The Perfect Heavyweight Fighting Machine...

Funny how weight becomes paramount when discussing Conn, completely ignoring his quality, yet if someone links Louis destroying the huge Carnera all of a sudden his size doesn't count because he's an "oaf".

 

Suggest the knowledgeable posters just stop responding to such garbage threads. From this point out I will ignore them. As the phrase goes.....

 

Bet you £1 you don't. -;

 

If Conn can do this to one best heavyweights of all time at a 25 pound weight disparity, why is it so hard to envisage one of the best heavyweights of all time doing the same thing at a 25 pound weight disparity?

 

Louis knocked the f--k out of Billy Conn.
Twice.

 

Have people forgotten?

 

Take the nostalgia glasses off, and find every angle possible to discredit Joe Louis.


Yeesh...some people

 

Let me make reiterate that I'm discussing the Louis who was knocked out in Schmeling I against Braddock, and Jimmy was far more competitive over his first four rounds with a fully prepared Bomber than Max was prior to his first knockdown of a dehydrated and undertrained Joe in round four.

Granted, it's an edgy choice, but no, I do not believe an undefeated Louis would have dethroned Braddock.

Billy Conn was among those who stated, "When a fighter's undefeated, there's something wrong." Marciano was an exception to that rule. In fact, not only was Rocky the first HW Champion to retire and remain retired with an unblemished record, but he was actually the very first challenger for the HW Title with an unblemished record in the Queensberry era! (I checked that a number of times in disbelief. Jeffries and Corbett had draws on their records of course.)

Comportment in defeat was a critical component of determining contendership, how one handled it and came back from it. In the PKA, the 46-0-0 Bill "Superfoot" Wallace always ranked behind Joe Lewis in full contact karate polls because of how Lewis dealt with defeat when beaten.

Everything in boxing's upside down today because of the premium placed on never being beaten, a situation which infuriated Conn.

 

Yeah but only because Louis slipped, fell, and landed on Conn with his glove.

 

:yep

 

Here, it might merit mention that Louis said of their first match, "Max Schmeling was a good counterpuncher, but Billy Conn had it all!" Joe rated Conn in 1941 over his other opponents in a very interesting mid 1970's interview, when Louis was providing a good many conversations on camera.

Think about this. Billy Conn over JJW, Ezz, Marciano, Schmeling and the host of other noteworthy fighters he squared off against.

Joe wasn't thinking back to how weight drained and weakened he was for Conn I, it was clear in that interview he was comparing Billy to his other opponents as he discussed this with some care in his recall

 

I believe that award goes to this man: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aW3TmcwScO8. Nobody, not Sonny Liston, not George Foreman, not Lennox Lewis, not Joe Louis, Not even the great Ali, could've beaten this version of Tyson!

 

See? Thats how threads like this end up.

When we go tit for tat based on who was worse, you know we done ****ed up.

It makes everyone think less of boxing.

 

An overlooked outstanding performance of Joe's was his blowout of John Henry Lewis, a LHW like Harold Johnson who could compete with some of the better HWs of his day. Sure, JHL was going blind, but he still came into his challenge of the Bomber on a very good streak and got destroyed in a unique way. However, he did not become the Bob Foster of his era as a result of how Louis starched him because of Billy Conn's 1941 challenge.

Conn preserved the status of the LHW Champion as an automatic top HW contender for the better part of over two more decades. Then, BF's dismal showings with Frazier and Ali shelved the notion for over 15 years until Michael Spinks achieved a boxing equivalent of the four minute mile. (Still glad SRR laughed it off when Curt Gowdy asked him on a 1970's installment of "The Way it Was" if he was going to go after the HW Title after decisioning Joey Maxim. He and Jake LaMotta briefly joked about Ray taking on former LaMotta victim Bob Satterfield at HW. Bobo Olson later did plan on challenging Marciano after lifting Moore's LHW crown, but Archie laid Bobo out and softened him up for Robinson-Olson III & IV.)

I don't know exactly what Conn's true measurements were, but in the inaugural 1990 IBHOF class group portrait, he's standing in the back row, and looks to be about the same height as Ali and Bob Foster. All three tower over the other standing retired ATGs. Tape measurements are notoriously inaccurate and vary wildly with the same fighter sometimes.

 

This is a shame, because we depend upon them so heavily, to determine the outcome of fantasy fights!