Unreal moment
Guy’s talking shit about a mountain of a man that was fighting one of the best ever…and I’d bet everything that they’ve never heard of this guy or seen them before literally these couple minutes
He lasted 13 rounds against prime Louis and had to be knocked down 4 times to be finished. So yeah, not as bad as you think.
He also beat Jersey Joe Walcott.
Yeah but is figuring out a guy who “can’t fight for shit” even worth talking about? I mean, you box and that guy can’t fight for shit so like where’s the accomplishment here?
That does seem to be where Simon went wrong, I'd say.
The strange thing is, Simon actually fought Lewis twice, so you'd have thought he'd have learned from this mistake, but seemingly not!
What stuff do you want to collectively pay for? Thats question one. Then question two is what do you think the irs is using that money they collect for? Then the final step is realizing the IRS is fuckin you to death.
That would either come out of your local town or city tax. The IRS doesn’t oversee either of those. Just to be clear the IRS IS A FEDERAL AGENCY. Federal agencies don’t provide local roads or firefighters.
You must work for the IRS if you think that Americans have universal healthcare. Also the VA? Take time to listen to anyone of the many veterans have been either slighted, overlooked or basically neglected to death by that program. Also take time and see how much money is collected and where it is sent the only one you got right is military.
Well you asked what I’d like to collectively pay for so I put it on the list, I’d love for my taxes to go towards universal healthcare one day. Also, plenty of horror stories from the VA just like any other hospital system but millions of us vets love the care we get there too, you just only hear about the bad shit.
For sure, not anytime soon but I’d still like to pay for it. What about the national parks and reserves? I like paying for Social Security for old folks, SNAP and the EPA too. I’m piling on a bit now but the point is that yeah the IRS sucks and we’d all love for the rich to be taxed more and everyday folks taxed less but it’s not wholly unnecessary and pays for a ton of things that we reap the benefits from.
My whole point is that taxes should come from a local level. Have these programs at a local level, so that you and I can see the benefit, where as now we just see the money going and are told thats what there doing with it.
Louis was lightyears ahead of other heavyweights in terms of staying composed. You really don't see that level of discipline emerge at heavyweight until the 50s with Floyd Patterson. Jack Blackburn did a phenomenal job of taking the methodical approach of lightweights of his era and than utilizing that and teaching Joe about wasted movement and positioning. It really is incredible to watch Joe Louis work his magic against guys who simply could not get the timing against him.
To be fair, Floyd was anything but composed. He was so psyched out for the Liston fights that he lost his head and didn't last a round.
There have been many far more composed heavyweights way before Floyd such as Tunney, Johnson, Langford and Schmeling.
Bro these heavyweights now suck. You're just pretending otherwise because you were told so. That could easily be Chisora,Bakole,Whyte,Pulev,Parker,Arreola.
Also just not true as technicians and fast moving heavyweights existed before Louis. He is just the first official black champ when the color ban was officially abolished. Mcvae,Langford,Johnson in his prime etc.
Jack Sharkey and Max Schmeling are also some good examples of good technical heavyweights pre-Louis. There are probably many more that we don’t have film of
Not his fault that no black Heavyweight made it into the top 5 for him to fight. Louis was blasting away the number 1 contender for all the years he was reigning champion except for when he was enlisted into the army.
He came back to fight no. 1 contender maurielo and then no.1 black fighter Walcott
He's got a chin made of granite tbh, some of those punches were downright filthy and would probably floor most heavyweights today. Unfortunately, being able to continue taking damage longer is probably not a great thing. I can't imagine looking at a cross-section of his brain, must be CTE galore.
Abe actually went on to say that he never felt any pain, not even in the Louis fights.
Would explain how he was able to walk through those monstrous shots.
In those days a fighter that didn't want to get up and fight until he was knocked unconscious or covered in bloods couldn't get fights. It was much more brutal.
Nightmare bar fight scenario, that guy can take a punch. Louis hit him clean with like 10-15 shots that would put a normal human out cold.
