BoxRec

Arguing about people's primes and the like made me think about Joe Louis and the final ten fights of his career. The myth has been told so many times that Louis was so old, so far gone, and so slow that he was a hopeless and hapless victim by the time he fought Rocky Marciano.

We are going to tackle this head on once and for all, settling the debate. Forget the documentaries that tugged on the heart strings (Joe Louis: America's Hero Betrayed) it's going to just be straight forward analytical facts here.

Before the Comeback

Louis knocks out Jersey Joe Walcott in the 11th round to erase any and all doubts that he was gifted a decision over his opponent half a year earlier.

Less than three months (September 30th, 1948) after the match Louis puts on exhibition matches and continues to do so until April 22, 1950 although he announced his retirement on March 1st, 1949.

However, he is informed by the IRS that he owes $500,000+ to the government in back taxes. He made decent money doing exhibitions, but not heavyweight championship money. So begrudgingly he announces he's unretiring to face newly crowned champion Ezzard Charles.

Part of his reasoning, beyond money, to pursue the match with Charles was the fact that while on exhibition tours he knocked out the following men:

-Pat Valentino (KO8)
-Nino Valdes (KO1)
-Elmer "Violent" Ray (KO4)

He also gave Rex Layne and Roscoe Toles, among others on the heavyweight scene fits. Some of those men Charles had fought and struggled with, or went some distance with Charles.

Not to mention how difficult the matches were with Walcott for Charles, so Joe Louis honestly thought he had a genuine chance at regaining the title.

For context going into the match with Charles let's view Louis against Valentino. This was December 1950, and Valentino had just fought Charles for the title the year before going eight rounds with the champion.



There are a lot of people who want to say that Louis's punching power was diminished, but they don't take into consideration the amount of knockouts he had while doing exhibitions against top contenders too.

But to calm down the naysayers, yes he wasn't as lightning fast with combinations anymore and it was the velocity of Louis's punches that made him so devastating in the past.

Louis vs Charles

Charles, considered by many to be the greatest light heavyweight of all time title or no title, since winning the title from Jersey Joe Walcott had defended the title three times against Gus Lesnevich, Pat Valentino and Freddie Beshore.

However, because the European market recognized Lee Savold as being the world's champion, and because Louis never lost the title in the ring there was much doubt as to the legitimacy of Charles as champion.

Louis had only been retired for 18 months so in the minds of many people he was still the lineal champion, and therefore this was the only legitimate heavyweight title match that Charles was involved in.



Needless to say Louis lost a unanimous decision to a man who was arguably the fastest heavyweight to ever hold the title until Floyd Patterson and Cassius Clay came along.

Following the match Charles was officially recognized as being the one and only true world champion even though the European market would continue to recognize Lee Savold as champion.

HomicideHenry wrote: ↑03 Nov 2021, 17:31 The myth has been told so many times that Louis was so old, so far gone, and so slow that he was a hopeless and hapless victim by the time he fought Rocky Marciano.

I wouldn't say he was hopeless but he wasn't the fighter he used to be. The accurate knockout punches that flattened so many before we not having the same effect anymore.

After the Charles Match

Although he was a 2-1 betting favorite over Charles, it was clear that Louis had lost his step. The most generous score card he received was winning five rounds out of fifteen.

Retrospectively, however, I think even if Louis was in his prime he would have struggled with Ezzard Charles just like he struggled with Billy Conn--- so the loss, to a degree, can be downplayed a bit although at the time it was quite a shock to millions of fans around the world that Louis could lose after being champion for so long.

“I’d like to give thanks to God for giving me the strength and courage to win the fight, and since I won the championship I feel very proud about it. I’ll try and do my very best to keep it as clean as the previous fellow who just stepped down.” -Ezzard Charles, afterwards

“I was at ringside the night Ezzard defeated Joe Louis. It was a real good fight. But as I was leaving, all the people seemed to be talking about Joe. In the papers the next day, the same thing. Everybody seemed to be crying for the loser. Nobody gave any credit to Ezzard. People just didn’t want to see Louis lose. It wasn’t Ezzard’s fault. He has simply come along in a time in history when a blood-hungry public couldn’t appreciate him.” -Rocky Marciano

Louis, who weighed a career high 218 pounds, in the weeks following the bout let the public know that he would try harder and be in better shape from then on out. Less than two months later he was back in the ring again.



Cesar Brion, 29-3-0, was rated by Ring Magazine as #7 in the world in their annual ratings. He had previously defeated Charley Norkus and was billed as being champion of South America at some point.

Louis, looking to impress, came right at the young man and won a pretty wide unanimous ten round decision (55-45, 55-44, 56-44) and seemed to be making good on his promise to do better.



