How competitive was Joe Louis at age 37?

No he didn't. Lewis was fairly close as well. After them, the number of beaten contenders do decrease drastically.

 

From what I remember Lewis is way behind those two.

Honestly if you rank heavyweights on resume it is either-

1. Louis
2. Ali
3. The rest

or

1. Ali
2. Louis
3. The rest

 

That i agree with. But that's also because Ali and Louis didn't have the embarrassing losses that Lewis had.

 

I think that they have him beat on volume.

Both in terms of number of title defences and number of ranked oponents beaten.

No disrespect to Lewis.

 

Holmes is right up there in terms of duration and volume of quality opposition.

What perhaps hurts his standing is that he did not fight a few key fighters that he should have.

It should also be said that although Louis, Ali and Lewis had their soft options they were usualy ranked soft options.

 

But Holmes out of his entire title run only fought 3 or 4 top fighters, Louis at least try to have one or 2 hard fights per year(Outside of WW2 of couse)

We didnt see Louis spended the MAJOR of his rein defended against the likes of 15-0 David Bay's. Most of Louis's title defenses had at least 50 or more fights. And since a good number of Holmes fights were against the level of prospects. I just cant rank Holmes over Louis, or Ali or even Marciano. Holmes was the Dempsey of his day lol.

Fighting overmatch foes to look good for the crowd.