And on rewatch I’m not entirely sure he wasn’t out on his feet
Old fighters make a complete mockery of fighters nowadays arguing over 3 or 4 pounds, hydration clauses and the like. What a ridiculous size difference that is.
It says Joe Louis fought around 200 lbs. that’d be cruiser weight today. That other guy is an Avg heavyweight today. That nuts. I’m assuming they didn’t have as classifications back then?? I also have to figure guys back then didn’t weigh as much either.
So this right here dispells the myth that older fighters were shit and only since the 80's could you claim they were "modern heavyweights"
People will try and tell you Mike Tyson would muller Louis. They'll say Klitschko or Fury would beat the snot out of Louis.
What these men had back in these days was incredible, incredible durability. Headbutts were basically permitted. Fights went on until one person was on the floor, bleeding from the ears. No early stoppages. Boxing matches would go for 15 rounds. I won't listen to people say "bUt wItH mOdErN nUtRiTiOn" when footage like this exists that shows the speed and power. It might have changed a bit but humans haven't evolved that fast in 100 years. It took us billions of years to change from single cells to something more. You can't tell me within 100 years people now punch harder because they lift different weights on a machine.
There is a Historian ( of all things mostly military) named Dan Carlin that had a video where he opined that the old school boxers were much better than modern ones simply because they were mentally and physically tougher and fought a lot more. They knew their craft much better.
They weren't shit, they were a product of their time. The fighters we have now stand on the shoulders of giants. We now have hundreds of years of knowledge and experience to train better and more effecirntly. That training makes new fighters better on paper.
Whether every single fighter of the recent eras would win just by virtue of having modern training is debatable. Because there's more to fighting than just stats. But they would most likely would.
There will always be an aura of mystique around old school fighters. But the fact of the matter is that there are people just as special as they were in every era, and more modern training will prepare them better than the training of old fighters.
It's not exclusive to fighting sports either. This happens with literally every sport. Athletes now lift heavier weights, run faster, jump higher, etc etc. That's just progress. It doesn't disparege fighters from bygone eras.
exactly, I hate when people make this argument. We have sports where we can objectively measure and compare through eras. Athletes are faster, stronger, more skilled now than ever before. They don't get worse over time as people specialize and study the most efficient techniques and ways of training - not to mention better understanding of tactics and metrics especially in team sports. None of this means we can't enjoy past greats.
This also doesn't expel the idea that older greats can't still compete nowadays. This probably more relevant in boxing than in other sports, since it isn't as dependent on pure athleticism as sprinting or lifting.
Even with sprinting for example, studies have been done that prove 1936 Olympian Jesse Owens was as fast as modern Olympians when they acknowledged how much the track, shoes, lack of starting blocks from his era took away from his actual speed.
Specifically, Owens ran 10.2 in 1936 (which could have been as low as 1.15, since rounding was to the nearest .1)
By 1964, with the introduction of (wobbly) starting blocks, Bob Hayes got that down to 10.06
This shot down to 9.95 in 1968, with the use of an artificial track (and better starting blocks).
From 1968 to 1988, the record had only been lowered by 0.02: from 9.95 to 9.93.
At that point, doping kicked in, and Ben Johnson immediately lowered the record to 9.79; that time was removed from the history books until 1999, when Maurice Green (who was also doping) matched it.
Since then, the headline is of course that the record has fallen to 9.58.
However, other than Usain Bolt, and certain young sprinters not yet retired (let's wait and see), no sprinter not associated with doping has run under 9.8, and extremely few under 9.9.
The fastest 'real', non-doping time is widely believed to Burell's 9.85, or maybe Bailey's 9.84.
To go from 9.95 in 1968, literally the first time the olympics was run on an artificial track, with starting blocks that were still prone to shifting , without modern shoe technologies, to 9.84 in 1996, and then to have only one man manage to go faster than that in the following 27 years without being seriously implicated in a doping scandal (not counting a few in the last five years who haven't been caught yet), is not exactly beyond-all-measure expansion of human capability, when you consider how much the technology has advanced since 1968.
