How would Charles fare against Louis best pre-championship opposition and his 25 title defenses? Would he be as long reigning as Louis?
Yeah.....are you telling me that Billy Conn or perhaps' Max Schmeling couldn't conceivably have even upset Charles?
More the opposite. I am saying that Charles is so far from being able to realistically replicate Louis's resume, that it does not warrant serious discussion. It wouldn't be enough to be better than all of Louis's opponents. You would have to be something like 25-30% better than the best of them, over most of a fifteen year period.
Not that talented. If this was within the ceiling of a Charles, then we would have at least four other heavyweight champions, who would have done something similar.
Not if Joe Louis is overrated. I could see Charles coming close to doing what Louis did, minus one or two fights.
It would take a lot more than Joe Louis being overrated to make it realistic. You would then have to explain why no other heavyweight in history had been able to achieve such success as a champion, and you would probably end up concluding that all the other top ten heavyweights were also overrated. Good as Charles was, a champion of his caliber is never going to dominate the heavyweight division for very long. There is always going to be a Joe Walcott, or an Elmer Ray to trip them up. To dominate for a long period, it is not enough to be slightly better than that type of fighter, you have to be much better.
Charles would do very good because he was such a masterful boxer, however he never had close to Joe's power, so many of his fights against bigger men are going to go longer and be more grueling adding up he mileage. He def trips ups and no way does he go 60-1 like Louis did. But he would probably go a very outstanding something like 55-5.