My thoughts on Joe Louis

I was pretty much with you until the end, Louis is my clear #1 but I am not sure Bowe or the Klits pose the most problems for him, though I like the majority of what you said :good

 

Evander Holyfield. Enough said.
But yeah enough about Bowe I reckon.

And the more I study Joe Louis the more I see the case for him at number one.....Ali has never left the top spot on my list though. You don't reign as champ in the heavyweight division for 11 years without being damn near unbeatable.

I think some of the smaller and smarter great heavies give Louis more problems than the slower giants.

 

except that a lot of people DID beat Ali. And some of them arguably didnt get credit for turning the trick either.

 

I think he's #2. Ali almost had him on longevity and definitely has him on quality.

But Joe at #1 is defensible. I just dont have it. I can't, by how I rank. I think he loses to Ali prime for prime and didn't beat the same quality of men. I can't rank him first.

 

Louis has always been my number 1, I feel Ali would have been a fighter he would have handled. I know a lot of people compare Ali's style to Conn but 2 different guys and Ali was more open to the left hook than Billy and Joe had many versions of the hook which was faster and more deadly than Frazier's or Coopers

 

Yes!! This!! :good

 

The thing is, a resume is guys other than the fighters -- Ali and Louis -- that weare discussing. When you discuss resume, your discussing the guys who got beat, but you're not actually discussing the guys who did the beating. It

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important to assess the quality of the era -- that, I'm not denying -- but thats so you can assess whether the fighters under consideration were willing to meet the best, and in considering the quality of their performances in light of the level of their opposition.

What if Ali had come along in another, weaker, era, so that his 'resume' where not so impressive; yet had been just as willing to meet the best, and had the same fighting qualities, as he had had in his actual era? Would he no longer be as great a fighter? Yet there would be nothing intrinsically different about him, or different in his willingness to meet the best. Only we should expect him, in a weaker era, to have been even more dominant.

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I tend to have Ali #1, Louis #2. I have no problem, though, with anyone maintaining Louis at #1.

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btw, in the course of researching a response to a recent 'Boston Tom McMoustache' thread, I think I may have stumbled upon a boxer who faced competition even Ali would have blanched at:

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