Did Joe Louis have obvious boxing flaws?

Joe Louis fought in an era where he really had virtually no genuine rival. He was too good for everyone at his best. In fact he was well ahead of his time and was a very intelligent boxer with a very high ring IQ. Only Ali and Holmes are able to rival Louis for the ability to judge an opponents strengths or weaknesses and change stratergy during a fight. This is a very under acknowledged quality of Louis. The era Louis fought in was not a very good one. It was by no means the worst but far behind the talent in the heavyweight division in the 70s and 90s. The only boxer to really find a weakness in Louis was Schmeling and this fight took place when Louis supposedly was at his very best. Louis in previous fights to this would jab down leaving himself exposed to a right hand counter punch. Louis while only losing this single fight between 1935-1950 was supposed to be at his peak between 1935-1941 and he was knocked out by a former champion who in his era was a power puncher but was nothing exceptional compared to other heavyweight champions since then. Even Louis admitted that Marciano hit harder than Schmeling. It is true that no heavyweight is unstoppable even during their peak years but there are obvious weaknesses in Louis that not enough fighters were able to take advantage of in his era.

Although Joe Louis hit with tremendous power compared to other heavyweights in his era, his single punch power was nothing exceptional compared to quite a few heavyweights since. There are testaments from others who fought both that Marciano's single punches were more powerful than Louis. Even Jersey Joe Walcott, who fought both fighter in professional bouts, says this in a television studio while sitting next to Joe Louis. Louis does not even argue with this but seems to agree. Louis had superior technique compared to Marciano in that he would fire off more fluid combinations and had superior boxing ability, he also had superior ability to finish a fight. Based on this there is no way Louis punches as hard as Foreman, Shavers, Bowe or Lennox Lewis. I would probably say Joe Louis's power is more equal to Joe Frazier in that it is very good but would not KO someone like Ali, Foreman or Holyfield. Of course being able to fight is as much to do with how you use the power rather than just throwing big single shots one at a time but the point is that Louis's power was not the best of all time. Sure he scored a lot of knockouts but I am not convinced that the quality of opposition says how well he would do with other ATGs. The record number of defences is irrelevant is your opposition isnt occasionally close to your level. This could apply to someone like Larry Holmes too but Holmes did gain wins over Norton and Shavers who were far better than anyone Louis opposed during his peak years. Some may argue that Schmeling was of their standard but Schmeling found a way to win one of his fights with Louis with ring intelligence. Billy Conn was on his way to ouboxing Louis until he relaxed too much and decided to fight with Louis allowing Louis the chance to KO his opponent. This fight is generally regarded as one of the best heavyweight title fights of all time, but I disagree. While it may have been a brilliant finish it is not a testament to Louis's brilliance but his opponents weakness for relaxing in front of Louis. Also the quality of the fight in my view is really poor compared to the FOTC in 1971 between Ali vs Frazier. Jersey Joe Walcott made the same mistake against Louis while on the way to a points win in their second fight.

Some may argue that Louis won against 4 former or current champions and won against lots of top contenders but what does that mean if the era he is in isnt very good? I really believe that the best fighters to oppose to Louis were JJW, Ezzard Charles and Rocky Marciano. There are fans of Louis that will argue Louis was a shadow of his former self but JJW basically used a style that nearly beat Louis in 1941 but maintained it throughout the fight, in their first fight. It appears based on reports and the rounds I have seen that Louis should have lost this fight. Then Charles outboxes Louis by a wide margin on the scorecards. Then Marciano wins against Louis. So what if Louis was at his peak during those years? I believe he would lose to at least one of these three fighters even at his very best as he lost easily to two of them even when he was winning against other highly ranked opposition.

Louis is my view would easily lose to Ali from 1964-1975. Ali would be too elusive in the 60's and took punches from other opponents that punched harder than Louis in the 70s. Marciano would be more likely to win against Ali. Larry Holmes outboxes Louis. Foreman, Bowe and Lennox Lewis are just too powerful for Louis. Even though Louis could recover from knockdowns quite easily he was knocked down by ordinary fighters. It is clear that Louis had a poor punch resistance. Others make this point about someone like Joe Frazier based on his fights with Foreman, yet Foreman was far superior in punching power to Joe Louis's opponents. It was possible to KO Joe Louis. It happened when he was at his peak and when he was past his best. It was also possible to outbox Louis. In Joe Louis's defence he still had the ability to KO other ATG heavyweights. Louis was a very entertaining fighter to watch and had qualities that other ATG do not have.

Overall I think Louis should only be judged on what he was fighting. The quality of opposition during his title reign was poor and other future title holders in a one off fight could win against Louis even if their reign was short. Louis was still a threat to any ATG champion though and is the best KO finisher of all time.

 

Joe Louis in my view fought the best 3 opponents he ever opposed at the end of his boxing time.

In my view JJW probably should have won the first fight based on the rounds available and observers watching the fight. Louis also lost easily to Ezzard and Rocky.

In my view this shows Louis would not do so well in match ups against other really good ATGs

Patterson and Frazier were thought to be able to give anyone a good fight until their fights when they were stopped early by big powerful punchers.

Fighters such as Patterson and Norton are often not deemed worthy of a top 20 ranking in the list of ATG heavyweights due to poor punch resistance against powerful punchers. Louis had the same problem but no one in his era except Schmeling and Rocky were able to take advantage of this due to poor quality of opposition and Louis's brilliant offence.