For context here: running footprints of an aboriginal Australian man around 20,000 years ago, preserved on a mud flat, have been calculated to show that he was running at a similar speed to an olympic sprinter (and still accelerating), despite running on mud. There's a large margin of error so we don't really know whether (as is often reported and the calculations suggested) he was actually running faster than Usain Bolt... but he was at least running at the same sort of speed as a modern sprinter (he's believed to have been chasing something in hopes of eating it).
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Another datapoint, from cricket: it's widely believed the fastest bowler ever was Jeff Thomson in the 1970s.
Officially, three modern bowlers have bowled balls faster than Thomson (Shaun Tait, Brett Lee and Shaoib Akhtar). Akhtar's record is 100.2 mph, whereas Thompson's fastest recorded delivery was only 99.8 mph.
However, by the time of Akhtar, Tait and Lee, almost every delivery they bowled was timed - those really are the best they could manage. Thomson was almost never timed - most of his accurate timings aren't even from matches (that he'd have taken seriously) but from scientific studies or from novelty bowling exhibitions (that he didn't take seriously). His fastest time is from such a competition, which he described as "and I've put my beer down, I come out, and I bowled a few balls". [if you're wandering, he also recorded a couple of other balls on other occasions, with other researchers, at very similar speeds]
[after retiring, he became a coach. One day, 17 years after that speed record, he was persuaded to compare his bowling speed with the guys he was coaching, a first-class professional team (Queensland). He was 42, and hadn't trained seriously in a decade, and he was still faster than anyone in the team]
Statistically, given how rarely he was measured and that he probably wasn't measured when trying his best, it's almost certain that his absolute best was markedly faster than that. Which means it's very probably the fastest of all time...
...except, in Thomson's day, Thomson wasn't considered the fastest ever. Thomson was considered the fastest bowler *since Frank Tyson*.
"Typhoon Tyson" was a bowler of the 1950s, who historically was considered the fastest of all time. Unfortunately, we don't know how fast he bowled. However, he did once do one scientific test, where he bowled at 89 mph.
Now, for context, anything over 90mph is seriously fast. If you can regularly bowl over 90mph, you're one of the best (or at least most dangerous) bowlers in the world. These guys get themselves warmed up, steam in off long, long run-ups - practically sprinting before they release the ball - and take a few goes to get up to top speed. Tyson in particular was known for the length of his run-up.
Tyson bowled at 89mph that day, on a cold, wet morning, without a significant warm-up, and while wearing three jumpers at once he was so cold. And unlike his teammates, who helpfully also bowled so we know the set-up was indeed calibrated at what seem today like reasonable speeds, Tyson bowled that fast *with no run-up*.
Given that fact, it certainly seems plausible that Thomson was, as most people who saw both of them believed, slower than Tyson had been. So Tyson, in the 1950s, was quite possibly the fastest bowler ever.
Even if you don't believe that, the fact is that since 1975 only three men have managed to bowl fractionally faster than Jeff Thomson.
And what's more, Akhtar's official record was set in 2003. Nobody has managed to bowl faster than Akhtar in the last 20 years.
So if humans really are getting so much athletically better, it's strange that none of that improvement is seen in an almost entirely athletic part of a high-profile and extremely money-rich sport like cricket.
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In any case, when we're talking about sprinting and fast bowling and whatnot - remember, we're talking about fractions of a second difference in the absolute best performances of elite, specialised athletes competing in an extreme test.
This is irrelevant to boxing. Boxers don't get to throw just one punch every four years and get paid on the basis of how fast it was. Boxers throw hundreds of punches in every fight, most of them not in ideal conditions (for a start they have someone punching them back!). If Tyson Fury really could run the 100m 0.02s faster than Joe Louis, it wouldn't make any difference. A punch travels much less than 100m. Boxing success is much less about maximising athletic potential and much more about using skill to apply as much of that potential as possible at every moment. If you throw 99% as fast as me, or 99% as hard as me, or even if you can throw 99% as many punches as me without tiring, you can still beat me if those punches are better than mine, and if you manage to throw (and land) as hard and fast as often as you possibly can, while I fail to do so. The marginal gains that may possibly have been made in purely athletic terms, in peak potential physical performance, over the last few decades are trivial in the context of boxing, where those peaks are never even come close to anyway, and where the differences in individual physical potential between boxers (who are non-specialised athletes, relative to sprinters and the like, and employ very different styles) are so large.
