1950 Joe Louis vs Dempsey's big men

I really dont think Willard should be completely written off against Louis at all. Especially in 15 or 20 round fight.

Anyway, TKO of Jess Willard was a good win for Dempsey at the time. And a KO of Joe Louis was a good win for Marciano.

Different fighters posing a different set of problems to two different opponents. So it's irrelevant how 1919 Willard would do against 1951 Louis in assessing which win means more to Dempsey and Marciano respectively. Especially if it's something to do with "who beat the best 210+ fighter?" question since Willard and Louis are significantly different in size. And size should mean nothing to appreciators of Dempsey and Marciano anyway.

This thread has descended into the stuff John Garfield questioned about when he put up a thread asking why boxing postors talk about everything but the fighters.
Stripping the boxers and the sport of all its real-life meaning by talking about rankings and relying almost totally on boxrec info and other such crap.
I mean, really, when people are measuring Al Kubiak against Carl Morris against Lee Savold against Floyd Johnson and claiming some sort of meaningful or profound knowledge about the fighters based on a sketchy list of dates and results and a few lists of "yearly ratings" to suit their argument it's all a crock of ****.
In my humble opinion. :smoke

 

SQ: Rocky said he had nothing on his right, nothing. Your own boy but you still push the case that he did. If you refuse to take your own guy at his word saying you know better than there is not anything more I can say.

Lee was a slow, washed up, punching bag when the old Louis beat him and no spin by you can get around it. That's exactly why they matched him with Louis. Your endless justification of a shot Louis is ridiculous.

 

I mentioned Weaver and Walcott in response to someone else making some sort of vague comparison.

I wrote :

I happen to have the utmost respect for both Walcott and Weaver as fighters, and see loose parallells in their career trajectory.
I dont see why you should have a problem with that.

 

And I say they were both very good.
Do you disagree with that ?

 

How does anyone compare Walcott and Weaver ... two totally different styles.

I go with what Rocky said because he was not quoted as being nice in the papers but factually to his own inside men ... plus his punches had nothing from my own watching them.

 

"has a weird style that's tailor-made to beat Louis"

This is a good point.

My earlier point was that no fighter below the very top level--Schmeling, Charles, Marciano--ever beat Louis, so it somewhat a stretch to make any of these men a favorite. Assuming that they were better than the limited film or their records indicate is certainly a jump into the dark.

 

Louis can hit here still. He connects some big shots on Marciano on occasion. Marciano closes the distance so all of Louis power is just a short shot. He doesn't get to extend to his liking but the power he has is still there. Power is the last thing to go and for a 37 year old to a lose a substantial amount of it WHILE bulking up in his latter years would be odd and a rarity in sports/boxing.

 

True. My point is that the uncertainties multiply when we're talking about "Dempsey's big men" as one unit compared to each of them individually. For instance:

* Chances are low that Willard was better than his film evidence and record.
* Chances are low that Firpo was better than his film evidence and record.
* Chances are low that Morris was better than his film evidence and record.
* Chances are low that Fulton was better than his record.


BUT:

* Chances are much better that one of them was.



There are a lot of subtleties that would take a lot of close inspection to catch even in modern boxing film--not to mention the older stuff. For instance...

[YT]3w8UdMCmFOA[/YT]

[YT]vPP07C2E3LM[/YT]

 

Or even...

[YT]v4FavcyJ2n0[/YT]

 

He puffed guys up with his jab. The over looked fact is Rocky almost took him out in the first round. He hit buckled Joe's knees with a big right in the last seconds of the first. If he had another thirty seconds the fight might have ended right there.

 

How am I the one "grasping at straws"?? YOU're the one who suddenly decided to divert this into a discussion of numerical rankings, not me.

No, that angle isn't accurate either. The Johnson win was part of a series of MAJOR elimination fights specifically designed to determine the next HW title challenger. Willard's win removed a serious candidate from consideration and meant the division was just one fight away from determining its next title challenger. The Louis-Savold fight did not have the same significance or impact. Joey Maxim was already scheduled as the next challenger when the Savold fight was arranged, and Walcott was already pegged to be the next challenger after that. Louis' win left a title shot for him as only a possibility for down the road, but its fruition was still dependent on public interest and Charles still being the champion by that time, which of course didn't happen.

No, I'm not "speculating." I'm pointing to what's plainly visible right there on film. That's the complete opposite of speculating.

And if you don't disagree with me, then why ask?

Again, I'm not "speculating" anything. You're speculating because you continue to make assumptions about a fighter's quality based purely on other circumstances, like his weight and activity, rather than what his actual form is when he fights.

On top of that, making an issue of Willard's "high weight" vs. Dempsey doesn't make sense anyway, because he weighed significantly more than that against Moran and looked as good as in any footage of him (and was credited with giving one of his best performances by ringsiders).

It has nothing to do with my argument. YOU said Louis had proved that "only an ATG in his prime" was capable of beating him at this stage. He did not do that, because he failed to prove that even just a very good contender in his prime wasn't capable of beating him.

I was referring to Firpo, the guy who beat Willard in that time. I said none of the fighters Louis beat in his comeback were as highly regarded as Firpo.

No, I said he was a leading contender because he was actually considered a leading contender. I never went into specifics about his individual opponents, and to be honest, I wasn't even aware that he had even fought Miske.

Well, if you want to make an issue out of something like that, you could just as well ask what did Savold and Johnson do after they lost? Johnson still remained a leading contender through several fights afterward and had a couple of decent wins, whereas Savold dropped out of contention and had one more fight (which he lost) before retiring.

Bill Brennan, who was considered among the leading contenders then and was actually favored to beat Johnson.