Joe Louis vs Black 1930s top contenders

I would like a clarification.

Are you saying there were great black heavyweights out there and Louis simply refused to fight them, the same as Johnson after 1910 with Langford, or Dempsey with Wills? Or are you saying they could have been great but because of discrimination never got the chance to be what they could have been, like an eagle killed in the shell and so it never soars?

If the latter, I agree with you. If the former, I don't know. Who is the superior heavyweight you are talking about?

Louis was not responsible for the social conditions of his time. His obligation as champion was to fight the best contenders available. Time would hopefully improve things, as it did.

 

I would like to suggest the latter.

I think that it is no coincidence that some top black contenders like Joe Walcott and Elmer Ray enjoyed Indian summers only breaking through to the top of the rankings late in their careers when circumstances were more favourable.

I wonder if they could have been a force earlier and perhaps if some other murder row members could have been more.

 

I think you are right that both could have been contenders back in the 1930's.

What exactly do you think this says about Louis?

In a left handed way, Louis is being criticized for conditions he did not create and probably more than any other single man, he helped to change.

 

But I'm not critizing, Louis. I'm just stating that under more equal conditions he would have faced a more competitive playing field. That's all.

But you can't in any way compare Louis to Dempsey blatantly ducking Wills, for example. I think Louis showed what he was made of by rematching just about anybody who gave him a tough fight. He carried himself like a true champion, no doubt.

 

"I'm just stating that under more equal conditions he would have faced a more conpetitive playing field."

Perhaps criticism is the wrong word, but you are giving Louis a negative evaluation on the basis of social conditions which stunted the development of black fighters and therefore saying Ali faced a more competitive era.

Well, the conclusion that Louis' era would have been stronger if black fighters were given a fair shake I find impossible to argue with. That is certainly true. But, and it is a big but, there are other factors working for the competitiveness of Louis' era and against those of Ali or another champion.

1. Louis fought in a era when boxing was far more popular and drawing its participants from a significantly wider section of the population. Jack Dempsey said once late in his life that what boxing needed to get back on its feet was a depression. Well, Louis' era had one.

2. Related to the above in some ways is the almost complete abandonment of boxing by white American fighters. Every black champion in every division between the 1930's and the 1950's lost to white opponents. Most after 1960 did not. While there were more good black fighters than in the 1930's, although not necessarily more than in the forties or fifties, there were clearly fewer good white fighters. Check Ali's high-ranked opponents in my earlier thread. I think Jerry Quarry is the only white fighter. He and Bobick were the only white heavyweights to rank in the top five during the 1960's and 1970's.

3. Boxing in Western Europe, in my judgement, also regressed and produced fewer really tough opponents. Louis lost to a Euroheavy. Champions from 1960 to 2000 rarely did.

I am not really disagreeing with you. I am just pointing out that the level of competition, in the sense of a "strong" era versus a "weak" era, etc, is very difficult to judge as there are always crosscurrents. Discrimination against blacks crippled the early Louis era, but rising prosperity and the concommitant decline of good white American and Western European fighters hurt competition in the post 1960 era. The influx of Eastern European talent gave competition a shot in the arm from the 1990's to today, but are we perhaps seeing an abandonment of the sport by black American fighters to match that of their white counterparts back in the fifties and sixties. The highest rated American heavyweight currently is Tony Thompson. It is not a stretch to say he is not a top five heavyweight and only someone with blinders on would claim he is in his era what Jeffries, Johnson, Wills, Dempsey, Louis, Marciano, Liston, Ali, Frazier, Holmes, Foreman, Tyson, Bowe, and Holyfield were in theirs.

 

You definitely have a point, Fogey. Personally I think the division started to look better after WWII and I put this down largely to the increased opportunites afforded to black fighters. But as you point out, there are many factors going into the equation, so it's hard to say for sure.

It's easy to say that Louis was a great champion for sure, though. I only got Ali higher.

 

If a poll were ever conducted to determine the most revered and beloved African-American of the last century, the winner would most likely be Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And rightly so. Under King’s leadership, the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s broke the chains of segregation that held millions of black people back.

