https://streamable.com/34zhg Great film quality of an entire uninterrupted round. You can discern all the movement happening in the ring. You can see all the individual punches, even quick double jabs. In this round, Joe Louis throws over 75 jabs, and over 100 punches.
Louis was in shape. He was boxing good. It just goes to show, no matter how much talent a fighter has, what huge factors the right tactics and seasoning can be.
I just noticed something....Louis drops his left after throwing the jab...he's open for a right hand!
Indeed. This was not a sluggish and unfocused Louis like the Tyson of the Douglas fight. Schmeling really captured lightning in a bottle that night.
Schmeling pawing that jab out preventing Louis landing those uppercuts, fighting very similar to a small Wlad.
I think a "sluggish" Tyson in Tokyo is a myth too. Of course, Louis's trainer and the American press did in fact make the same old "unfocused" excuses you'd expect. Stories of Louis spending almost no time in the gym, looking bad when he was there, and spend more time in nightclubs and on the golf course ... Same excuses.
A great performance by Schmeling, a highly seasoned professional against a twenty two year old Louis. I never understood how Schmeling, at the top of his game was destroyed by Max Baer. Great clip.
Could not agree more. Nobody will argue Douglas or Schmeling deserve to be rated above Joe Louis or Mike Tyson (even if they did beat them) so why deny each of them the credit of overcoming one great fighter with the right tactics? All fighters good enough to be champion are good enough to produce one great win and upset the odds. They might not produce it again but so what? No matter how great a fighter is he can still get found out. even when trying his best. It doesn't have to be that the other man was not focused or that his training went wrong all of the time. In a competitive match somebody has to lose.
I'd rate Schmeling's win over Louis as relatively better than Douglas's over Tyson's. Not simply because I rank Louis greater than Tyson but more because of the physical dimensions of the fighters in question. Douglas had to fight a brilliant fight against Tyson but with his huge height and reach advantages and 10 pound weight advantage the performance becomes a little less impressive than Schmeling's who was actually a bit smaller than Louis. That's just the "hardship" of being such a big man. Beating smaller men, however great they might be, and whatever their reputations as "giant killers", will never be as impresive as smaller men beating bigger great ones.
I agree. There are double standards with that one. Some fighters get a pass for beating up on smaller men when it should actually lower their status. Riddick Bowe, Sonny Liston, George Foreman.