How highly do u regard Billy Conn?

Unreasonably so

 

Very ... the first fight against Louis proves that.

 

Its complicated. The Louis fights are great but his resume at LHW, HW or even combined does not match those performances. At LHW hes got an Usykian record, hes almost undefeated with like a dozen wins most of which are rematches where he lost a lot of rounds. All his top LHW opponents except Lesnevich and Bettina were also MWs albeit legendary ones. Today this wouldn't be a problem but in that era this sort of resume is really glaring.

At HW Conn beat 4 Louis opponents in Pastor, Savold, McCoy and Dorazio and has a few other quality wins. While he was more dominant thats also a very short resume for his era. Those were not among Louis's best title opponents either and Pastors the only one who isn't among the worst.

Conn might have given prime Louis the best fight of any opponent especially twice. He was a better HW then LHW thats for sure but given how little he did its hard to rank him anywhere near the top of Louis's opponents. Its also hard to rank him above most of the great LHW champions of his era he didn't beat like John Henry Lewis, Bivins, Marshall, Moore or even Maxim. While almost no one could do better against prime Louis over two fights I feel theres a healthy list of fighters who could have stepped into the gap between Lewis and Bivins and did what Conn did.

Conns KO rate below HW was sub 15% too. Like Loughran but Loughran did so much more.

Conn mostly didn't fight after 24 so that explains quite a lot but that was unusually common in this time period.

 

In the lower half of the top 10, probably around 7-8.

 

The war ruined more than a few careers.

 

I agree, on resume he's not anywhere near the top 10 for me but he had great boxing skills but very little power for a 175 lb fighter..
15 ko's in 76 fights

 

H2H highly…..

 

You have to look at his entire career.
His first fight was at 135 pounds, and he had 6 losses in his first 13 months after turning pro at 18 with zero amateur fights. Yes, he fought a lot of middleweights, when he was a middleweight. He fought Yarosz and Kreiger, Young Corbett 3, Apostoli, Babe Risko. At what would be junior middle now, he defeated Zivic. He had a number of fights at what would be super middle now. He only had 10 fights at would today be light heavy. He had 10 fights as a heavyweight.
His record as a puncher is deceptive as well. Eight of his 11 stoppage wins were against heavyweights. Ironic that a guy that 'couldn't punch' scored most of his stoppage wins against the biggest guys he fought. But by then he had learned how to fight, his body had matured. When he was a middleweight it was on the job training against very tough opposition and he was very young.

 

A ton of respect for the Man.
Coming sooooo close to beating the Brown Bomber.
His record speaks for itself.

 

It wasn't a scintillating performance, but Bettina was a heckuva fighter (+ an awkward southpaw) & Conn was able to keep him under wraps all night long. Roy Jones got praised as a phenom for years for the same repetitive "potshot & sidestep" approach vs. challengers who weren't even a fraction as accomplished as Bettina.

His ideal weight was almost certainly modern day smw - I would say he ranks among the best smw-sized fighters that ever lived.

He also weighed w/in the 175 lb limit for several of his hw fights, including his stoppage of Pastor & epic battle w/ Louis, so I think those should also count toward his lhw legacy as well.

 

Very highly indeed.

God knows what his resume would have ended up like if the war hadn't happened.

 

I think he was terrific and underrated today. The more you dig into his resume the more you have to respect it.