But Joe Louis, the heavyweight champion of the world from 1937 to 1949, would finish a strong second. Louis led no movements. He led with a stiff left jab to his opponents’ noses. He was the second black man to win the heavyweight crown, a generation after the tumultuous and controversial reign of the first one, Jack Johnson. Johnson did not open any doors for the black athletes in his wake. Indeed, the door slammed shut behind him after he lost the title. Louis and track star Jesse Owens pulled that door open again. And this time, it didn’t close.

In his gloved fists, Louis carried the hope, pride and aspirations of black people throughout the world during his rise to the title and his long championship reign. Yet for much of that time, the dreams of other black heavyweight contenders were deferred.

It’s easy to believe that Louis was the only black heavyweight of note during the 1930s and ’40s. He wasn’t. There were others. But almost none of them got the opportunity to fight Louis either before or after he won the title. Chances are, none of them would have beaten him. Louis was the best heavyweight of his time – and perhaps all time. Even so, he was not invincible. And his black contemporaries were just as deserving of a crack at him as the white ones, who were known as the “Bum-of-the-Month Club.” That designation was unfair, but the fact that they couldn’t even become one of Louis’s so-called “Bums” must have embittered the black contenders of his day.

Louis did not personally draw the “color line” against his own, as Johnson infamously did. Louis’s managers – John Roxborough and Julian Black – were the ones who picked Joe’s opponents. Roxborough and Black were a pair of African-American businessmen with underworld connections – not unusual in the fight game, regardless of color. They were well aware of Louis’s potential to break the barrier that stood between black boxers and the heavyweight championship. And they weren’t about to risk that ground-breaking opportunity by putting Louis in the ring with a black fighter who could derail their gravy train.

Thus, among the 31 bouts Louis fought before wresting the title from Jim Braddock, only two were against black opponents. Although he fought several blacks during his amateur days, the first time he met a fellow African-American as a professional was in the second bout of his career. The opponent, Willie Davis (also known as “Davies) was hardly a threat. He was winless in six bouts, and that soon became seven as Louis starched him in three rounds.

Not until bout number 20 did Louis face another black foe – one who was far more formidable than Davis (Davies). The man in the opposite corner was Roscoe Toles, a contender with solid credentials. One has to wonder why Louis’s managers were willing, at least this once, to put their man in against a fellow man of color who had at least an outside chance to win. Be that as it may, Louis and Toles met in Flint, Michigan, on April 27, 1935. Louis knocked Toles out in the sixth round.

But … was it a real fight or just an exhibition? Opinions vary. Some record books list Louis-Toles as a regular bout; others call it an exhibition. Boxrec.com, the definitive Internet record-compiler, does not even list the bout on either Louis’s or Toles’s record. So the status of the fight remains in limbo.

Toles deserves better than that. He may have lacked a knockout punch, but he was good enough to make The Ring magazine’s ratings. If his fight with Louis wasn’t a “real” bout, it should have been.

But Toles was not the only black heavyweight who could have given Louis a stern test during the young bomber’s rise to the top.

Johnny Whiters was a rival of Toles’s, fighting him at least three times (records vary), with Toles winning twice. Neither was able to knock the other out. Whiters defeated several of Louis’s opponents, including Eddie Simms, Jack Kranz and Willie Davis (Davies). He finished his career with 66 wins, 38 of which came via the short route. He lost 14, and had two draws. Only three of his losses came by stoppage. Whiters would not have been a pushover for Louis.

Jack Trammell was a tall, lanky banger with a sneaky right hand. One of his victories was a KO over Toles – in one round. Trammel also beat Harry Thomas, who would later get blown away by Louis in a title defense. Given Louis’s vulnerability to right-hand punches, Trammell might have exposed that flaw well before Max Schmeling did in his memorable upset of the Brown Bomber in their first fight. But Trammell never got the chance.

Lorenzo Pack was also a slugger, as attested by the fact that all the 19 wins in his short career came by knockout. His victims included Trammell and Whiters, as well as Louis foes Eddie Simms and Art Sykes. Like many other sluggers, though, Pack lived and died by the sword. He was put to sleep in six of his nine losses. Future champ Jersey Joe Walcott knocked him out in 1938. Louis would most likely have done the same. But at least Pack would have had the proverbial “puncher’s chance” to pull off an upset.

