Different kind of punchers. Marciano was a heavy handed brace yourself for abuse kind of fighter, everything hurt. Sanders is sharp, capable of catching you unawares with a 1 shot ko punch. You would feel Marciano more the next day, but Sanders is a legit dangerman. I think for 1 shot Sanders punched a lot harder than rocky. He was about 3 stone heavier also
1) Sanders was 38 and not in the best of shape. Hardly what you'd call "prime" 2) Vitali and Louis are not the same in either dimension nor technique 3) Sanders was himself a counterpuncher at heart. His usual gameplan was to softball a few jabs out there to get the range and see how the opponent reacted. The moment the other guy did something sloppy that straight left would come barreling down the pipe to usually devastating effect. That's how he caught Vits in the first round. 4) He was pretty mobile in his prime. not nearly a static target.
This was just judging off this particular fight against a top level opponent. But what do you think was his best fight against a top level opponent, wasn't he a similar age vs Wlad? And yes, Louis had better technique than Vitali so that'd make him more dangerous in some respects.
He was a year younger and in better shape. But even that wasn't exactly "prime". Louis undoubtedly had better technique when it came to generating power, inside fighting and combination punching. Vitali was more of an arm-puncher that relied on volume and placement to degrade his opponents. His focus was on using his massive height and frame to be as awkward as possible to land on while walking the other guy onto his punches. Not to say Vits didn't hit hard, he certainly did, but considering his size and what his brother was capable of, he was a little light-fisted for his frame. What I'm saying is: these two guys are not really comparable. Sanders vs Louis would be advised to box from range and look for an opening to land his fearsome counter-left. Louis vs Sanders would be advised to try rile Sanders up and get him into a close range slugfest. Sanders was pretty useful in a shootout himself (see: Du Plooy fight) but that was really what Louis excelled at. I would have paid a fairly stiff ticket price to see these two go at it. Forget about who would win, it would be guaranteed fireworks from start to finish.
joe would have finished him inside 2 at most, though since retired sanders wouldnt get close to getting into contention much less make the top 20 in louis time then its entirely hypothetical.
Louis would stop him in interesting fight. You can't win a game of counterpunching against prime Louis.
For boxers who weren´t hard to drop, Sanders was a dangerous guy. Wouldn´t bet a penny on Louis here.
It's not a gimme fight for Joe and he would have to be careful earlier on. A younger Sanders in good condition can punch, he can go rounds and he's a southpaw, but Joe's all round class and power will see him through in 8 or 9 rounds.
