Joe Louis + Tomato Cans = overrated legacy

Joe Louis was a very good fighter but he did fight a lot of Tomato Cans. Even Marciano had some credible opponents that over the hill but still credible.

 

Yep, all those HOFers, former/future champions, and top contenders sure were trash...

 

How about Marciano plus white skin plus spoiled fruit equals ring immortality for a small but determined few ?

LOL ... just could not resist ... by the way, I'm white if it matters (which it does not, of course)...

 

You need to take a step back and look at the reality of Louis's record.

Louis fought 34 oponents who were curently ranked in the top ten by ring magazine. Thats twice as many as any other heavyweight champion excluding Ali. Indeed half of his profesional fights were against curently ranked oponents!

He defeated eight lineal champions (6 heavy and 2 light heavy) in an era when there was only one belt per weight class and eight weight clases.

He defended the title 26 times mostly against ranked oponents and helfd the title just shy of 12 years in an era where there was only one version of the title. Ring magazine said upon his retirment that he had given every deserving challenger a shot at the title.

People may differ on the strength of Louis's competition but they were clearly the best available. In fact it is hard to see what else he could really have done to build a stronger resume with the opposition available.

 

Can you name any heavyweight champion who defended the title sucesfully against five or more ranked oponents who is not regarded as an all time great?

I would suggest to you that Rocky Marciano is an all time great because his raw career statistics dont allow any other interpretation.

 

Both Louis and Rocky clean out there eras(Well ok Louis does have a black murders row, but he did beat a few of them on his comeback trail)

If they were great or not is besides the point, they were the best of there era, and Rocky and Louis clean them out. As I said before you cant relly ask for much.

Kinda of like what Wlad is doing now. You may say todays heavyweights suck, but there the best out there, and Wlad is cleaning them out.

 

Cheers Woddy

 

Louis' "murderer's row" is just the guys who happened to be top contenders in the time that he was in the military. Other than that, there was nothing to separate them from all the other top contenders Joe fought. When he was active, he fought exactly who he was supposed to fight. He fought at least one #1 ranked contender each year, and usually a few top 5 contenders as well.

 

M2S has left Woddy with about a lightyear's worth of ground to make up...

 

Perhaps if you had even the simplest of facts correct you would not come across as a total idiot.

 

Actually the bulk of what Louis fought in his title run and in his defenses was crap.

Out of Louis defenses the only guys i would give maybe a chance against Holmes or Tyson are Wallcot and Schmelling.

 

You are long on the theory but short on the facts.

The facts are that Louis defeated twice as many ranked oponents as either Holmes or Tyson.

He beat far more ranked contenders.

He beat all the top fighters of his era and they either lost to them or refused to face tham.

Those are the facts.

In terms of depth of resume and consistant quality of oposition Louis has only one peer (a certain Kentucky heavyweight). Beyond that there is clear blue water between him and any other pretender to the throne.

 

This crap really needs to be deleted.

 

This post ranks low in fairness and pretty high in bias and ignorance. Just some starting points:

1. Louis was not an "olympic champion." He didn't even compete in the Olympics.

2. I assume by "close to 30 pro bouts before stepping up to the plate," you refer to the Schmeling match. This is silly, since Schmeling was already Louis' third former champion, the second one (Baer) having given Schmeling the beating of his pre-1938 life, and was about Louis' 10th fight against a ranked opponent. You simply refuse to view those previous big-name matches as instances of Louis "stepping up to the plate" because he dominated them, and you would rather only accept a sequence of events which undermine his credibility- had Louis blown Schmeling out the first time around, you wouldn't consider that a "step up" either, in spite of its being his third victory over a former world champion that year alone. These close-to-30 (27) bouts took place within the span of less than two years total,this being a guy just 20-22 years old! This is the polar opposite of "protected."

3. Your description of Louis being "regularly decked, beaten and made to look like a fool against the most average fighters the sport has ever seen" is so obviously inaccurate that I suspect (like most of your post) it is deliberately inflammatory hyperbole. Louis was only ever decked twice by fighters who never held the world championship (once apiece by Galento and Buddy Baer), and both of those men, while limited boxers, were nevertheless very dangerous punchers and reasonably high-ranking challengers. He was obviously not "beaten" by any "average" fighters, as all of his losses were to former or future champions, who, even if one wants to smugly throw around condescending remarks about their legacies, were clearly far above average. One could fairly say, I suppose, that Louis was made to "look like a fool" at times in his first encounters with Schmeling, Godoy, Conn and Walcott, but all of these men (especially Schmeling and Walcott) were excellent fighters, and Louis knocked them all out in rematches. At any rate, none of these things happened to Louis "regularly," but rather a handful of times in a career of around 70 pro fights, and hardly ever to "average" fighters according to any fair standard.

4. Your bit of Revolver-ing through Louis' record to find whichever opponents and/or attributes of opponents would be most unflattering to one's perception of Louis' opposition is unconvincing and weak argumentation. There has never been a champion who did not at some point in his career fight at least a few opponents who were fat, had low knockout percentages and/or had unimpressive records. Louis did defend his title against more mediocre opponents than most champions do, and he did miss a few contenders who would have been worthy title challengers, but the longer one's title reign, the more such things are inevitable, and Louis' was the longest of all. Examine Larry Holmes' title reign- this being the second longest of the gloved heavyweight era- and you will find that he also faced a number of underqualified challengers and failed to take on several high-ranking opponents during his own era.

Ultimately, Louis faced and defeated all of the five most recent preceding champions, then faced all the next three proceeding champions, beat one of them, and lost competitively to the other two while long past his prime. While some of his title defenses were relatively wanting in opposition, the majority were, in fact, against legitimate title contenders, and the vast majority of these were, in fact, won in dominant fashion- your method herein has been to draw a minority of dubious or negative information out of a sea of the positive, and read negativity in to some other cases in which it does not present itself. Far from informing an accurate assessment of a champion's legacy, this type of methodology produces only biased, polemical hobnob of the sort often reserved for journalistic muckraking and political campaigns.