Two months later he fights Freddie Beshore, who went 14 rounds with Ezzard Charles the year before. Louis cuts him fast and busts his nose, forcing a stoppage in four rounds.

For all intents and purposes it looked like Louis was getting back into a rhythm and groove. He was 210 pounds for the contest, slowly but surely getting back into real fighting shape.



Omelio Agramonte of Cuba was up next. It must be noted that prior to making an official comeback Louis boxed this man twice in the month of March 1949. Agramonte was also a man who dabbled in professional wrestling, and was the heavyweight boxing champion of Cuba. Louis wins a unanimous decision. Louis was 207.

Later that same month Louis takes on a hard nosed journeyman named Andy Walker, 17-8-7, and stops him in the tenth round. Louis was obviously trying to stay busy getting into better shape, but also looking for every dollar and cent he could possibly get along the way. There's no footage of this match on YouTube.

The bout itself, from what newspaper clippings I've seen, was not all that great as apparently the 18,000 people in attendance booed throughout much of the contest. Again I can't help but think that maybe these matches were viewed as exhibitions to Joe Louis.



Three months later he faces Agramonte again, and once again wins a unanimous decision by scores of 57-43, 59-41, and 57-43. It kind of makes me wonder if these two didn't have some kind of gentleman's agreement together to basically spar rather than be competitive, considering the past exhibitions they did together.

Being Taken Seriously Again

The matches with Brion, Beshore, Agramonte and Walker must've did the trick because four months later Joe Louis took on "the other world's champion" Lee Savold.

Savold, 104-44-4, had claimed the heavyweight title back in June 1950 when he stopped Bruce Woodcock in four rounds. Charles won the real title in June 1949, but the European market refused to acknowledge the former 175 pounder as being a legitimate heavyweight champion.

Ring Magazine had Savold rated #2 in the world in their 1950 annual ratings. Louis stops him in the sixth round of a scheduled fifteen. Louis suddenly becomes "the other world's champion", and becomes the number one contender to newly crowned champion Jersey Joe Walcott who Louis already previously defeated.



It would be the final career knockout win for Louis. However, he did just enough to make the public believe in him again. He wasn't gifted a title shot, he legitimately earned it.



Two months later he was back in the ring again, once again facing contender Cesar Brion, and once again wins a unanimous decision by scores of 62.5-47.5, 59-51, and 56.5-53.5 further cementing his #1 contender status.

And two months after that he defeated Jimmy Bivins, 78-20-1, who was always floating around the top ten, by unanimous decision. 7-3, and two 6-3 scores. No footage available on YouTube, but this doesn't detract from the fact that Louis had defeated three top ten contenders and was considered the second best heavyweight in the world at least on paper.

The Brockton Blockbuster



Louis could've waited for the Walcott championship fight and made far more money than he would've against anybody else, but the IRS was constantly hounding him.

So he begged Rocky Marciano, the popular New England heavyweight, to fight him. Marciano grew up idolizing Louis, and didn't necessarily want to fight him. But since Louis established himself as the top contender, a victory over Louis would make Marciano the logical contender for Jersey Joe Walcott.

I think Louis like a lot of others saw Marciano as being too clumsy and short to really be effective and figured that he could either outbox the young man or catch him coming in, because Louis was still deadly if people tried to trade with him as evident in the Savold fight.

Besides that, Louis had previously done exhibitions against Rex Layne who was basically of the same mold and style of Rocky Marciano, and probably figured that it wouldn't be too difficult of a match.

The fight itself was brutal on both ends of the equation as Louis busted Marciano up, and even won a few rounds. But slowly but surely the non-stop power punches began to wear Louis down and once Marciano had somebody hurt he was absolutely relentless.



Unfortunately the match has been either remembered as a tragedy or something comedic, where people have grossly exaggerated the age and vulnerabilities of Joe Louis and also have downplayed the abilities and worth of Rocky Marciano.

Make no mistake, had Joe Louis been in his prime he would've absolutely wrecked the guys he fought in the comeback with maybe the exception of Ezzard Charles and Rocky Marciano--- he wasn't as good as he was. Nobody is disputing that.

The real question is, "How much did he really diminish as a fighter?," and that's worth speculating about. Did he drop 10%? 20%? 30%? 40%? 50%? It really needs to be debated.

He was already on a decline following WW2 (1945) but held on to the championship until 1949. 1945, the drop-off was 10%-15%. By 1949, the drop-off was 20-25%. The comebacking Joe Louis? The drop-off was 30%-35%. That makes him 65-70% the man that he was. That's my opinion.

Louis had a great career in the 30s, he scored his major wins then. No surprise, that he showed decline during the later stages of his reign. Fighting the lesser opposition, ageing, having times off the ring - all that stuff got to Louis. He kinda spanned 3 eras: a good one, a comparably weak one and a great one. Charles, Walcott and Marciano were the best fighters he faced, but Louis clearly was past prime against those.