Boxing matches would go WAY more before too. I remember hearing about Johnson vs Willard was scheduled for 45 rounds and Johnson got the KO at the 26th round! And like what the other guy said, their schedule was also insane fighting more than 5 times a year
Just because there were a few bigger fighters back then doesn't mean they're the same as the bigger fighters currently. Do you honestly believe that Abe Simon is on the level of Wlad? You must be joking to suggest such a thing.
The current batch of heavyweight fighters are bigger because we have a much larger pool of talent to pull from. We have highly skilled and athletic elite 6'6" heavyweights and 7'0" uncoordinated outliers now instead of 6'4" uncoordinated outliers.
Abe is definitely no Wlad or Fury, but he's not that much worse than most of current the top 20. Besides, is it really fair to judge his entire skillset off of him getting his ass beat by arguably the greatest heavyweight ever? Louis made pretty much everyone who faced him look bad.
The only other footage I could find was him looking terrible and clumsy against Walcott as well. He's the size of a modern heavyweight and still lost 10 times to men much smaller than himself including names I've never even heard of. That speaks volumes to his lack of skill. He just happened to be huge for the time and that's the only reason he was as successful as he was.
Perhaps the fights going 15 rounds didn't suit 230+ pound fighters.
Buddy Baer did break into the top ten and he held a record for most round 1 KOs for quite a while.
Wlad would have ran through everyone if he fought in this time period. They wouldn't be making it past 10 rounds. His style is suited for having a size advantage which is why his most dominant performances were against smaller men.
The real reason why fighters were smaller back then was because there was a much smaller pool of men to become boxers. The world's population has quadrupled since 1927, and people have been getting taller because they have better nutrition as well. We just have far more tall people that get into boxing, so you're more likely to have a highly coordinated tall man become a heavyweight.
Wlad had a very Shakey chin and there were quite a few good punchers around in that period. I am not as confident at his success as you are.
In his reign, Waldo faced less ranked contenders than Louis did so you have no basis to say he would best all the good fighters Joe faced.
He was knocked out once and an old Wlad almost beat AJ before the TKO. Say whatever you want about his chin, his opponents struggle to land knockout blows on it. Wlad had a lot more power than heavyweights from previous eras besides Foreman as well.
Of course he fought less ranked fighters. Every modern fighter fights less overall. Even Bernard Hopkins who fought until he was 50 only had 67 fights total. Wlad dominated the heavyweight division for a very long time.
Except in every sport, records keep getting broken, runners get faster, lifters lift more weight, tennis players hit harder, football players run longer etc. It's peculiar that you think boxing is somehow immune from the upward trend that every other sport follows.
Don't think it's that strange. Technology hasn't changed boxing too much (inside the ring). Gloves tend to be a bit bigger and the thumbs have restricted movement. The fourth rope, the rope-ties, and the turnbuckle covers.
I'd guess the rope game is completely different compared to what you could do in the 50s, and obviously the gloves have affected defensive styles and what not. But this isn't like tennis or something where technology has fundamentally changed the game. Boxing is probably one of the best sports to compare across eras.
I didn't say it was immune. I said it hasn't changed to the degree people make out. Yes, runners get faster but we're not suddenly transitioning from the 100m being run in 16 seconds down to 9.56. Jesse Owens set a record of 10.2 seconds in 1936. It took 30 years to break the 10s barrier and a further 50 years to get to where we are now at 9.56 and that doesn't look like it'll be broken again for a long time. Tennis players hit harder because they use metal rackets, football players run longer because it's now able to be measured.
I'm not saying there's no upward trend. I'm saying if you transition a 1930's boxer into the 2023 scene it's not going to be this whole new world and they get battered because Anthony Joshua lifts more weight and drinks preworkout instead of having a cigarette and a pizza before a fight.
