The chin and defensive skills of Joe Louis

You are not mistaken.

However if you look at the rankings at the time, you would see five men who were better than Galento, ranked beneath him.

However he managed to beat a strong #1 contender, so that was how it had to be.

Given that he had previously dropped Louis, perhaps he had something?

Schmeling was a great fighter as was Walcott.

You could argue that those are the two best men he ever faced, and arguably both top 20 heavyweights to this day.

Braddock was a lineal champion, but probably not one of Louis's top five wins.

 

Two Ton had 111 progressional fights he had an intelligence to him for a certainty a sort you don’t get fighting 1-2 times a year. If he could hurt Louis once the way he did he knew something.

 

absurb.

 

Let’s get it right ..

Chin, 8
Ability to bounce back from being stunned 9.5 ( key component )
Defense 8.5

when he lost to Schmeling he was hit flush so many times after the fourth round by a very hard punching Schmeling that in victory Max said he could not believe what a good shot he could take. Still, he was KOed but was a very young, pretty inexperienced fighter.

Braddock was an off balance flash knockdown

Galento could do nothing but crack and fought the fight of his life .. he stung Louis in the first which Joe took well and dropped him in the third. Joe took it well ,recovered extremely fast and decapitated him.

I find the Conn stuff overrated. Conn had nice moments against an overconfident, weight drained Louis .. the rally he threw was beautiful but having Joe out in my opinion is a bit much. He was so out he crushed Conn a few minutes later.

BBaer was a huge guy, a big puncher, caught him and knocked him out of the ring but Joe came right back, recovered fast and took him apart.

T Mauriello could swat, landed a huge right that knocked Joe across the ring and was iced a minute later.

Walcott , a damn good and dangerous puncher dropped him three times, all legit shots but never had him on ***** Street … Louis took them well.

Marciano, we’ll we all know he couldn’t punch.

Louis was an exceptional fighter but how he rates H2H really comes down to match ups. If you study careers you can build lots of cases .. Ali was floored by a small cruiser in Banks, badly hurt in the first round by small Doug Jones, almost KOed by small cruiser Cooper, floored badly and multiple times hurt by 204 pound Frazier and hurt by small Leon Spinks … how they recover is critical.

 

Holyfield a 10? Ridiculous.

Recovery is part of chin. Some get tagged hard and recover in the blink of an eye whereas some can stagger around the ring and not recover at all - at times it's invariably the end for certain boxers as they don't recover. They might not have even gone down. Bruno liked being stopped on his feet. This is surely chin based. There's barely a difference between being staggered but not going down and flash type kd's. Coming back from being staggered but staying on your feet means you don't get the respite of a trip to the canvas and a subsequent count.

I couldn't possibly go back to a bare 7 for Joe for reasons already stated. You rated his chin a 6 and defense a 7 yet he went 14 years, 43 fights and 25 successful title defenses without being stopped. It's no secret he was well out of shape vs Schmeling yet he still shipped an enormous amount of flush right hands. As Eddie futch once said, an out of shape fighter can't ship the punishment as well. All the above is definitely not the work of a 6 rated chin and 7 rated defense fighter.

As i said Holmes followed a similar pattern to a bit lesser degree. If one was rating Louis 6 on the chin what would Holmes be? Given Louis attacked more the most you could possibly rate Holmes would be 7.5 in the chin stakes and no-one is rating him that low. You rated him a 9.0. He was dropped against Shavers and Snipes (Isaac too)and took longer to recover than Louis customarily did and was also hurt hard against Witherspoon, Weaver (many claim a KD that was ruled a slip), Williams stunned him and there's a few other moments if one looks close enough. Only against peak Tyson did he not find his way back and he was aged like Louis against the likes of charles and Marciano and one might even put forth Walcott as Joe was way past his best at that point.

I see past all that and consider Holmes to have an excellent chin, one i'd rate a 9 i reckon vs Joe's 8. If someone wanted to have them a half point apart based on styles etc i wouldn't lose sleep.

 

We will have to agree to disagree on that one. It just doesn't have to be that complicated. Magazine experts back in the day used to conjure up 20 crucial categories to rate guys on and they used to simply make one category called "ability to absorb punches". This is a common sense approach and can be massaged to give a quite accurate rating to anyone. Taking a punch and recovering whether from one punch or from taking 10 rounds of them is pretty measurable.

Tyson was hurt via singular punches from Tucker, Bruno and Smith. From memory Holyfield hurt him reasonably early at one point too. He actually recovered quite well. Vintage Tyson rarely ever got caught flush as his opponents were too busy trying to survive.

Frazier took a good punch. He was however extremely hurt during the second KD i think it was. He was then down again without throwing a single punch. Realistically he was in no condition to continue and numerous ringside authorities were screaming for the fight to be stopped so Frazier getting back to his feet yet again only counts for so much given he wasn't in good enough condition to be allowed to fight on. He was also pretty cactus at the end of the rematch which featured from memory two kd's. Frank Bruno was often stopped on his feet but it meant little in the big picture as usually once he was hurt that was it whether he hit the floor or not.

You also agreed with 6 and said "There are also numerous boxers who had decent 7/10 chins who I would rate above Louis in a heart beat." So you don't really class him as a 7 it's fair to say.

Louis went back at opponents fast because he took a good punch despite being dropped or hurt. H was never staggering around or running away to survive unlike plenty of others. Even Holmes used to keep clear for a short period of time.

Holmes surely wouldn't be too far from a 9 which is why i drag Louis up to an 8. I am comfortable with Holmes at a 9. What it is is "ability to absorb punishment" for mine.

 

He's not beating Marciano at that age even with Tua's chin, that much is true, but I think he never really recovered fully from the first KD by Schmeling (round four?), so maybe better chin/recovery powers could have seen him find a way there. He wasn't the best at adapting during a fight, so perhaps not but there's always a possibility.

 

Louis' chin is like a 6.5, sufficient and above the average heavyweight, but nothing near what we've seen at the top level.

I think it is telling, that it is commonly thought to be his biggest weakness. Louis was a very complete fighter

 

Louis's style was bared around advancing behind a shoulder roll, and switching to a crouch with a single movement, when the situation dictated.

When he was coming at you, there wasn't much to shoot at.

His style was subtle and brilliant.

For all that, he was ultimately a finisher, and he had to operate inside the danger zone.

The question you have to ask, is how much woudl have got tagged if he hadn't used this subtle style?

Again, you are not seeing the elephant in the room.

These men do not have nearly as many knockdowns, because with the exception of Ali, they didn't have nearly as many fights against contenders.

Also if you grade a chin on number of knockdowns, you are penalizing the man who keeps getting up, and rewarding the man who gets put to sleep.

This is not entirely sound logic.

 

Here is Galento's moment of glory.

The end of year rankings for 1939.

Joe Louis, Champion

1. Tony Galento
2. Bob Pastor
3. Lou Nova
4. Tommy Farr
5. Max Schmeling
6. Johnny Paychek
7. Red Burman
8. Gunnar Barlund
9. Roscoe Toles
10. Lee Savold

Now in my opinion Bob Pastor was better, Loui nova was better (notwithstanding their sole fight), Tommy Farr was better, and Max Schmeling was much much better.

To be honest Lee Savold was probably better, albeit based on a future timeframe.

For all that, his ranking is entirely justified.

He had beaten the previous #1 contender, and a fairly dominant one.

Those sort of outcomes happen in boxing.