Rocky Marciano Film Study

Louis nearly stopped Brion as it was, so sure, a younger version may well have stopped Brion.

However, Pastor, Farr and Godoy all lasted the distance with prime joe Louis. It’s not like every opponent is destined to be knocked out first time around.

 

Who here is saying Louis was at his best?

 

Definitely losing his hair by the time of the Marciano bout. Could have been the key to his loss.

 

Pastor ran away all night ,in the second fight he was floored multiple times before being stopped. Farr and Godoy were simply better than Brion.

 

I don't suppose that big cyst on his shoulder helped him.

 

Yes, it was his knock knees, dentures, and arthritic right arm. That would have been enough on its own ...until the alopecia set in and sent The Brown Bomber right off the cliff. Lol!

 

from Grantland Rice's prefight analysis...

"Louis can no longer move around... He has lost his old punch. He has been belting second and third-raters around without knocking them out. Joe will find Marciano the first hard hitter he has faced in years.... So the raw facts are that Louis must locate a punch he lost three or four years ago.... It has been a dull story ever since Louis lost his punch, his hand speed and his reflex actions in the ring."

I'm going to go out on a limb and take his word for it.

 

There's articles about stating Louis and Conn were obviously not the same fighters by the time of their rematch. This is some 5 years earlier including over 2 years of inactivity.

 

I remember seeing thousands of words expelled dfending Holmes later reign opponent choices and then a couple of weeks later he and The Rock came up. Oh my how the tune changed.

 

Oh heavens no, they would have had to have been running in there!!!

 

Why not take your own word for it and watch the film evidence? Louis against Cesar Brion, the rematch is a good fight. It’s still world level.

Grantland Rice was not even a boxing man. Boxing wasn’t even his favourite sport. Golf was. He was bigger on Tennis. You know more than he did. Most of us know more than he did. Him saying Joe Louis was better as a young man is no newsflash is it?

A guy who witnessed how much better Louis was as a young man isn’t hedging his bets (in a sport he is far from expert on) by saying an ex champion isn’t as good as when he was a champion?

And it still dosnt mean the ex champion isn’t better than a great many weaker champions just because the man saying it dosnt know enough about the sport to put his reputation on the line.

The bookies had Joe Louis favourite. They put their reputation on the line and paid out on the minority that backed Rocky. They got it wrong. Nobody could know then that Marciano would become a special fighter. Hence hindsight being a wonderful thing!

 

Not “being the same” and not being world class is two different things. You need to be firm about this John Thomas.

 

I don't think anybody is disagreeing with that, what's being argued in part is what level of fighter was left in Joe Louis. The fact remains that Louis was beating elite fighters of his day up to the Marciano fight. What happened in the Marciano fight was two atg fighters meeting in the ring and unfortunately Louis wasn't close to his best (in his entire career of course) which showed every round up until the knockout.

Imagine we didn't know who or what "prime Joe Louis" looked like before the Marciano fight. Imagine that version of Louis was the only version we knew and was in his 20s for the sake of argument. We'd just regard him as an elite fighter of the day that wasn't as good as the top 3 guys (Charles, Walcott, and Marciano).

 

Er did you not see where i stated this was some 5 years earlier? At Joe's advanced career stage and age that 5 years wouldn't have made a difference on a guy already noticably declined eh?

 

It is 100% about Chok trying to make Louis look better than he actually was. We know he was still going ok we know he beat a couple of contenders etc etc etc.