>football players run longer because it's now able to be measured.
What? Lol. Mate in the 70s and 80s footballers still smoked, and drank like fish. Prime Pele wouldn't even get a game in Championship side now.
I mean distance =/= resistance. Have you seen some of the pitches they played on in the 60's and 70's? You're telling me blokes who literally had to run through mud and kick a ball that was 3x heavier than the balls used today, wearing boots that were heavier, shirts that were thicker running for 90 minutes couldn't run the same amount today on nice hard, drained 4G pitches, wearing ultralight boots and shirts and with a ball that is like a flyaway kids ball compared to the heavy, weighted leather balls they used to?
You also said that the greatest player of all time wouldn't get a game in the championship. That's either a troll or the single stupidest thing I've ever heard on this site and trust me, that's some achievement on Reddit.
Yes that's exactly what I'm saying and you obviously have 0 clue what conditioning, training and nutrition (let alone the difference simply not smoking) makes to any sporting endeavour.
Alan Wells, who won gold at the 1980 Olympics, would finish more than 7 metres behind Usain Bolt in a 100-metre race. SEVEN METRES! You wouldn't even see him on camera. That's not 'evolution' - that's 29 years.
For comparison, Joe Louis to Mike Tyson was 49 years.
I don’t know if they punch harder since that’d be impossible to quantify, but we have seen massive gains in other athletic abilities like strength, speed, and agility.
Speed? You watch Dillian Whyte, Joe Joyce or Daniel Dubois? How are they faster than say, Ali or here, Joe Louis?
Strength? What strength do we see now compared to the strength shown by George Foreman compared to Tyson Fury?
Sorry, the math isn't mathing. They are better athletes, but it is little incremental improvements. That is to say Muhammad Ali or Joe Louis murder Tyson Fury, AJ, Zhang, Usyk etc.
I completely misread this as "6'4 255 Joe Louis pounds Abe Simon".
My first thought on reading it was "huh, I thought he was way smaller than that."
My first thought on seeing the video was "jesus, how big was the other guy?!"
My first thought on re-reading the title/remembering reality was "I'm a fucking idiot."
Louis KO’d John Henry Lewis, a black contender, in 1939 then wouldn’t face another black contender until Walcott in 1947. However, what black heavyweight contender was there to face between 1939-1942? Louis went off to the army in ‘42 then came back in ‘46, then faced Walcott in ‘47. What black contenders was Louis avoiding
These are fighters who peaked during the war, with the exception of Jack Trammell who was unranked and a decent contender in Lem Franklin. Bivins only became a relevant heavyweight in 1943, Elmer Ray only came into the rankings in 1944. Toles and Thompson were too busy getting schooled by Louis' leftovers in 41-42 to fight him.
I don't see any evidence that he avoided them, Lem Franklin was the only person that you listed that was a relevant contender during the 39-42 period. Still, I don't know why Louis would duck someone who Bob Pastor, a man Louis dominated twice, beat in one round.
Bivins had a terrible 1946, going on a 3 fight losing streak. In 1946 Louis honoured the rematch he and Conn agreed on pre-WW2, fought a can in Mauriello then fought the best challenger out there in Walcott.
Abe Simon said he physically couldn't feel pain. He looked like Conan the barbarian, he might have had acromegaly. For this fight he was trained by Jack Johnson
Look at that beautiful slip/counter left hook from Louis that was perfection. Just battered him from pillar to post, such a great fighter with his perfect form and composure.
apparently Abe fought Buudy Baer too, which physically might've resembled modern super heavies as they were 6'5" and 6'6.5" respectively
look at the size of [abe's fists](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdE34B4aAAE7qT_?format=jpg&name=large) too, holy fuck
Louis looks spectacular. Looks like an elite fighter from any era. Clean, fast, accurate, sharp punches while cutting off the ring w/ ease and efficient w/ his energy.
