How does Corrie Sanders fare against the men against whom Louis defended his championship? Who beats him?
Sanders might drop one or two due to his lack of consistency. At his best I have no problem picking him most of them without a second thought. But Louis had one thing that Sanders did not have and that was that he was a busy fighter that trained his ass off. I've seen Sanders look spectacular against guys that other top fighters struggled against and I've seen him stink the joint out against guys he should have blown away in a couple of rounds. Almost always when he sucked it was because, oh yeah, he'd only had a fight in the past year and that one had gone 2 rounds. He suffered a lot from ring rust and undertraining and if he put in one of his sucky performances against a top flighter I could see him get the L. I'm not making excuses for him; this is part of who he was as a fighter. His hardest matchup stylistically is probably Marciano. A guy with a short awkward stance that throws damn hard and likes to maul on the inside. Sanders had a habit of letting guys work on the inside and then try to counter them. I always hated him doing this because imho his boxing skills were superlative at his best and he should have been boxing rings around his foes. But again, this is probably the result of not enough roadwork. Doing this against Marciano would play straight into the smaller guy's skillset and what's more Sanders never had the sense to fight tall or lean on the small guys like Wlad.
Yup agree completely. People that think Sanders did not have a good gas tank should see him against Ross. On the other hand, the results of ring rust and inactivity were all too evident against Kulpin, where Corrie didn't look at all like the fighter he could be. I still wish he'd taken his career more seriously. He seemed like a happy-go-lucky character, though, willing to take life as it came.
Supposedly Sanders gassed against Rahman because a leg injury prevented him from training properly and HBO would not accommodate him for the time needed to mend. Sanders was thrashing Rahman pretty well up until he tired. I think Sanders would have clobbered the Bum of the Month Club in spectacular fashion. What if Sanders had a different manager and trainer? What if Lou Duva, Angelo Dundee or Eddie Futch had trained him?
Given Sanders complete inability to put together any sort of run of form, I imagine that nearly all of them would have beaten him. The idea that Sanders would have been great in another era, is frankly ridiculous. Arguing that somebody like Sonny Liston could have replicated Louis's resume is misguided, but arguing that somebody like Sanders could have done it is preposterous.
I think Sanders is a very underrated fighter. He had a good career, Wlad of course, Purritty, Al Cole, Bobby Czyz, Bert Cooper. His loss against Rahman was a shootout. I think if he decided to come to America like Botha and Coetzee did, he could have gone farther, but he wanted to stay in South Africa. I know he wanted to fight Lewis and Tyson, but he was a high risk/low rewards opponent, and smart fighters avoided him, because he was a dangerous, fast southpaw puncher, that wasn't well known to the general public. Why fight such a dangerous guy when you probably wont make much money and you can get knocked out. I wasn't surprised when he ko'd Wlad, because I had seen him fight a few times before, and knew that not only could he punch but he was a fast starter and very aggressive.
This. You can add to that du Plooy, who KO'd Tillis, Bey, Pritchard and Weaver. Nelson, Sprott and de Leon are decent scalps as well.
A single loss in his first 37 fights is complete inability to maintain a run of form? OK. Wait a second. We're getting to what's ridiculous. Are you seriously making the argument that Sanders could not have beaten guys like Braddock, Farr, Galento and (lol) Dorazio? He would have run through them like a locomotive. These guys had a ton of losses, in some cases DOZENS of losses. They didn't call it the "Bum of the Month" club for nothing. These guys were midgets averaging 190lb going up against a genuine heavyweight. Some of them would have fought at LHW today, ffs! If you truly think that ALL of these bums would have beaten Sanders, then you understand nothing about boxing. Get a grip.
Du Plooy KO'd Weaver in 2, here you go: http://boxrec.com/media/index.php/Johnny_Du_Plooy_vs._Mike_Weaver_(2nd_meeting) He's another case of a guy with great natural ability that preferred partying to training. For some reason I detested Du Plooy (for reasons I can't even remember, lol) and I was super chuffed when Sanders carpet bombed him.
We are talking about consistently beating currently ranked contenders, over a period of multiple years here. That is the kind of run of form that Sanders never put together. They called it the bum of the month club because they were up against Louis. The reason these guys had a lot of losses, is because they fought elite opposition with a frequency that Sanders would never have contemplated. If Sanders was picking up losses against guys like Tubbs while being relatively protected, then yes he would absolutely have picked up losses against guys like Farr and Galento, if he had to fight them frequently. Chris Byrd fought as a light heavyweight, and he still got a lot more done than Sanders, in the same era. Its not so much that beating them individually is a big ask for him. Its more than the schedule is an impossible ask for him!
Sanders wasn't being protected. Protected against WHOM? Protected fighters are fighters who bring in a lot of money and whose marketability would be affected by losses. Sanders brought in relative peanuts and he was virtually begging guys like Tyson, Holyfield and Lewis for a shot. Secondly, let's examine some of this elite opposition that they lost against. Galento lost against: Eddie Mader, 185lb, 57-43-9 Marty Gallagher, 206lb, 43-27-6 Galento was KO'd by this 22% KO monster Al Friedman, 185lb, 36-34-6 Johnny Risko, 190lb, 68-46-6 who were amongst 22 others that he lost to. Max Baer lost against: Willie Davies, 13-19-2 (Baer being the last guy this chump ever beat) Johnny Risko, 190lb, 68-46-6 James Braddock 194lb, 46-24-4 James Braddock lost to: Tom Patrick, 180lb, 28-30-4 Herman Heller 10-11-2 Hans Birkie 200lb, 37-41-8 Tommy Farr lost to: Ernie Simmons 21-27-5 Billy Thomas 37-42-9 Walter Saunders 15-19-6 (Saunders on his debut) 1) Losing to Tubbs (18-4) is a positive pleasure compared to losing to this collection of washouts 2) If these guys were "elite" then everybody in the "old days" was elite. Or, perhaps, in reality, they were ham and eggers with a few exceptions. *Makes noise of vast distaste* Disagree completely. Sanders would have filled up the hospitals with these dwarfs and midgets who still somehow contrived to lose to boxers with LOSING records. Chris Byrd got the shots that mattered because he was a little guy without a punch who was game and put on a good show. Nevertheless, Sanders' record (42-4) is probably comparable to Byrds (41-5-1). Here the hypothetical becomes complicated. If you take the Sanders that actually existed, and sort of transposed him into Louis' career, then I think that he would have dropped some due to said lapses in form. If you take Sanders and make him repeat that track record as a continuous timeline, then I think it's absolutely doable for him and I'll tell you why. Sanders simply didn't fight often enough, and suffered from ring rust a lot. Make him fight as often as Louis and I think you will have a sharper, better version of Sanders.
Very good. I would say that Sanders, unlike Joe Louis had a lot of power from age 36-38, meaning he has a better chance vs Marciano than Joe Louis did. The loss to Rhaman was due to a leg injury that prevented road work, and let's not forget that was the best version of Rhaman who Ko'd Lennox Lewis. I could see Sanders having an easier time in some fights Louis struggled to win, but I also see him losing 1-2 more times than Louis did.
