Watching Louis vs. Braddock again, I'm surprised at how well Braddock does this fight. He lands a lot of good punches on Louis. And clearly displays really good IQ, grit, accuracy, and effectiveness. It's really breaking apart the whole Baer-Braddock mismatch idea for me. His image on this forum just doesn't match what I see on the 1080P HD 60FPS version of the Louis fight. And I can see how Baer, or any other HW for that matter, would struggle with the HW champion version of Braddock. I don't think Baer deserves to be ostracized for losing to Braddock. Unfulfilled potential in Baer? Sure. But Braddock was no pushover.
He deserves more flak than he gets for the Braddock fight. Maximum Chump Baer did nothing all fight and basically clowned away the championship. I'm glad Braddock beat his ass.
It seems that the injury somewhere occurred during the fight. It was confirmed by X ray after the fight, so it is pretty reliably documented. I am not saying that this is a get out of jail free card, but it at least makes Baer's behavior more explicable. He was probably trying to conceal the injury.
OK, let's run with that. He didn't injure both hands, did he? What's to stop him from jabbing or from trying to land something, anything? Instead he took shots to the kisser all night and showed off his muscles. Sanders blew his hand out against Daniel Bispo and still took him to the cleaners with one arm. That performance had left me deeply unimpressed with Baer.
Baer is a strange case. He was inconsistent mentally and his killer instinct was all over the place imo. He could just clown and cruise or he could go ballistic at times. Of course there's a couple of incidents that may have led to this.
Yeah, he woke up at the end of the fight when it was too late. This of course begs the question of how bad his hand injury actually was, though. His performance against Schmeling was much better. Baer basically let Braddock win.
Do you think Joe Louis let Braddock A. Take him to the half way point of the fight. B. Land a bunch of hard snapping punches on him. And C. Knock him down?
I see what you are saying, that Braddock is better than I'm giving him credit for. I also, however, saw Baer clown and laze his way to a loss against Braddock. If you want to put it that it was a combination of factors, fair enough I guess.
Yeah I think Baers psychology for this fight was a bit lacking. Combine that with the fact that Braddock was seriously no slouch... Braddock was a really good fighter at this point of his career. A close quarters spoiler. With his mechanics and reflexes optimized for traps and rhythm breaking.
