Who could have beaten Joe Louıs ın hıs prıme?

[Majesty]

And please with the revisionist history. Its junk science. Who cares if Louis hit the deck a few times? He took about 60 power shots from Schmeling before he finally went down and took everything one of the biggest punchers in history had to offer in Baer. This notion that Louis could not take a punch by bigger men is perhaps one of the biggest urban legends in boxing history. And again about Marciano...talk about a reach. Thats like saying Jimmy Wilde was not that good cause he lost to Villa in his last fight.

Louis had the hand speed of Ali and punched about 5 times as hard. Louis had an actual triple left hook that he landed and each shot was as hard as the first. His right cross could stop a vehicle.

Of 25 successful defenses, 21 were won by knockout, 17 of those were ten counts and 5 in the first round. He also knocked out six men who held the heavyweight title.

Benton ranked him 1
Futch Ditto
Arcel Top 3
Tyson #1
Historians like
Fleischer #4 and #5 in many Ring publications
Callis #1
Sugar #2
Daniel #1
Carroll#1
Rose #4
Eskin#1
Loubet #1
Durant #1
Gallo #1
The Ring On many occasions # 2 behind Robinson as the greatest fighter of all time and #2 as an atg hev
Big Book of Boxing #1
Odd #2

I guess all these people and countless others have no clue what they are talking about.

And if not for the lost 4 years during the war who knows....

Thing is, Louis showed he was able to be outboxed by smaller men, and his weakness for a right hand was never ever fixed. It wasn't that he couldn't take shots, but considering the style and training of people in this era(like the Klitschko's) they would catch him every single time.

Ali would have beaten Louis, Larry Holmes would have beaten Louis an in his prime Mike Tyson was probably the hardest and fastest puncher Louis would have ever faced.

The styles Louis came up against were NOTHING compared to the styles in boxing no more than 20 years later. Styles evolve, fighters evolve, and the reason you see no one using Joe Louis' style nowadays is because they'd be knocked out. That is as it is.

Whether or not Ali is better then Louis or sits at #1 or #2 is a debate w/o a finite conclusion. The suggestion that Louis could not compete today because of his style is ridiculous no offense. That is akin to saying the reason nobody fights like Robinson is because the style wouldn't work.
Holmes could quite possibly beat Louis along with Tyson and Ali and one could add the likes of Dempsey and Lewis but I don't really agree that styles have evolved or fighters for that matter. Fighters today are manufactured with one goal in mind and boxing legacy is not it. Office chairs have evolved to with the plastic wheels and adjustments that fall apart just like most products in this throw away society. Made to fail. In large measure boxers today are a bunch of coddled wimps that fight maybe once or twice a year and imo have styles that are not near as diverse. I hear what you are saying and do not agree. Imo boxing is devolving and has been.

No, boxers having no other choice in life but TO box is devolving. Not the style and additions to the science of it and the craft of it.

You're trying to make it like "well guys these days aren't as tough as guys back then so that equals boxing devolving" it doesn't.

You may say that there are boxers out there that wouldn't make it back then because the toughness isn't the same, the question is what boxers could have beaten Joe Louis in his prime.

Holmes, Ali, Tyson etc aren't the crop of "coddled weaklings" that you're talking about, we aren't just naming random Joe schmoe's that could beat Louis we're naming other all time greats. So the point you're trying to make at the end there is really moot in terms of who could beat Louis. Walk into a boxing gym 50 years ago, you learn certain things, walk into a boxing gym now, the advanced things you learned back then are the beginner things they are teaching now and there's techniques and strategies along with training methods and resources now that people didn't have 50 years ago. Boxing is constantly evolving, and you can't say "fighters aren't tough like they used to be" as a reason to justify that boxing isn't evolving. The most coddled person in the world can still be a savage in the ring if they have that instinct.

Not sure if it was you but you said, who knows what Louis would have done if he didn't go into the war support and exhibitions. Well what would ALI have done if he wasn't kept out of the ring so long? See the most well known points and greatest victories of Ali's career occurred when he was out of his prime and on the way down, so to imagine what he would have accomplished if he was active all those years in between that were taken from him is something to imagine.

Ali in his absolute prime would slaughter Joe Louis and it's not even a knock against Joe Louis' greatness. Ali was a very hard puncher and was underrated for his power, he had the best jab in the history of heavyweight boxing before Larry Holmes who pretty much learned it from him.

Joe Louis had power, but he was flat footed, he was plodding and he had trouble with people that knew how to box. Max Baer may have been tall but a master craft boxer he wasn't.

Ali would have jabbed Louis all night and constantly caught him with the right hand and Louis wasn't particularly fast either, Ali's handspeed was unimaginable at the time and Louis would have seen nothing like it. There was no other heavyweight in Louis' time that had the speed, the power, the footwork, the technique and the ability of a prime Ali. You could even make an argument that Sonny Liston would have given Joe Louis all he could handle, and we saw what Ali did to him.

Ali's style was all wrong for Joe Louis, it was the perfect counter to it, that plus Ali's other physical and mental(inside the ring) advantages over Louis tip it in his favor. Ali would have stopped Louis.

Tyson is another story entirely, Louis liked to plod forward and see what his opponent had to offer and use his jab to size up going after them and once he had them hurt he'd go in for the kill. Tyson in his prime would have bullrushed him and never given him a chance to relax. When you watch the first Schmeling fight you realize that Shmeling created a little bit of distance between him and Louis to where he was just out of range of Louis' jab and he'd catch him with a right hand. And Louis could be caught and hurt early as well as dropped. Tyson also had a better jab, better defense, better combinations and blistering speed. So I think it's safe to say that Tyson would have caught Louis early, and Louis who has been known to be caught cold would probably have hit the canvas. The question is if Louis would have been able to take Tyson's early bullrushing early and that's up for debate. However Tyson in his prime was a master at angles and was very good defensively and Cus would have created a perfect strategy to take out Louis and I wouldn't put it past him to be able to do it.


The thing is, Joe Louis was an all-time great, for his time. But his style remains rooted in that time along with the other heavyweights of that time and their styles. As boxing evolved so did styles, so did techniques, so did resources, so did athletes, and so did strategies. If Louis walked in against Ali or a Tyson or a Holmes with his 1930s mentality, while they were bringing their more modern ones, Louis would have gotten overwhelmed.

Nothing against Louis' greatness, but there's a reason his style worked back when it did, and why it wouldn't work now. Jack Johnson even saw the holes in Louis' game, that's why he picked Schmeling to beat him the first time around, and he did. What Schmeling "saw" was something Ali, and Tyson and Holmes would have saw. The problem is they'd have made Louis pay much much more dearly for it.