That is just the point though, it isn't! There is a huge gulf between his pre and post war performance, relative to the contemporary competition, that has to be explained somehow. If you fall back on the above explanation, then the ramifications are huge!
There obviously wasn't so much difference, that a third rate contender before the war, was superior to the champion after the war. In order to believe that, you would have to regard the pre war era, as being the strongest in the divisions history!
An interesting thread would be fighters that had their best prime vs those who felt with less fortunate circumstances .. Walcott's career peaked past his physical prime .. no doubt about that .. very few fighters are lucky enough to be guided out of the gate protected and provided for .. very few .. that's why going off the record book without studying the career is half baked ..
Rather obviously in the quality of the men that Walcott was losing to over those respective periods, and indeed the level that he was operating at in the division!
Whats half baked is throwing out the record book (i.e. a fighters ACTUAL accomplishments) in favor of giving weighted credence to what you THINK he MIGHT have achieved had all of the stars aligned for him. We can play that game with anyone which is why we go by actual results.
And old Louis? A lightheavy Charles? An overachieving swingforthefences slugger? OK, yeah, his winning percentage was halved post 1945. Doesn't that accurately match his supposed increase in competition? He was always the same journeyman. Nothing changed. Stop whistling your silly tune when the facts are a deafening chorus.
I am not making excuses, because what I am going to say goes for all boxers. Matchmaking will get any great fighter beaten at the right time. Trainers and boxing people of the day ideally probably would knowingly steer a fighter away from these kinds of guys at the point Walcott fought them. People in the know would know how much a fighter has left. If he’s been in the gym. How good he looked last time out. Without this you can get anyone beat. When a heavily invested in prospect has a team around him like Joe Louis did he was able to get the perfect balance of opponents on the way up one after the other. Don’t get me wrong, Louis fought some excellent men on the way. Some I don’t think Joe Louis gets the proper credit for. Charlie Retzlaf, Jack kranz, Al Ettore, Adolf Wiater, patsy peroni and Roy Lazar are overlooked winners who can upset an applecart if the previous opposition had not been perfect. Being a full time boxer with the backing of a team around them is worth a magnitude to any fighter. That’s how fighters wind up being great. Blind talent is never enough. I am very suspicious of full time fighters who make it big without serious backing because I don’t think it is possible. And I include Marciano in this. We know he hooked up with Wiell who was matchmaking from a distance but it has never been clear who was actually supporting him and his chum Allie Columbo especially early on when the purses were small.
This is just postulating hypothetical claptrap, manufacturing excuses for a man dropping fights he was expected to win,
No it isn’t an excuse. I believe all the men who beat Walcott were good enough to beat walcott because they were good fighters. I’m just saying all fighters will lose fights, even great ones, if they don’t have backing or if they get too good a fighter to face at the wrong time. It dosnt mean I am overlooking the defeats or excuse them. Abe Simon beat Walcott but he’s not going to do as well against Joe Louis as Walcott did.
That’s Not unreasonable. I can accept that. I can’t find the quote but I remember Max Baer being asked what he thought of the new champion Jersey Joe Walcott. Max was nonplussed because to him it showed how boxing had declined because he used to knock Walcott out back when joe had been Baer’s sparring partner as a youngster.
Walcott fought a 5 & 6 years older Louis who had lost years to the War ,Simon fought a pretty much still prime Brown Bomber in41 & 42.
It is quite frustrating to have to explain basic information about the era to you, and argue with you about it at the same time In the pre war era Joe Walcott was never close to being a contender, he never beat a contender, he lost to a number of men who were not contenders, and it is debatable whether he even fought a contender! The post war Joe Walcott practically cleaned out the top ten before he even fought for a title, became a lineal heavyweight champion, and established himself as one of the most dominant contenders of all time. If you cannot see the difference in the levels that he was performing at pre and post war, then you fundamentally don't understand the eras!