DrDuke wrote: ↑04 Nov 2021, 03:58 Louis had a great career in the 30s, he scored his major wins then. No surprise, that he showed decline during the later stages of his reign. Fighting the lesser opposition, ageing, having times off the ring - all that stuff got to Louis. He kinda spanned 3 eras: a good one, a comparably weak one and a great one. Charles, Walcott and Marciano were the best fighters he faced, but Louis clearly was past prime against those.

It is kinda crazy just how long he was boxing. We wouldn't see comparable career lengths until Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Evander Holyfield and Wladimir Klitschko.

Louis made his pro debut in 1934 and his career ended in 1951. He caught the tail end of the Braddock, Baer, Carnera, Schmeling and Sharkey era.

He dominated the next decade because quite frankly there was nobody of any real consequence. And only in the final two years of his reign did he finally meet a challenger who was of the same ilk as himself (Walcott) and arguably lost the first match.

He retires. In the interim Charles, Walcott, Marciano were on the rise. A brand new era where those guys most likely would've beaten the guys Louis kayoed on the way up. A superior era of competition than what he was used to.

By then he dropped off too much to really be competitive. He was good enough to defeat everybody else in the world but those three. Like I said in my post on the Louis-Charles fight, I don't know if Louis could've beaten him even in his prime.

Years and years after the Marciano fight, when Murray Woroner was doing the 1967 NCR-315 computer tournaments Louis kept remarking again and again--- despite people dismissing the Marciano fight as Joe Louis being too old--- that he wasn't sure he could've beaten Marciano even in his prime.

So all-in-all, I basically agree with you when you said: "Charles, Walcott and Marciano were the best fighters he faced, but Louis clearly was past prime against those." He could've beaten Walcott head-to-head in his prime, but I'm not so sure he beats Charles and Marciano.

HomicideHenry wrote: ↑04 Nov 2021, 09:09 He could've beaten Walcott head-to-head in his prime, but I'm not so sure he beats Charles and Marciano.

I guess, he could beat Charles too. However, I'd still won't pick him against Marciano, because Marciano was too tough and relentless, while Louis was vulnerable enough. I can see Rocky being behind on points, but only for some time. Marciano KOs Louis more often than not.

DrDuke wrote: ↑04 Nov 2021, 09:51

HomicideHenry wrote: ↑04 Nov 2021, 09:09 He could've beaten Walcott head-to-head in his prime, but I'm not so sure he beats Charles and Marciano.

I guess, he could beat Charles too. However, I'd still won't pick him against Marciano, because Marciano was too tough and relentless, while Louis was vulnerable enough. I can see Rocky being behind on points, but only for some time. Marciano KOs Louis more often than not.

He could have possibly beaten Charles but my rationale is that Louis at the peak of his powers struggled with Billy Conn.

Yes Billy fought a bit differently than Charles, using a lot more lateral movement than the Cincinnati Cobra, but I think there's no question that Charles was a bit better than what Conn was.

Charles was a very quick man, and I don't think his hand and foot speed was exceeded until Floyd Patterson came around. Louis had problems with movers--- and when he fought Charles, although he was 65%-70% the man he was in his prime, he lost by scores of 2-13, 3-12 and 5-10.

In his prime the fight would have been closer for sure but I think Charles would've most likely edged a decision, unless Louis caught him. I don't know if Joe could've stopped him, considering he went 15 rounds with Rocky Marciano.

Yes, Walcott kayoed Charles but the two men only fought each other four times. It was bound to happen eventually, especially when Charles was fighting 7 times in 1951 when he lost the title. The man was always busy. The hyperactivity might have cost him the championship.

As for Marciano vs Louis, prime for prime, I think Marciano was a stylistic nightmare for Louis. The only man comparable that he fought while as champion was Arturo Gudoy, and he went the entire 15 rounds with Louis the first time around.

No offense to Gudoy but he was no Marciano or Dempsey or Frazier or Tyson. And many people booed the split decision win for Louis. Of course in the rematch Louis kayoed him in the eighth.

-September.18. 1946-
This was what Joe Louis would later write in his 1978 autobiography.
The last fight where he "actually felt like his old self as a boxer"
and was seriously thinking of retiring after it.
( it was the last fight mentioned in his 1950 autobiography MY LIFE STORY.
Also he said in the book (in-between the lines) that he was approached to throw this fight by 'some people"
(through Harry Mendel)
and the re-match would be 'for real".

Meant to reply to earlier. A lot was said:

"It is kinda crazy just how long he was boxing. We wouldn't see comparable career lengths until Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Evander Holyfield and Wladimir Klitschko."

