Joe Louis Defence

Nat Fleischer called him "a master on defence." Grantland Rice disagreed:

"On the defensive side there is still a lapse between mind and muscle. A break in an important co-ordination.”

I have sympathy with both points of view.

I do quite like the video-maker's choice of Walcott though. It's not helpful that we can't see the whole fight, but there are definitely some interesting learned technical defensive moves in those highlights, Louis demonstrating what he's learned in what remains one of the very greatest ring careers there has ever been. He was bound to pick up a thing or two really

Early on he's relying upon the slip. From How to Box:

"[This should be] used against straight leads and counters. As your opponent leads with his left, shift your body about five or six inches to the right of the blow, making it fall harmlessly over your shoulder…sometimes it is only necessary to move your head to slip a punch.” You can see him do it, it's fun. It was a key skill for Louis and one that allowed him to consistently out-jab opponents over the course of his career, even those who out-reached him. Louis slipped a lot of jabs.

After being caught with two clipping Walcott jabs early, Louis slipped the third in this manner. What is crucial to note about the Louis defense is that it is built specifically to facilitate offense. After the punch is slipped, How to Box tells us that we should find ourselves in position “for a blow to his unprotected left side.” This is the theory, in practice Louis comes out of the slip to throw a punch at Walcott’s right side before following it up with a short straight right. It is Louis’ early warning that the angles Walcott will be showing will not be of the type he has been shown in the gym.

It’s also an early lesson in the way that Louis wove his complete offense together with his less astonishing defense to create a pattern of deterrent that affected almost every opponent he ever met. Moments later, Walcott tried his first serious left hook and Louis demonstrated the duck. “Bend forwards at the waist, ducking his blow. As soon as you have ducked his blow, straighten up and at the same time counter with a blow to your opponent.”

Louis pulls this counter off beautifully, following a left uppercut to the body with a clubbing right hand around the back of Walcott’s head as Jersey Joe, already rocking a little, tries for his own duck. He doesn’t quite make it and backs up before unveiling the two-step that would cause Louis trouble all night, going away and coming back with a punch (usually a right), one big horrible feint that Louis will fail to unpick in either fight. Later, swarming Walcott back to his own corner, Louis comes square and continues to throw blows even as Walcott blocks them on his gloves. Here we see the elemental weakness in the Louis defense—it is all but abandoned when he is in the full flow of an attack. Most offensive machines share this weakness. It is born of the absolute surety that exists in this extremely rare breed of fighter that they can outpunch any opponent, and that exchanges are therefore to be sought.

It's fun. It's a fun defence Louis fought with because he was never really trying to avoid being hit, as in, he wasn't behaving like someone that didn't want to be hit, he was behaving like someone who wanted very badly to hit someone else. That's an active defence, an aggressive defence, a direct defence. Must be very horrible to be in with.