Who says Joe Louis couldn't punch anymore in 1950?

foreman would not have scored any knockouts in his last ten fights had he not had such a weight advantage. he always needed to be stronger than his opponents which is why he would not face ruddock, lewis or a buch of other equaly as big guys rated at that time. the edge he needed was experience and strength. a match well made is a match half won. in his comeback Louis took on anyone, he was not selective.

 

Rocky's chin was as proven as it could be based on the opposition ... Walcott could really hit and Rocky took it , especially after the first round knockdown when a lesser man would have caved .. still, Rocky never fought a naturally bid 215 pound heavyweight with top kills in his physical prime let alone a 230 plus guy so we can only speculate ..

Rocky had power to hurt anyone. His power was terrific on a pound for pound basis and still big , period ... however, boxing is to successfully hit and survive being hit and that's a who other discussion when a man is a brawler and giving up huge height, weight and reach to top opposition ..

 

He had the rep coming into the Charles fight based on past laurels .. starting with the Charles fight the world saw a watered down Louis ... as the clip shows he could still rip into a stationary target if reasonably fresh but there is a gigantic jump in quality between punching out a Pat from a Rocky ... Louis' exact words after recovering from the Marciano fight were "that Rocky sure can hit, can't he ?" That pretty much answers that question.

 

rocky took out 6'3'' 239lb big bill wilson who recorded 42 KO'S as well as 6'4 230lb johny shkor who beat a good tami mauriello to get rated. at 6'5'' 190lb maybe carmine vingo was posibly on his way to growing into a 220 pounder had his career continued.

we recently had a thread on here rating the best 225 plus heavyweights and it was a prety **** poor bunch as soon as you got past lennox lewis and tokyo douglas ...hell, I had to add bonecrusher smith into my own 225plus list, talk about scrapping the barel! The best heavyweights who ever scaled 225 plus recorded their beter wins below that weight. even george foreman was just under 225 when he beat norton. at 225 he was strugling against lyle.

 

Bingo! Foreman thrived against overmatched opponents. He did not like to be evenly matched. Too bad comeback Foreman didn't have James Toney's mindset, in that he'd fight anybody, even guys who were naturally much larger than himself. Lewis and Bowe would have been nightmares for Foreman, as would have Ruddock and even guys like Tim Witherspoon and Frank Bruno.

 

Not quite true. He had scored some explosive KOs in exhibitions leading up to the Charles fight (not only vs. Valentino, but also Nino Valdes and Rex Layne) that helped stir such massive interest in the fight. Fighters like Lee Oma actually turned down offers to fight Louis in exhibitions because he had still been showing so much power, and had the rep for going all-out to score KOs in exhibitions. Even in the Charles fight itself, he still showed enough power to shake Charles a couple times and keep him fighting warily and defensively.

Post-Charles, with the exception of that one sweeping left hook that KO'd Savold, that same power simply wasn't there. His fights were generally dull, tactical distance fights that he won by fighting technically and working his jab.

 

His power did, at the very least.

 

I was thinking about making a thread along the lines of "What if senescence were eliminated in human beings? How would that affect the historical landscape in boxing?"

Basically, if you eliminate senescence (the slow and inexorable onset of biological decay in living things) you guarantee that someone remains in the exact physical condition of their prime adult years and never withers or wastes away to the point where they die of natural causes, making them immortal to a limited degree (of course still being susceptible to communicable disease, toxins, or grievous injury). So boxers could (and, knowing the psychological disposition of 90% of fighters, for the most part would) stay in the game as long as health and interest allowed them to.

Joe Louis was the main part of the idea's impetus.

If his physical prime had lasted for the last seventy years, who would have beaten him? He would have been able to retire whenever it suited him (barring the unfortunate possibility of pugilistica dementia or some other career-derailing calamity suffered in or out of the ring) and could conceivably have shared the ring with Marciano (on more even terms), Liston, Ali, Frazier, Norton, Foreman, Holmes, Tyson, Lewis and even either Klitschko - with his body in no lesser a condition as far as strength, speed and reflexes than it was in 1940, assuming he stayed in the gym. Fancy that!

His power alone would have kept him in the race with all of those listed above. As has been pointed out, even in his period of deterioration he always hurt his opponents even when his KO ratio dropped to 30% for a span.

 

Fair post.