Joe Louis's quality of era

I would say that it depends how you look at it.

In terms of the absolute elite level talent it was ma comparativley weak era outside of Louis himself. You didn't get top level contenders like Joe Frazier or Evander Hollyfield coming up through the ranks to challenge the champion.

That dosn't tell the whole story though.

If you look at the next teir of fighters you have a verry deep talent pool. Fighters like Jimmy Ellis or Jerry Quarry or Oscar Bonavena almost seem to have been ten a penny at some points in that era.

Iwould suggest that if you compared the ring magazine top 10 of a given year in that period to a given year in the 70s then the 70s rankings would be stronger from 1-5 while the late 30s early 40s rankings would be stronger from 5-10.

It was probably harder for an up and coming contender to break into the bottom half of the top 10 in this era than it was in the 70s or 90s. This was in part due to the level of competition around this band and in part due to the fact that fighters fough more regularly so you typicaly had to beat more top level fighters to get ranked.

So not a great era like the 1970s but a veritable meatgrinder none the less.

 

The 1930's was a low point for heavyweight boxing. Early on there was a game of musical chairs as the champion always lost in his first title defense. One time the title changed hands via a low blow foul. There were years with no title matches, and the competition, particular in the 2nd half of the 1930's was rather poor. Louis cleaned up.

The 1930's could not compare in talent to the 1970's or 1990's.

 

You make an issue of the number of times the title changed hands in the 30s, but it changed hands a fair few times in the 90s and that decade saw some of the weakest lineal champions along side some of the strongest.

Somtimes factors other than the talent pool can screw up an era.

By the same token a single dominant champion is not necisarily a sign of a strong era. If you make a great fighters competition weaker he is only going to get more dominant.

 

Lou Nova, Bob Pastor and Al Ettore weren't bad. Possibly underrated I'd say.

Even someone like Charley Retzlaff was quite a knockout artist but he was blown out by Louis in one round.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCXpLOfzb1Y

I imagine Lou Nova could have been a champ under different circumstances. Looks like a solid boxer to me.

 

Wile none of these guys are great boxers like Joe Frazier they could potentialy have made havoc in the elimination tournament won by Jimmy Ellis after Muhamad Ali was stripped of his title.

With the right matching some of them could have won it.

 

This is a very good answer.

 

Akins :good

 

Just thank your lucky stars you didn't say Samuel Peters or I'd have gone all Tony Montana.

 

the 70ties had maybe a better top (ali, frazier, foreman and maybe norton and at the end of the decade ofcourse holmes) but fighters like Bonavena and Ellis and Quarry and Lyle are nothing better then Max Baer, Max Schmeling, James Braddock, Joe Walcott, Jack Sharkey, Tommy Farr and Billy Conn.
i even think that a prime and focused max baer (like i said earlier in a post) beats the likes of quarry and ellis and bonavena and also norton

 

1930s era in terms of quantity were pretty strong. 1940s both in quality and quantity were VERY strong.

 

This is it in a nutshell.