“This was an hour before midnight on October 26, 1951. It was the night of a day that dawned on July 4, 1934, when Joe Louis became a professional wrestler and knocked out Jack Kracken in Chicago for $ 50. The night was a long time on the road, but it had to get there. “
Red blacksmith
I have been following boxing for most of my life, and have come to the conclusion that selecting the best who has fought in a division is a matter that, for the most part, is in the eye of the beholder.
However, it is easier for me to compare fighters from different eras than to compare teams or individual athletes in other sports, because boxing has hardly changed since the introduction of gloves. There I have There have been some rule changes, and the matches are generally not scheduled for as many rounds as before, but the duration of those rounds has not changed, and the ring is the same size as for God knows how long.
In other sports, the equipment has changed, and perhaps the playing surfaces are different. That’s especially true, I think, of baseball, which has seen the introduction of indoor games, artificial turf, and batting helmets, among other things, as well as rule changes designed to level the playing field for hitters or pitchers.
Comparatively, boxing hasn’t changed, and when you look at Joe Louis’ career, it’s hard for any viewer to say that anyone else was better.
Most 21st century Americans probably regard Louis as a figure from a bygone era, like Babe Ruth or Jim Thorpe, someone they only know through flickering images on movie screens. If you think of someone who breaks racial barriers, you probably think of Jackie Robinson from baseball.
But Louis was more than a barrier breaker. Tea Florida Times-Union writes that Louis, who was born 100 years ago on May 13, was a American hero.
That’s how he was.
Louis didn’t break racism championship barrier in the heavyweight division of professional boxing. That distinction belonged to Jack Johnson, the “Galveston Giant” who won the heavyweight title more than a decade before Louis was born and lost it when Louis was a little boy, but never won over white Americans.
(There were more, of course, mostly related to allegations that Johnson violated the Mann Act, allegations that were clearly racially motivated, but that’s a topic for another discussion. My point is that Louis was not the first black heavyweight champion.)
Yet Louis was a popular figure from coast to coast, and he was talented. Among the all-time heavyweights, ESPN ranks him only behind Muhammad Ali, just ahead of Johnson and a couple of spaces ahead of Rocky Marciano, who knocked out Louis in 1951 in their final fight.
Marciano, of course, is the only heavyweight champion in history to retire undefeated. But when Marciano met Joe Louis in 1951, Louis was 37 years old. Marciano was almost 10 years his junior. One can only wonder what it would have been like if they had been the same age when they faced each other.
The year Louis was 28 (Marciano’s age when he fought Louis), Louis successfully defended the heavyweight title twice in a couple of months, winning the first in a knockout in a round, the second in a knockout. technician in six rounds.
The year before, he defended his title four times, including the famous fight with Billy Conn, the “Fight of the year” in 1941.
He did not fight in 1943 or most of 1944 because he served in WWII, but he did experience a surge in popularity when he was quoted as saying: “We will win (the war) because we are on God’s side.”
I’ve seen multiple lists that have Louis rated the greatest heavyweight of all time. That’s appropriate, considering his reign as champion of the heavyweight division was longer than any other.
At times, he was criticized for the quality of his opposition. The lineup of his opponents was known as the “Tramp Club of the Month” when defending his title (despite his nickname, most of those fighters They were ranked in the top 10 heavyweights). But made He will also face some very good fighters, some of the best of his time: Conn (twice), Max Schmeling (twice), Jersey Joe Walcott (twice), Ezzard Charles, James J. Braddock.
In many ways, Louis was produced and presented for mass consumption. His image was strictly managed: he had certain rules that he had to abide by, one of which was that he could not be photographed with white women, and his handlers were even responsible for inventing his nickname, the “Brown bomber”.
(Several other nicknames were mentioned, but “Brown bomber” seemed to be preferred by most.)
Louis’ triumphs in the ring were greeted as symbolic steps for the black community. There weren’t many black figures for black Americans to look up to in those days, but they didn’t just look up to him because of his race. He was a heroic figure for all American people.
“Every time Joe Louis won a fight in those depressed years, even before he became champion, thousands of black Americans in relief or WPA, and poor, would take to the streets across the country to march and cheer and scream and cry because of Joe’s one-man triumphs “, wrote well-known author Langston Hughes.
“No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on black people’s emotions, or mine. I too marched and clapped and screamed and cried.”
“What my father did was allow white Americans to think of him as an American, not a black,” said his son, Joe Jr. “By winning, he became the first black hero of America’s whites.”
And he paved the way for those who followed him.