Joe Louis vs. Vitali Klitschko

i have the first godoy fight it has been a while since i watched it and i cant remember how much of it i have but i did not think louis had come close to having lost his tittle

 

Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but are you suggesting that Louis was not a good boxer?

Louis knocked out Schmeling, knocked out Walcott, knocked out Pastor, and knocked out Conn twice.
Perhaps you see things differently, but in order to get that KO, Louis had to create an opening for that KO - which requires several different skills to be used simultaneously for that to happen.
Louis didn't overpower opponents with brute force; he used effective technique to score the knockouts.

Let's face it, boxers make fighters look bad. Very rarely does an opponent look great when faced with a quality boxer with good movement and a good jab.

I'm also not happy that you include Charles, since Louis was years past his best.

 

Walcott won the first fight. I have no problem in admitting that. Walcott was an awkward cutie and Louis battled to solve Walcott's style.

As for Godoy, I honestly think he would have been thrown out of a modern ring because he often dipped below waist height, which is illegal. Godoy too had a very awkward style.
Mendoza, can you provide a reliable source that claims Godoy was robbed?

 

I did not say Louis lacked skills, I said he had slow / methodical footwork, a low guard, and was there to be hit by quality boxers. So to clarify my positing I think Louis was far from quality in defense.

How could one have good defense if the likes of Buddy Bear, Tony Galento, and Jimmy Braddock knock you down? The truth is good boxers exploited the above flaws in Louis' defense, and some modestly skilled guys were able to produce something dramatic.

It was Louis huge edge on power and unwise bravado by his opponents that bailed him out vs Walcott in the 2nd fight and Conn in the first fight.

Had the judging been fair, Walcott is the champ. If it was a 12 round fight, Conn is the next champ. If Conn was wise, he's likely the next champ as well.

While Louis was past his best, he had enough to win a string of fights after he meet Charles. Charles simply exposed the same flaws a young Joe Louis had.

 

McGrain,

Those who saw the footage and do not emotional attached themselves to Louis know who won. If you plan scoring Louis vs. Walcott 1, please PM me your card.

As for the judges, Louis managers had a special in with Madison Square Garden. He had his own crooked ref in Donnavan, who ref at least 15 of Louis fights. Donnovan scored the Farr fight 14-1 for Louis. This is perhaps the worst score card of all time, as Farr likely won at least 5-6 round and you could argue 6-7. One of Louis managers went to jail for gambling related charges around boxing.

 

No. I am saying those here who scored for Louis have not seen all there is to see, or in some cases are being biased. I said nothing at all about Sweet Scientist. I have seen the first Walcott vs. Louis fight and know Walcott won at least 8 rounds and had two 10-8 rounds. How does Louis win? He would need to win 10 rounds clean, and that did not happen.

The truth is Wlacott camp insisted that Donnavan would not be allowed to ref the 1st fight. Are you aware of this? Donnocan was a crooked as a dog's back leg. Indeed the replacement ref scored the first fight for Walcott. The outrageous score card was by Donnovan in the Farr fight. He only gave Farr one of 15 rounds. Utter crap to anyone who has seen the full fight. I hope this clears things up.

McGain, I get the hunch you have not seen as much as I have in this thread. There is no need to get heated. I like you as a poster. I urge you to watch for yourself.

Which fight?

 

The Louis-Walcott bout was scored by rounds, not by points. Walcott's knockdowns wouldn't have mattered except in the case of a draw.

Donovan refereed most big fights in New York. I really don't know about him being Joe Louis's "personal" referee.

 

If 1/3 of the press favoured the champ, that would indicate that 2/3 of them favoured Walcott, correct?
Jimmy Cannon, who was a big Louis supporter, suggested that if it had been anyone else other than Louis, an official investigiation would be launched into the scoring.
Personally I don't think it was an outright robbery. I think Cannon overreacted, as did Peter Wilson (Sunday Pictorial in the UK) who wrote:
"I'll swear on oath that Joe Louis was licked!"
Louis himself thought he lost, by the way.
I agree that we cannot toss out the opinions of those who though Louis won. By the same token, we cannot simply toss out the opinions of those who thought Walcott won either.

As for myself, I have not seen the fight in many, many years now. I have highlights of it on VHS and not the whole fight. I have not seen the fight in it's entirety.

Regardless, I have never put too much emphasis on the fight in judging Louis as a fighter, regardless of who won.
The reason being is that Joe was nearing the end pretty quickly. He was a badly faded fighter at this stage.

"While Joe was in training for Walcott, a physician noted that the champ's reflexes were unequal, that his left side responded with less agility than his right. On occasion there was also slight drooling from the right corner of his mouth.
These were signs of reflexive deterioration, but Joe ignored any suggestions that he quit. He needed the money, and the ring remained the quickest and surest way to get it.

Instead, Joe was unduly worried about his weight. Over Mannie Seamon's strident objections, he decided to dry out the last couple of days before the fight, cutting back on his food and water intake. It was vanity more than anything. The overweight boxer simply didn't want to look sloppy in front of his public." - Joe Louis, The Great Black Hope.

So whatever the thoughts on the scoring, to me it's largely a moot point in any event. The champ was simply not the same fighter he had been, and he also cut weight, which hampered his conditioning.

 

So? He was well past his best when he fought Charles. Well past it. Simply because he had a few victories subsequently, does this mean he was hanging onto some sort of prime?
Come on.