P4P Matchup 1: Joe Louis vs Pernell Whitaker

I found this quote from Conn's trainer on a different thread discussing how much movement troubled Louis,

"You guys have it all wrong. You don't box Joe Louis. Put all the boxers you like in front of Louis and he'll find them. No, you need to fight Louis. Fight him every minute of every round, you need someone who can take his punches and give him some back. That's how you beat him".

Fact is, yes movement does trouble Louis to an extent because limited movement is essential to his style of setting up punches perfectly. Movers ruin this, but it doesn't bewilder him as much as people think. He still ended up finding those chins eventually, even if they made him look bad along the way.

 

I mean from watching the fight Conn had success when he moved and didn't allow Louis the chance to plant his feet and throw. When he stood in front of him and allowed Louis the chance to punch he got knocked out. Either war Whitaker wouldn't make that kind of mistake and would outbox Louis thoroughly.

 

True, moving was successful for Conn, especially in reducing Louis’ output and overall accuracy. It was a battle of jabs and lead left hooks from when Conn was dancing at range, and in fairness Joe was holding his own. It wasn’t like he was out of ideas the moment someone tried moving against him. The Farr fight probably demonstrates his jab more effectively when his moment dances around.
However, I don’t think Conn actually started to win the fight until he was beating Louis to the punch on the inside and utilizing his superior handspeed, something Louis definitely wasn’t used to be at the disadvantage of. From the outside, he was doing well but Louis didn’t really give him many openings outside of a jab and an occasional lead hook. The tenth was probably the best example of Conn’s success on his feet.

So yeah, I agree that Louis does struggle with movement but only someone truly great can capitalize on it thoroughly and consistently for an entire fight. Conn was great, which is why he had so much success. You can apso possibly attribute Louis’ poor performance due to cutting too much weight in order to make the fight more commercially successful, which was apparently documented pretty thoroughly in the build up. I’ll have to do more research on that though.

 

#2 ranked Bob Pastor
#8 ranked Lee Savold
former or future contenders Gunnar Burland, Al McCoy and Gus Dorazio.

 

Conn didn't have the same footspeed in round 13 that he had in round 7, 8 and before. Watch the 20 minute version, not the 6 minute highlights.