Do you rank Joe Louis the same when it comes to career and h2h?

His resume kind of hands him half of the head to head argument as well.

Even if somebody else could have beaten him, you would have to question whether they could have done better vs the same opposition, over the same time frame.

 

I hated to say no because it feels wrong. I can think of several fighters I’d take to beat him prime for prime but at the same time a lot of it depends on style for me. Joe had problems w swarmers and guys w great foot work. That being said if you had a tournament of the 20 best guys h2h fighting each other at least once I think he finishes top 5 career def number one or two

 

Yep I rate purely on h2h or eye test or winnability or whatever we wanna call it.

Legacy and resume etc was too boring for me.

 

I do the same exact thing

 

For me, Louis is very difficult to rate.

In my head there aint no number hierarchy, just classes of fighters that I see on the same level: Tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 etc.

Louis was a star among some grey lost planets. He was ahead of his time. For me he is vastly overrated in therms of raw power (like Dempsey), but beeing extremely sharp and accurate, with a not so solid chin, but solid recovery. Considering the gap of skill and weightclass, he is not in my tier 1. I have difficulties seeing him fight the normal contenders with attributes not existing back then. Huge raw power, very good movement + jab + chin, extremely durable fighters: Lyle, Cooney, James Smith, Frank Bruno, Razor Ruddock, Pinklon Thomas, Tony Tucker, Ray Mercer, Oliver McCall. Tier 1 simply proved they could overcome this attributes. For me, Louis rarely did.

 

I agree somewhat with this, although not to such an extent. I would give Liston, Holmes, Tyson, Lewis, and the Klitchkos reasonable chances of victory. I cannot see Ali losing to him.

I would have him top 5 h2h.

 

Louis nowhere close to 1 or 2 h2h.

 

This.

 

I rank Louis as #1 on the ATG HW List.

Head to Head? He's top 5 for me along with Ali, Tyson, Holmes and Foreman.

 

Just took my top 20 and contrasted h2h.

Louis is my # 1 ATG and came in at # 2 h2h

Ali comes in at #2 ATG and fell to # 4 h2h

 

makes no sense.

Head to head is a question of a fighters pinnacle, with a hypothetical fight at that time. Longevity, considering the lower 50 % percentage of a fighters opposition, mostly after this prime, doesn´t give you much information. Focusing on dominance around prime as well as the performance against the 10-20% of the best opponents should be the key. However, for H2H, there is simply just one point of time at which the fighter actual existed, anticipating the best performance.

 

Louis was not viewed as #1-3 while he was champion and rated by Nat Fleischer at #6 sometime in the 1960s.

His rocket up the charts has a lot to do with politics, he was a hero. Hero's are never underrated and there is plenty of films to watch on him. Oddly enough his controversial fights such as Walcott 1, and to a lesser extent Godoy 1 have missing video parts, yet his matches vs bum of the month types are complete.

Legacy wise, Louis should be #1 or #2. Head to head, he has slid backward in the past 30 years in my opinion. Barely top ten now for me.

It would be interesting to see the newer boxing fans age 20-40 take on Joe Louis. My hunch is viewing him with fresh eyes, and born into a very politically different times, they don't view him as someone who's say 50-80.

 

I'd bet that most 20-40yo boxing fans would be highly skeptical about Louis' h2h ranking, but the type of young guys who find classic boxing forums like this tend to be outliers who view past eras every bit as romantically as their grandfathers do.

 

Louis meant lot to the world war II generation. American youths seems to know less about their history theses days, but those who are boxing fans can see him films with fresh eyes.

 

It's not like they don't have their own biases though.