Would he have, at some point, lost to someone else down the line and early in his reign as champ? The Schmeling fight made him change his attitude and tighten him self up. He basically shocked the hell out of him and his handlers. So question is, if for whatever reason he never took on Max, do we see him fall somewhere else along the way.?? Or is it business as usual, all the way to Walcott?
I think the same sort of thing would've happened eventually. Louis got complacent due to how easy he was finding the sport and how much attention he was getting. He spent his time training for Schmeling either at the golf course or in a lady's bed. If not Schmeling, it'd have been someone else.
Very interesting one,Fergy. Thinking about the top heavyweight contenders who were around in the latter part of the thirties,I can't see anyone who would have posed as big a threat to Louis as Schmelling even with The Bomber in complacent frame of mind. You never know,though.
Tough to say, but it's possible that he'd have never had such a long and successful career without this loss. You have to keep in mind that you need extraordinary fighter to beat prime Louis, even unmotivated. Schemling was the 2nd best fighter of the decade after all.
Cheers Stevie. Think I have to agree with George above. Even though there wasn't a great deal of guys around that look like challenging Louis, I think at some point he really could take his eye off the ball. Not sure who but all it takes is a too laid back Louis and a determined challenger.
the lesson would have been learned the hard way against somebody else. Tommy Farr might have been a good candidate.
Lucky for Joe, he had that strength of character to come back. A lot of fighters have had early kos like that and ruined em. If it's true what I've learned about Joe, some of those pre Schmeling fights he took lightly so it was a good lesson for him.
Very interesting question! Sometimes I've wondered why the match with Schmeling was made in the first place. Following his KOs of Carnera and Baer, Joe was already the outstanding challenger for the title. True, Schmeling was on the comeback trail and had posted some fine victories but little to suggest that he would be anything more than another scalp on Louis' resume. That said, it is a wonder that Louis was not permanently damaged from the beating he took in the first Schmeling fight. Perhaps a lesser fighter would have been ruined. As it turned out, it was a wake-up call for Joe. Had he kept winning as he had, and complacency set in, I do believe he could have been upset along the way. Perhaps Farr, Conn, Godoy, or maybe Buddy Baer might have done the trick.
I think Joe suffered a lot of brain damage in the first Schmeling fight which accelerated his decline and showed up later in the reflex tests he took in the late '40s. It was a terrible, prolonged beating. Much worse than the beating he later gave Schmeling, particularly in terms of head damage, which IMO is the worst type of damage a fighter can receive. I don't disagree with any of the speculation engaged in by contributors to this thread, however. The beating may have smartened him up as a fighter, but it didn't do his long-term physical well-being any good.
That's an interesting point. It has been noted that Louis was floored ten times during his professional career and this fact is used as evidence that he did not have great punch resistance. Two of those knockdowns occurred in the first Schmeling fight and those were his first knockdowns. I wonder if those subsequent knockdowns might trace back to the Schmeling fight. He did take a long sustained beating in that fight that would have finished lesser men long before 12 rounds. Most of the later knockdowns were flash knockdowns where he rebounded quickly, so I wonder if his balance might have been affected. In his later fights he appeared to age rapidly and prior to the Marciano fight the right side of his body was mysteriously weak.
Yes, it is speculation, but we know from what has happened in football that the effects of head injuries show up eventually and sometimes as early as the mid to late 30s in a person's life. I've always thought that the first Schmeling fight proved that Louis could take punishment rather than the reverse. I think his balance could easily have been affected. I know that heavyweight Pat McMurtry from my region in the Pacific Northwest took two bad beatings, one from Nino Valdes and the other from Eddie Machen which resulted in balance problems while he was still in what should have been his prime years. Fortunately, he chose to retire before any more damage was done. I think other fighters probably experience the same type of things, but choose to hide them.
