Two of the biggest upsets in heavyweight history and Joe Louis and Mike Tyson were similar ages 22 and 23 and both were considered virtually invincible at the time of their defeats. Was it is the case that Schmeling and Douglas just had the number of Louis/Tyson or was it more the case that Louis and Tyson was just undertrained and not prepared?
Tysons head movement was gone at that point of his career, it has been declining much since he unified the belts and without his defence all he had was offence, tho that declined too, if you really wanted to sum it up Tyson didn't want to fight anymore, douglass was the opposite, when that man stepped into the ring that night with Mike that he had more fight in him than possibly any other champion, on top of that Douglass was very prepared and never looked so sharp before or since, very underrated fighter. I'll go as far as to say schmeling was a bit overrated, Louis was an atg that schmeling knocked out but if I'm to be honest here I can't help but see it as a fluke, Louis had a bad chin and not great defence so it was a matter of time that would happen, but was still 5 times the fighter max was.
I think schmeling was in his prime for that fight and he never looked as good, he wasnt ever much of a physical fighter but a smart one so he got more or less better overtime due to experience.
Schmeling had outhought Louis before their bout had even began, and devised a gameplan to exploit what he saw as Joe's technical flaws (his left hand lead), repeatedly landing right hand counters and leads towards the eventual stoppage. I never thought there was more technical finesse in Douglas's win, and that it was moreso will, although Douglas was the much bigger upset historically.