Leroy Haynes was something of a “poor man’s Brown Bomber.” Like Louis, he stood 6’1” and weighed about 200 pounds. Like Louis, he could knock a man out with either hand. Unlike Louis, however, Haynes lacked consistency. On the plus side, he knocked out former heavyweight champ Primo Carnera twice (Louis did it once). But he was stopped by Pack in two rounds, and by future Louis title-challenger Tony Galento in three. By the time Louis became champion, Haynes was all but washed up. Still, if they had met while they were both contenders, and Haynes had an on-night as opposed to an off-night, heavyweight history might have taken a different turn.

Tiger Jack Fox was only a light-heavyweight, but he was good enough to hand leading heavyweights their heads. His victims among the big boys included Pack, Trammell, Whiters, and Walcott. By the time Louis came along, Fox was a veteran of more than 100 bouts. In his only title shot, he lost to light-heavyweight king Melio Bettina, in part because the Tiger went into the ring suffering from the effects of a stab wound inflicted by a woman with whom he’d had an altercation weeks before. If Louis’s management steered him clear of Fox, it’s not hard to see why.

After Louis won the heavyweight title, he defended it 21 times in five years. Then he joined the U.S. Army as the Americans entered World War II. During his early championship years, Louis could have given title shots to any of the above-named black contenders – except, perhaps, Haynes, who was clearly on the downslide in the late 1930s. He didn’t, though. Only one of those 21 defenses came against a black opponent. That opponent was John Henry Lewis, who was the world light-heavyweight champion and one of the few fighters to hold a decisive win over Tiger Jack Fox, knocking Fox out in three rounds.

But by the time he challenged Louis, John Henry was at the end of his career, and could only see out of one eye. Louis, who was friendly with Lewis outside the ring, got him out of there in the first round. That was John Henry’s final bout. At least he retired with a big paycheck.

Only Louis’s managers could say why they gave deserving black contenders the cold shoulder during the frist part of Joe’s title reign. With the advent of the war, however, the landscape changed.

 

But by the time he challenged Louis, John Henry was at the end of his career, and could only see out of one eye. Louis, who was friendly with Lewis outside the ring, got him out of there in the first round. That was John Henry’s final bout. At least he retired with a big paycheck.

Only Louis’s managers could say why they gave deserving black contenders the cold shoulder during the frist part of Joe’s title reign. With the advent of the war, however, the landscape changed.

Louis was not the only champion to join the armed forces during World War II. Many non-champions enlisted as well. The titles of the champions who went into the service were “frozen” over the course of the Allies’ struggle against the Axis powers. Boxers who remained civilians were eligible to become “duration” champions – something like the “interim” title-holders that today’s alphabet organizations foist onto the long-suffering public.

An extraordinary black fighter named Jimmy Bivins won both the heavyweight and light-heavyweight “duration” titles. Bivins was not big even by light-heavy standards, and he didn’t have much punching power. But he could box any man’s ears off. Billy Conn, who was about the same size as Bivins, came close to lifting the title from Louis in 1941. Bivins could have done just as well – if not better.

With Louis in abeyance, opportunities opened. Bivins wasn’t the only black heavyweight to come into his own during the war years. The story of Jersey Joe Walcott’s rise from obscurity is well-known. So is that of Ezzard Charles, even though he fought mostly as a middleweight and light-heavyweight at that time. There were others who might have given Louis problems if he had fought them before his long war-time layoff.

Hard-punching Elmer Ray had one of the all-time greatest boxing nicknames: “Violent.” And he lived up to the image that soubriquet implied. In the middle part of his career, he reeled off 50 consecutive victories, with 44 knockouts. He fought Charles and Walcott twice each, splitting both series. After his winning streak was snapped by Walcott, Ray’s career took a downturn, and he never got a title shot. Too bad. What a barn-burner a bout between “Violent” and “The Brown Bomber” could have been.

Lem Franklin hit even more violently than Ray, as 28 knockouts in 32 wins attest. By the early 1940s, Franklin had turned out the lights on Bivins, as well as Louis victims Abe Simon, Tony Musto and Eddie Simms. Those wins made him a logical opponent for Louis. But that logic came undone when Franklin faced another Louis victim: Bob Pastor. The glass in Franklin’s jaw shattered when the feather-fisted Pastor stopped him in eight rounds. From there, it was all downhill for Franklin. In his final 10 bouts, he was knocked out eight times. His last contest ended in tragedy, as he died after a nine-round beating at the hands of fringe contender Larry Lane.

