Joe Louis Never Proved That He Deserves The Number One Slot ATG Heavyweights

Well, some argue that any high ranking of Frazier is always based primarily on him BEATING Ali.

And then Ali gets credit for beating Frazier because Frazier's ranked highly !

The same could just has easily be applied to Louis and Schmeling - and Baer fits in the "Foreman" role to complete the triangle.

 

The 80s had better overall talent but it was teh age of lazyness Most fighters not named Holmes or Tyson were only able to perform for one or two fights. The 90s crop of contenders though slightly less talented where more consistent.

Mid 70s was bad but this is offset by the fact that we had 3 ATG hws around.

 

Well, a lot of good fighters looked close to amateurs against Ali, that's why he generally is so highly rated. He made guys like Patterson, Williams, Terrell, Quarry and Ellis look quite silly as well, and they were all good fighters.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how many black contenders Louis met?

 

Louis face Joe Walcott and Lewis, the only black fighters to get a crack at Louis during his rein.

 

Who was on the panel? Having Walcott at #10, while passing over Foreman? I wonder who else did not make the cut. Is Walcott getting credit for making two all time greats look bad in defeats?

 

All I can find by googling is that it was a five-member panel. Their choices were :

1. Ali
2. Louis
3. Marciano
4. Dempsey
5. Johnson (tie)
5. Holmes. (tie)
7. Liston
8. Frazier
9. Langford (tie)
9. Walcott (tie)

 

Well, then I would say that he had pretty easy opponents. Consider how dominant Ali, Frazier, Holmes, Tyson, Holyfield et al. would have been if they more or less only had had white contenders. Which one of these were caused any real problems by white contenders?

The truth is that black fighters have totally dominated the HW-division ever since they were given more or less equal opportunity in the sport. To exclude everyone but one or two of them from competing at the highest level would severly hamper the competition in the division, to say the least. But that seems to have been case during Louis' reign. I would say that that puts the whole thing in a different perspective.

 

What about nowadays then ?

Do you think Russians and Ukrainians would have beaten all the black heavyweight fighters from the 1960s-90s if politics had not prevented them competing in professional boxing ?

Last time I checked all these black American fighters were getting beaten by white guys from the East.

 

Ali wasn't near his best. Bonavena fight proved that the old Ali was no longer fighting - a new slower flat-footed version who got hit a lot more was competing instead. Still good enough to win most times tho

 

There is no doubt whatsoever that the opponents Louis was fighting were the best around. There were no black contenders during Louis's title reign who were of the calibre of Max Schmeling for example. At least not untill Joe Walcott came along.

To infer that his opposition was weak becuase it was predominently white is to imply some black racial superiority. What matters is that Louis fought the best regardless of colour.

 

Baer, Schmeling, and perhaps Conn would give about any one a hard fight, black or white. Just because Schmeling is white, does not mean he is a weaker fighter than Terrel or Patterson imo.

 

Well, i meant to say it this way: in Ali vs Frazier I, both looked much better, faster and sharper than they did in their second and/or third fight. And Frazier won. Granted, Ali was a bit past his best while Frazier wasn't, but you can't overlook that Ali only won when Frazier had declined a lot (ironically, that was due to Ali for a large part).

 

I very much doubt this.

Before Joe Louis black fighters had in effect been banned from the elite levels of HW-boxing, with Jack Johnson as the sole example of someone braking the barrier. But after him it got even worse, until Joe Louis through smart managing and through being clearly superior managed to break through the race divide. During much of his reign there were definitely suspiouscly few other black fighters at the elite level, but towards the end oh his career and especially after the floodgates started to open.

Otherwise, how do you explain that there had been only one black campion before Louis, but almost exclusively black ones after him? It seems somewhat like denial to claim that black fighters got equal oppurtunity in the HW-division during the first half of the twentieth century. And that's why, IMO, questions can be asked about the records of all HW-champions during this period.

 

I wont deny that many good black fighters were frozen out, that's undeniable.

But you have to understand that there were more good white fighters in those days than in the 60s or 70s or 80s, for example.
I mean, how many men of Jewish-American backgrounds become professional boxers nowadays ?
In the 30s and 40s there were lots.

Economic conditions and the working-class culture of the 20s, 30s, 40s made far more white Americans get into professional boxing.

And you must have noticed that white men from Russia and Ukraine and Belarus are NOW ahead of the division.
Does this mean Muhammad Ali was lucky that white Russians weren't allowed to box professionally in the 60s ?
Think about it.

 

Of course, the changing socio-economic factors have played it's part. But I think it's clear from the very rapid entrance black fighters made to the elite levels of the HW-division during the late 40' and early 50's that the segregation began to drastically lessen during the latter stages of Louis' career and immediatly after it. The socio-economic conditions didn't change that much during the 40's for them to be the main explanatory factor, I would say.

As concerning today's HW-division I must plead some ignorance I'm afraid. Besides W. Klitschko and Valujev which other top-ranked white contenders are there?