Joe Louis -vs- Lennox Lewis:

If the big heavies (who were leagues below Lewis) Louis faced hit him cleanly then Lewis' extra size and skills are going to be bad news.

 

That logic cuts both ways.

Louis was a lot faster and more dangerous than any puncher Lewis ever faced, big or small.

 

In many ways yes, but your talk of Louis beating the big men he did has little to do with his Lewis chances in reality.

 

On the contrary. It shows that from a stylistic point of view he was verry verry efective against that type of fighter.

Not just in terms of doing what he wanted to them but also in terms of not letting them do what they wanted to him.

The bottom line is that Louis is virtualy unbeatable at mid range. The only way to beat him is either on the inside, on the outside, or by inteligent use of both.

 

I wouldn't call it rash at all. If a guy with the size and power of Lewis lands his biggest punches there's every chance in the world he would take Louis out.

 

To be honest, I have to agree with Janitor, some of you posters here give too much importance on the size/weight in the last time, some months ago it wasn´t that fatal...

 

Not at all, unless you mean just lemons of that size, which those guys are compared to Lewis.

Look, the chasm between those guys and Lewis is big. It's all about class levels. Doing what you like against B level Billy Bloggs is rather different to doing it vs A level John Doe.

Unbeatable at mid range maybe not. Arguably the best ever there would be a better description i think. Definitely awesome there, and it just happens to be a range Lewis doesn't need to fight at. Tyson would be an interesting study vs Louis just at this mid range. He was dangerous there too, to put it mildly.

 

Add the skill level to the size and weight and it means something, size and weight might not make some useless big buffoon dangerous or great but it sure fitsa in well with what Lewis brings to the table.

 

Yeah, you probably know it yet that I rate Lewis high, head-to-head and legacy-wise (4th), but some explainations here ("Louis never fought a big skilled fighter with so much power like Lewis...", etc.) are really meaningless and dissembling, because you could use it always the other way,too.

 

Precisely what I and several others have tried to profess for the past two days. Facing a large unskilled heavyweight who is mediocre in his abilities, is hardly the same as facing a well trained and talented fighter like Lewis, Holmes, or Ali. Certain old school advocates seem to believe that Louis beating Carnera or Buddy Baer is comparable to fighting the previously mentioned names. Although I don't necessarily consider the old adage " a big talented fighter always beats a smaller talented fighter," to be a rule of thumb, there is still quite a bit of merit to it.

 

No there is not.

Louis was never taken out by a single punch in 70+ profesional fights. Perhaps never even put in serious trouble by a single punch. He took punches from some of the hardest punchers of all time and shrugged them off.

If Lewis lands and he is braced for it he will just shrug it off. It is unlikley that Lewis will hit him with anything that he dose not see coming working from the outside. Even if he dose the chances are that Louis will just get up like he always did.

When you talk about taking Louis out with a single shot you are going off the map into uncharted teritory.

 

Maybe because throughout boxing history 'good big un has beaten good little un' far more often than not. So, if like I do, one rates Louis and Lewis 'equal' in terms of head-to-head, we go for the bigger guy. Nothing wrong with that. That's why light heavie and cruisers deliberately add weight when they step up. Why not stay at 188 or whatever instead?

 

Who says that Lewis's only chance at scoring a knockout over Louis has to come from a single punch? Lennox scored many knockouts in his career against very durable fighters whom he wore down with an accumulation of shots over an extended period.

 

Use things whatever way you want, the plain fact of the matter is that the big guys Joe beat pale in comparison to Lewis. I'm not using it as the be all and end all but more to refute any claims that Louis showed he could beat big men like Lewis. He simply didn't.