Well, no, there were others. There was also Walcott and Charles, and Patterson and Liston.

Marciano's style was nightmare for Louis? Would say the other way around. Marciano was not hard to hit and Louis was a very accurate puncher.

Don't see how the scores of Charles' decision over a past it Louis is that relevant when considering a prime Louis vs Charles.

More often than not, a prime Louis would have beaten Charles, Walcott and Marciano.

You can't have it both ways Alp. Either Louis was so far past it that it doesn't count when Charles beat him, or that Louis was a stylistic nightmare for Marciano.

It's quite possible that he would have defeated Walcott, Charles and Marciano in his prime but I figure if he struggled with Billy Conn and Arturo Gudoy, that he most likely would have lost to those three individuals.

I can't have it both ways? That doesn't even make sense.

He was past his best when he fought Charles. If he was in his prime, I think he would have won. Probably would not have been an easy fight, but he would have won.
Same with Marciano.
He beat Walcott when he was past his prime. Not sure why we have to argue to debate how Louis would have done against Walcott in his prime.
Yes Louis struggled with Godoy and Conn in the first fights. (Had much less trouble with them in the rematches) However, you can do that with anyone:

Charles got knocked out by Walcott. Lost to Elmer Ray. Lost to Nino Valdes, Rex Layne, Nino Valdes, Harold Johnson.
Marciano had to have the judges save him twice against Ted Lowry and against La Starza.

I think my point still stands that he wasn't some human punching bag or old man. No, he wasn't the Joe Louis of old but he was good enough to become the number one contender again legitimately.

I don't think he would have beaten Charles in his prime, on the basis of his performance against Billy Conn and Charles was better than him. Then again the Irishman was more of a mover than Charles, so who knows.

Walcott I think would have given any version of Joe Louis problems, but the older Louis was able to get him out of there. So Walcott from my perspective is the weak link in the chain.

Marciano following the Louis match did change his style a bit when before he was more of a brawler who didn't really do that much bobbing or weaving--- more of a straight up puncher than anything else. From Louis onwards he was doing a lot of bobbing and weaving, dipping his knees deeply, etc which made him all the more harder to hit.

The difference in Marciano is self-evident when he rematched Roland LaStarza and his rival simply was unable to do anything with Marciano. When Rocky was more of a straight-up puncher Roland was able to score a lot of points.

I think however that Rocky Marciano would have always been a nightmare for Joe Louis simply because he not only was tough enough to take it, but because of his tremendous conditioning which would have made Louis go on the defensive rather than offensive.

Being on the defense against Marciano was a critical mistake because he simply never stopped throwing punches--- the only way to stop Marciano's onslaught would have been to take it straight to him or to have kept running away.

Blocking and parrying punches was no good against Marciano because he hit so hard and so often he literally broke bones. That being said I do think that Joe Louis would have beaten Jack Dempsey, because unlike Marciano Dempsey simply did not have the conditioning to be Non-Stop for an entire 15 rounds.

The worst thing you could do against a man like the brown bomber would have been to slow down your pace or try to play it safe because he would have caught you with one of his 6-inch punches and you were gone. Dempsey was a tough man but sometimes you can be too tough for your own good.

didn't bother reading all of your comments because you went on way too long yet again.

Yes Louis was an old man by the time he fought Marciano. He was 37. He wasn't a punching bag, but was way past it. He was much slower, his reflexes were almost gone, and he simply couldn't pull the trigger and throw nearly as many punches.

Marciano had a lot of trouble with La Starza in the rematch. It was a very competitive fight. I think the fight is still on Youtube and anyone can see that.
Marciano was never hard to hit. Louis was a very accurate puncher. Louis would have had little trouble hitting Marciano.

On a given night, Marciano, Charles or Walcott could have won. The majority of the time Louis would have won.

If you didn't bother to read then why did you bother to reply one bit? I will never understand the logic of some of you people here I really don't and it's a shame that in the month of December everyone still wants to act like a jerk.

Was not trying to be a jerk. I'm just not going to read something that long; most people wouldn't. There is no reason why you have to go on and on like that. Surely you have noticed that other people have commented on your overly long posts before. I read your first few comments and stopped.

Joe Louis had trouble with Arturo Godoy in the first fight,
but Jack Blackburn had a plan for the re-match which worked.
But how would Joe Louis do (in his prime)
against Marciano's early style (which was like Godoys,
especially Marciano's post LaStarza style 9thanks to Charlie Goldman changing up Marciano's style)

4 round Exhibition
Chicago Coliseum
Thursday January.29.1948
( Joe Louis would have been 33 yrs and 8 months old here)
5 months later in June Louis would have the re-match with Jersey Joe Walcott.