He was way past his best but still boxing pretty well here. [yt]FQ4mrxOAZGo[/yt] How does he compare to other 36/37 year-old ex-champions or champions ?
One thing I notice, he still seeme to have power and skill but was finding it difficult to put his opponents away. Most the fights went the distance during this period. The opponents were decent fighters, it's not as if they were picking easy guys to make the old man look good.
He was no longer Joe Louis the ATG but he wasn't Joe Louis the washed up bum either. I prefer to call him Joe Louis the " aged contender." His opposition was neither stellar nor subpar. They were middle of the road halfway decent guys and he showed he could still fight. He was in all honesty a far cry from what he had been 10 years earlier though. He went from easily dispatching top contenders, former champions and super sized heavys to basically decisioning fringe types. Still a good fighter, but a shadow of his former self.
He lost the torque, man. That light-bulb pop where fighters realised they'd been hit after they got hit. Central nervous system was helpless. Mechanically it was all still there but it turns out his top 1% was more important than all but maybe Marciano/Frazier of the great heavies. One thing - his jab was maybe better. Maybe. Brion was his best jabbing performance maybe ever.
You can see against Brion he is basically just another fighter , he can't back Brion up or really hurt him.Brion would not have gone 6 rds with a prime Louis. The reflexes and power were gone,he got by with ring smarts and the remnants of his jab.
I agree. Probably not better, but he had to rely on it more, bring it to the foreground in his art. It was still the most formidable left jab on the planet. I believe.
Yes. I detect more of an "up" versus Brion. More angles I think. In the end though, it was always enormously important to him. He jabbed Baer's ears off, cut Baer to pieces with it, but all anyone remembers are the power punches. It was foregrounded by what was lacking in his other punches more than anything else.
Yeah, I always think of the Baer fight when I think of Joe's jab. Had Maxie rocking back on his heels. But then, Baer never did slip a jab in his life.
Still a very capable guy but lost some from his best reflex and with his style tough, he still only lost 2 fights past it and one prior 2 it ...PRIME and he lost to great fighters
His reflexes are shot, Louis can't pull the trigger. He gets by on his technical skill, heavy hands and smarts to rely heavily on his jab. The ghost of Joe Louis could still beat 85 percent of the heavyweights from his era. He just couldn't keep up with the pace the Rock set or keep him off without the pop in his punches of his youth. He couldn't pull the trigger on Ezzard who was too skillful for Joe at his advanced age. Another fight where Joe uses his jab magnificently is the Uzcudun fight although he quality on most prints is awful you can still see Him pumping it overtime into Paulino's face.
His legs were shot and he was terribly slow ... to compare him in any form with the pre-war Louis is absurd.
Yes, but perhaps we have to ask how many other fighters around at the time could have beaten him. Charles obviously. Walcott yes. Beyond that, I am not sure.
