Joe Louis's record vs ranked opposition

You co-authored a book with Joe Louis? @greynotsoold

 

"Co-authored" is a strong word for autobiographies. But with athletes, jocks, you know...

 

I just think longevity is his main strength, and think he’d have lost to most of the previous greats.
What are his best wins? Byrd? Povetkin? He does have a lot of wins against decent contenders.
Mercer was way past it, Rahman too.
I’ve just defended GGG by saying it’s not his fault his competition wasn’t great, so I have to do the same for Wlad.
But Wlad was ko’d thrice by fairly weak opponents, and I don’t look at him and think if he was fighting great fighters that he’d be beating them, like I do with GGG.
Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, I’d put Wlad just outside the top ten. Maybe he does deserve to be in there.

 

Byrd, Chagaev, Haye and Povetkin would be his best wins probably. Perhaps Peter as well. They aren't greats but solid top contenders and were in their prime and Wlad dominated them, along with dominant wins over the second tier contenders (Pulev is probably there somewhere in between).

Over a decade he beat everyone out there besides his brother and Wilder (who openly wanted no part of him) and rarely lost a round in the process.

GGG on the other hand, didn't have as many wins over ranked opp to start with, and when he met a good top contender like Jacobs he struggled. He is much more dependent on what he hypothetically would do, but I rate fighters on what they in fact did do.

(I also don't see why someone who needed a flash KD to separate himself from Jacobs and who lost to Dera on my card would even hypothetically be such a force, but that's another discussion.)

 

Agreed. The length of time Wlad was a unified titlist is the only career highlight. Unfortunately, this is coupled with some significant lowlights.

No 'shoe-in' for the Top-10 of all-time should have three stoppage losses to unrated/unregarded opposition, in my opinion.

While Wlad's longevity demonstrates character, it doesn't do enough as a trade-off against these types of catastrophic defeat - especially, when taking the level of opposition he faced into consideration.

He also failed to become undisputed champion, despite all that time at the top. And, there were windows in which this could have been addressed.

He's not even in my Top-15.

 

Can I ask what 15+ heavyweights you rate over Wlad?

 

There were none. He unified 2 titles from 2006 to 2008 and then Vitali came back. After Vitali retired, WBC gave their belt to a winner of Stiverne and Arreola (lol!) and then Wilder blocked the fight between Klitschko and Stiverne. Wilder later ducked Wlad.

It doesn't matter anyway. Wlad was seen as the king of the division, clear champion and the top dog.

 

What hurts Wlad is rather that he was never the clear top dog until the other candidate retired.

 

Wlad was a top dog from 2006 to 2008 and then from 2013 to 2015. That's 4 years. And even between 2008 and 2013 he was THE champion while his brother was a title holder. Even 4 years of being a top dog is not that bad.

 

True, but these things are always hard to do black and white. 2006-2008 Vitaly wasn't retired, right? In that case Wlad was more the interim top dog. And even after Vitaly retired, he was more default top dog.

So it's a bit hard to compare against other eras of domination.

Holmes had at least five years when he was no doubt the top dog, before he started to refuse meeting the best or giving rematches against the ones who ran him close. On the other hand there was no one as good as Vitaly among the others.

Lewis was probably the top dog from '96, when Tyson ducked him and Bowe got beat up by Golota, until he retired in 2004, except for the time between the Rahman fights. And he closed by literally beating his Vitaly.

Johnson... Hard to say here really since he started to take it easy after winning the title.

So while Ali and Louis as top 2 are easy, nr 3 is really tricky. I've said Holmes before, but looking at the above Lewis feels like the better pick.

 

Lewis wasn't top dog from 1996 Holyfield was ranked above Lewis from 1996-1998.

Holyfield's wins over Tyson x2, Moorer, gave him that number 1 ranking.

Infact Lewis was only ranked as the number 1 Heavyweight in the 90s starting from 1999.

 

Exactly right.

Here's a really pertinent question. If there was just one title during Wlad's era, like there was for Joe Louis, what do things look like?

Another thing, lets say the two broski's were actually able to fight, how much does a tough fight (or more than one) like that take out of Wlad?

Fighting a guy that may well beat him at his best is hardly conducive to a more productive future than he had. Heck, he may not ever beat him.

 

He was retired: https://www.espn.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=2218381

Hard not to be the default top dog if you have been one for almost a decade.

After Vitali came back in 2008 he beat Peter for the WBC belt (a guy who Wlad already beaten) and besides that, the only Top 10 contenders he beat were Gomez, Arreola and Adamek. He had no claim over Wlad for beating those guys.

 

I wasn't going by ranking as much who was the best in hindsight. Of course, we don't know for sure that Lewis would have beaten Holy in '96, so maybe '99.is the better starting point. As I said, tricky materia .
I

 

Wlad's the champ and Vitali is a contender.