Harry Bobo was yet another big hitter with a questionable mandible. Twenty-four of his 36 wins came by stoppage. So did four of his nine losses. Bobo knocked out Franklin in the first round. He did the same to Franklin’s conqueror, Lane. Bobo also stopped Louis victims Gus Dorazio and Lee Savold. In turn, he was kayoed by Wild Bill Boyd, Bill Poland, and Melio Bettina. By the time the war ended, Bobo had retired, and he never got a chance to check Louis’s chin.

Lee Q. Murray was a boxer-puncher who hit his stride during Louis’s last years as champion. He fought Bivins five times, winning twice. He also kayoed Bobo in eight rounds, but lost a decision to Roscoe Toles. Another key loss came by disqualification against Walcott. Despite those setbacks, Murray had sufficient skills to have given Louis trouble during Joe’s last years in the ring.

Curtis “Hatchetman” Sheppard, like Ray, lived up to his ominous nickname. With his “hatchet” of a right hand, he scored a one-round stoppage of Joey Maxim – the only knockout loss in the otherwise-elusive Maxim’s career. Even though he was a hard hitter, Sheppard could be stymied by clever boxers like Murray, Archie Moore and even Maxim, who outpointed him in a rematch after Sheppard’s knockout win. Louis would probably have beaten him, too. But then, Louis had problems with fighters who had big right hands, so Sheppard might have gotten lucky.

When the war ended, boxing’s titles were unfrozen, and the “duration” champs became contenders again. Louis was ready to resume defending his title. But age and inactivity had, inevitably, eroded his skills. He was still good enough to stop Billy Conn in a much-anticipated rematch, then annihilate Tami Mauriello in less than a round. It was clear, though, that he was not the Bomber of old, and there was a good chance he could be dethroned by a challenger determined to do so.

In the meantime, Jersey Joe Walcott had fought his way to the number-one contender’s position. On December 5, 1947, Walcott challenged Louis for the title. It was the first time Louis had faced a black opponent (other than in exhibitions) since his brief battle against John Henry Lewis in 1939.

Walcott made the most of his opportunity, dropping Louis twice and winning the bout in the minds of everyone except two of the three officials. When Louis was given the split-decision nod, he heard boos directed against him for the first time in his career. He had to fight Walcott again to redeem himself. In their 1948 rematch, Louis recovered enough of his old fire to come off the floor and stop Walcott in 11 rounds. That was Louis’s final title defense. He retired a year later. His record of 25 successful defenses stands to this day.

Two black fighters – Walcott and Ezzard Charles – faced off for the right to claim Louis’s vacated championship. Charles won by decision. If there was any discontent over one black champion being succeeded by another, it was muted. During Louis’s 12-year reign, he became the first crossover black celebrity, beloved by whites as well as blacks. The prospect of a black heavyweight champion was no longer the anathema it had been during Jack Johnson’s era and its aftermath.

With all his stellar accomplishments in and out of the ring, Louis should have been able to enjoy his retirement. But that was not to be. His tax troubles forced him to make a comeback.

The goodwill he had generated had created a far more accepting climate for black heavyweights than was the case when he started in the mid-1930s. In the 58 bouts he fought before abdicating his crown, only five were against black fighters (two of them against Walcott). That’s an anemic eight per cent. During his 10-bout comeback, he again fought black opponents five times – but this time, they accounted for 50 per cent of the total.

Louis’s first comeback fight was a challenge against Charles for the Brown Bomber’s old title. Ezzard won a one-sided 15-round decision to cement his claim to the crown. Joe should have retired for good then. But he couldn’t. He had to keep fighting as long as he could draw crowds make money – not for himself, but for Internal Revenue.

His next opponent was Omelio Agramonte, a black Cuban who was at best a fringe contender. Louis won by decision. Next came Andy Walker, an African-American journeyman from California. Louis stopped him in the tenth and final round. Then he fought a rematch against Agramonte, again winning a decision.

