Joe Louis vs. Bob Pastor I

I only watched the first two rounds right now while in bed just to see how my perception compared to yours out of curiosity.

The first round was a feel out round, with Pastor showing some nice footwork and slick agility. Louis lands a hard body shot counter, and lands a few jabs. A pretty uneventful round, but nice to see how they’re feeling each other out, getting a sense of reflexes, distance, and styles.

Round 2 doesn’t have complete footage, but from what we see, Louis clearly won the round. He lands at least three clean bone rattling counters, while Pastor lands a few desperate punches in the clinches. Definitely don’t agree that Louis did absolute nothing. Pretty good round overall.

 

We doing the Uzcudun fight?

 

This was a 1937 fight, two fights before Louis won the title. The scores were unanimous for Louis. Referee: Arthur Donovan 8-2 | George LeCron 6-3-1 | Charley Lynch 8-1-1
My recollection is Pastor cautiously ran around the ring and didn't want to take any chances, and Louis did not try particularly hard to catch up with him.
In their 1939 rematch when Louis was champion, Louis decked him four times in the 1st round, once in the 2nd, and eventually knocked him out in the 11th round.

 

"He ran like a scared rabbit the whole time"

That sums it up, except I think you are being unfair to rabbits. Most of them would put up a better fight.

I gave Louis every round. I didn't see Pastor doing much to Louis at any point. All he showed was marathon level stamina to keep running this long. I appreciate good boxing. A guy going in and out and side to side, but the boxer has to engage his opponent. Pastor never really did.

I see from Adam listing the scorecards that Louis won decisively. Good. I noted that Pastor was cheered, I guess as the hometown favorite. It was Louis who was booed at the end. Well, life and fight fans often aren't fair.

Off his overall record, Pastor was a good contender, but this one was a disgrace.

 

The second Louis-Pastor fight is much better.

 

I always wanted to watch this one. Hey another subject does anyone know why the rematch was scheduled for 20 rounds ? Thought that had been discontinued by that point

 

States determined the maximum length of fights. Which is why Dempsey-Tunney 2 was for 10 rounds in Illinois.

Michigan allowed 20 rounds fights, so championship fights in Michigan could go that long.

At some point it was standardized at 15 rounds for championship fights.

 

Only in the first and last rounds. Maybe one other, but I don't recall that. He won several rounds and was very competitive. The outcome of the fight might have been entirely different if he hadn't gotten bombed in the first round. He put up a strong fight for a guy that was an 80 pounder as a heavyweight. He wanted to fight Joe a third time. He was a good analyst and he thought he had figured out his mistakes in the first two fights and he really believed he could defeat Joe. He probably would have gotten a third fight because he earned it when he kayoed Lem Franklin, but World War II came along and he enlisted in the army.