Whats with this idea that Joe Louis was a weak champ or not as great a fighter as once thought?

If Tucker was so great why wasent he Heavy Weight Champion for 11 years
and 25 title defenses ?.People still regard Louis as a ATG. Who the hell talks about Tucker only
people who DKSAB. Cracks me up get some shumck with a p.c trying to rewrite boxing history.
JOE LOUIS is in the BOXING HALL OF FAME wheres Tucker ?

 

McCall lasting the distance depends on the referee, I guess. How barbaric he is.
McCall was a piece of granite but he'd be out of his depth against Louis, absorbing horrible punishment. 15 rounds might be too much to stomach.

 

Tyson beat him clearly still.
And Louis was better than Tyson.
So he's unlikely to give Louis much trouble.

 

I'll go with the guy who would rather go out on his shield then the guy who looks at your ears as a happy meal at Miky D.

 

I can’t really disagree with any of that.

 

Decent fight doesn't equal a good run tho. You say yourself Tyson beat Tucker "clearrly".

 

I'm not saying Tucker couldn't fight but my definition of a good run is different.

Someone going the distance vs peak Tyson was front pages news and a shock to most fans. Close inspection tho shows Tyson was very clearly the better man. A good run is a closer than 6 points, or the winner is dropped or in serious trouble at some point for mine..

 

In means about the same to me (and others here, I think).
It's a different opinion on semantics then !

 

how great a champion is perceived is largely down to funding. The funding supplies the match making. You can't make any fighter into Mike Tyson or Joe Louis. You need to be able to select the right one. With Fighters like Tyson and Joe Louis no stone was left unturned in order for them to develop into the greatest fighter they could possibly be. This has a massive impact on the legacy of a any champion. They never could have been the fighters they became without it. They need the right people to move them, or it won't happen.

They say the team that bankrolled Joe Louis actually settled on a young Jersey Joe Walcott first but he got ill and they could not wait for him to recover so they financed Louis instead. Now imagine that? Imagine Louis had of picked up with another team? Or that the association with Mike Jacobs had of been less fruitful? So many factors had to come into play. Nobody did it on their own.

Potentially Tucker had a lot of ingredients. But if I remember correctly his Father sold parts of his contract to other people, his career stalled, there was law suits, he got injured and consequently his first 30 fights took too long to happen. Tucker really was not getting the right fights or the right platform and there is an argument he may never have become the fighter he could have been because of this. It would not be wrong to suggest so.

However. Working with what did happen. What Tucker was. What Tucker became anyway, there is still a window where he was good enough to be what he was for as long as he did. And that's ok. It's also all we can use. We can't pretend he was better. We know he was quite good. For a time. A window. But that's it.

Quite good is not beating Joe Louis or any great fighter. That is just how it is.

 

What's worse is boxing "fans" who never stepped inside a ring treating the sport like an RPG where the fighters with the most "points" are unbeatable even though every single great fighter was beaten or greatly troubled by a boxer who wasn't anywhere near their level in the grand scheme of things.

Tucker wouldn't have beaten Louis but he sure as hell would have given him trouble. I have no doubts about that. And someone like Tua just might've sparked him out on a good night. It happened to plenty of other great champs too.

 

I noticed that too.

There are members on this forum who rate Liston, Holyfield, Morrison, Mercer, and Ike Ibeabuchi VERY highly in terms of both h2h and ability.

Yet they act like Louis wouldnt even make it as a journeyman in any post 60's era even though theyre all basically the same height/reach/build. Its very confusing, especially when you consider that other than Holyfield, none of he guys i mention have resumes that come even close and none of them get ranked as high as Louis in a top 10 heavyweight list.

 

I'd never even heard Joe Louis being described as a "small" heavyweight compared to the likes of Holmes and Ali or Liston, before the days of the internet.
He was just a few pounds lighter in his best shape, maybe an inch shorter than Muhammad and Larry, probably an inch taller than Liston, with a decent reach and build for his height.

I don't know where the idea comes from that he was "too small". Maybe because they shot many of his fights from a distance and rarely zoomed in !

 

Joe Louis is the only boxer ever that held title 11 years in a row and defended it 25 times.

No one could repeat this - in any weight class. Even with fractured belts.

That says a lot about him as a fighter

 

Yeah, what's more remarkable is he managed all that while being slow, small and having a glass jaw.

 

Joe Louis was plenty big. And so were other great heavyweights. But Louis is bigger than some people want to believe. He was a big guy.

As champion Louis barely weighed under 200 at all. He was usually over. Aged 28, Louis was 207 for Abe Simon in 1941. Aged 29 Larry Holmes was 209 against Norton.