Three fights later, Louis met Jimmy Bivins. In the early 1940s, this would have been an intriguing matchup: speed versus power. But with both men well beyond their prime time, Louis had to settle for a dreary decision win. He didn’t know it, but the Bivins fight would be the last victory of Joe’s career.

In his final fight, Louis was brutally knocked out in eight rounds by the up-and-coming Rocky Marciano, who would go on to become an outstanding champion in his own right. It was only Louis’s third defeat. Ironically, three months before Louis fought Marciano, Joe’s old nemesis Jersey Joe Walcott won the title from Ezzard Charles in a shocking upset. Louis might have fought on, hoping to get Walcott in the ring again. But no one who cared about him wanted to see him absorb another beating along the way. Marciano was the one who knocked the crown off Walcott’s head.

For four decades after the end of Louis’s career, black boxers dominated the heavyweight division. Only during the past decade have they yielded to a wave of fighters from the former Soviet Union. Louis gave his many black successors the chance to build on the foundation he established. Because of times and circumstances, however, his shadow hung so heavily over his contemporaries of color that they were deprived of the opportunities for glory that Louis’s managers were able to obtain.

Was that fair? No. But if it was the price necessary to give us the Brown Bomber when we all needed him – and later, Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King and, ultimately, freedom – so be it. Joe Louis was a great fighter regardless, and his managers’ decisions about his early opponents are a reflection on them, not him.

 

While I believe Louis did fight the best of his era and don't agree entirely on the narrative of this article, I still found it an. Informative and captivating read on fighters sadly forgotten to time in many cases.

Article by Charles Saunders.

 

I disagree with your first point.

1946-1960 was consistently very weak, ruled by old men, lightheavies and an overly protected champ... not to mention the division was still mostly an American enclave.

 

This discussion took place a long time ago, but I'd still have Charles, Walcott, Marciano and Patterson over Sharkey, Schmeling, Carnera and Baer.

 

Great share Long Count!!!

Thanks!!

 

These threads pop up every now and then. Styles make fights and one or two might have given him a shot, but a past-his-prime Lewis, cold****ed Elmer Ray with pillow gloves on in an "exhibition", and Ray was probably the most dangerous of all.

 

The goes that Ali made a ****** of Johansson in a sparing match as a teenager, Eddie Machen was done by '64 and Thad Spencer was a slow 5'11 gatekeeper. Ali didn't miss anyone.

Angelo Dundee insinuates that the only guy Ali ever ducked...was Duane Bobbick.

 

"very weak"

that better describes these arguments.

"ruled by old men"

Not in this era. The ages of the heavyweight champions (and the recognized best heavyweight in the world) from 1946 to 1960 at the end of each year

32-33-34-28-29-37-29-30-31-32-21-22-23-27-25

That averages out to a little under 29 years. Hardly old men on the whole. Only Walcott in 1951 was over 35, with only Louis in 1947 and 1948 (when he retired) was also over 32. In comparison the current champion will be 39 by his next defense, and over the last 20 years we have had Foreman, Holyfield, Lewis, Vitali, and Wlad as the recognized best heavyweight in the world, all over 35. If old men ruling the heavyweight division proves a weak era, the modern era is the one proven weak.

"lightheavies"

More like small heavies, as the heavyweight division often was before the 1960's. This point relies on one thinking big fellows like Willard, Carnera, and Baer were better than little fellows like Dempsey, Tunney, Schmeling, and Charles on the whole. I think that a tough sell.

"American enclave"

Really silly and biased complaint, I think. If Americans dominated the heavyweight division, it was because they produced the best heavyweights. Interestingly, though, from 1934 until the 1980's the only non-American champion was Johansson from this period.

What exactly would taking the Americans out of the equation prove? Would the championship between 1946 and 1960 being fought over by Bruce W, Brion, Ten Hoff, Neuhaus, and Valdes make it a better era? Would taking Liston, Ali, and Frazier out of the sixties so Johansson, Lavorante, Mildenberger, Cooper, Ramos, and Bonavena were fighting over the championship make it a better era?

If Jesse Owens and the other Americans were removed from the 1936 Olympics, non-Americans would have won those gold medals. They just wouldn't have run as fast. Why you think that would have been a good thing is up to you to explain.