Best five wins thread. Lineal / Ring Magazine heavyweight champions.

Are there any good newspaper accounts of the first LaStarza fight?

 

Burns was followed by another two decades of men drawing the colour line. After Braddock fought Louis, it was basically over. Nobody drew the colour line after that. It would have been unthinkable by Rocky's era.

 

Because the top contenders of his day happened to be white. After the war the best contender happened to be black, and Louis fought him, twice.

 

And when you are as dominant as Joe was, you pick the money fights which probably favoured white fighters.

 

By defending twice against black boxers he proved that there was no color line anymore.

 

Pick any black contender from Louis' reign and I guarantee Louis was fighting someone who was higher ranked.

 

Put it this way.

I doubt that he avoided Lem Franklin in his prime, but fought Joe Walcott when he was well past his best.

If Louis was going to draw the color bar, then Walcott would have been right at the top of the list of people to avoid!

 

If he did, then it was before either of their primes, so perhaps not all that important.

I think that he was lucky to get Layne at the right time, and it was still only a wafer thin victory.

 

That's just two guys, My point exactly. Who else offered him big bucks? Louis avoided noone, NOONE!

 

Anyway, my list for Marciano:

1. Walcott
2. Moore
3. Charles
4. Layne
5. Louis

 

Lem Franklin was number 2 at the end of 1941 because he had beaten Abe Simon in October of that year,the problem for Franklin was he was kod by Bob Pastor in Feb 1942. So there wasn't much of a window for Franklin to challenge Louis.Louis had twice beaten Pastor the last time by ko.He had beaten Simon no5 by ko inMarch 41, Nova no8 by ko in Sep 41 Buddy Baer no7 by ko in Jan 42.

The John Henry Lewis fight drew only a 17,350 crowd with a gate of $102,000.
In contrast Louis' previous defence, against Schmeling, drew a 72,000 crowd with a gate of$1,015,096
Louis' next defence after Lewis was against no hoper Jack Roper that drew a crowd of 21,125 for a gate of $87,697.
Next defence Galento, 34,852 crowd $283,302.