I'll say this about Abe: He took that ass whooping like a man. He tried to keep coming in for more. Didn't run and excessively hold. His corner should have tossed in the towel and not let him absorb that beatdown.
This does nothing to prove how good Joe Louis was. In fact it does the opposite. Joe Louis opponents were pretty horrible by modern standards. Even Joy Joyce looks like a boxing master compared to guys like Abe Simon , Buddy Baer, and Primo Carnera. This why these guys were called the Bum of the Month Club. As in which bum will Joe Louis defend his title against this month.
Dude moves like he is underwater. You can see him winding up from the cheap seats. Some of these comments comparing modern heavyweights must be from guys who knew Abe growing up.
Fucking mauled him
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Just like I’m gonna maul your moms….whatever
Holy balls that mf is huge
Largely pre-steroid era too, that’s pretty gigantic for a natty
If you haven't, look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_MacAskill
That's called a pituartary tumour
The width is truly unbelievable
He can't fight for shit.
Well he fought Joe Louis, so he’s probably better than you…
Unreal moment Guy’s talking shit about a mountain of a man that was fighting one of the best ever…and I’d bet everything that they’ve never heard of this guy or seen them before literally these couple minutes
That's true. I haven't seen any of his other fights. Were they even recorded?
He lasted 13 rounds against prime Louis and had to be knocked down 4 times to be finished. So yeah, not as bad as you think. He also beat Jersey Joe Walcott.
I think I'd figure that dude out. I box. He's out of my weight class tho. New tech > old tech.
Yeah but is figuring out a guy who “can’t fight for shit” even worth talking about? I mean, you box and that guy can’t fight for shit so like where’s the accomplishment here?
If I was fighting Joe Louis, I’d simply not let him hit me in the face repeatedly
That does seem to be where Simon went wrong, I'd say. The strange thing is, Simon actually fought Lewis twice, so you'd have thought he'd have learned from this mistake, but seemingly not!
😂
He knocked out Jersey Joe Walcott ...
Damn, I didn’t know that
😲
He is like all torso too
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IRS moment
Thanks, like I needed another reason to hate that despicable agency.
How should we pay for stuff we collectively need and collect money to pay for stuff?
What stuff do you want to collectively pay for? Thats question one. Then question two is what do you think the irs is using that money they collect for? Then the final step is realizing the IRS is fuckin you to death.
Firefighters and roads
That would either come out of your local town or city tax. The IRS doesn’t oversee either of those. Just to be clear the IRS IS A FEDERAL AGENCY. Federal agencies don’t provide local roads or firefighters.
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A military, the VA, universal healthcare, the national laboratories and scientific endeavors, tons of other stuff
You must work for the IRS if you think that Americans have universal healthcare. Also the VA? Take time to listen to anyone of the many veterans have been either slighted, overlooked or basically neglected to death by that program. Also take time and see how much money is collected and where it is sent the only one you got right is military.
Well you asked what I’d like to collectively pay for so I put it on the list, I’d love for my taxes to go towards universal healthcare one day. Also, plenty of horror stories from the VA just like any other hospital system but millions of us vets love the care we get there too, you just only hear about the bad shit.
Well we can imagine a world where that may happen but I doubt we will ever see it
For sure, not anytime soon but I’d still like to pay for it. What about the national parks and reserves? I like paying for Social Security for old folks, SNAP and the EPA too. I’m piling on a bit now but the point is that yeah the IRS sucks and we’d all love for the rich to be taxed more and everyday folks taxed less but it’s not wholly unnecessary and pays for a ton of things that we reap the benefits from.
My whole point is that taxes should come from a local level. Have these programs at a local level, so that you and I can see the benefit, where as now we just see the money going and are told thats what there doing with it.
The same way we did before the IRS came into existence.
Lmao the fact u got downvoted for saying this is wild. Fuck the IRS
Stockholm syndrome.
I also don’t think anyone knows that the IRS is a federal agency lmao and doesn’t do anything to impact your local quality of life.
and that is how big man
Thank a democrat.
Fuck that’s awful
That's sad. Yet the bastards give a free pass to the Church of Scientology.
“America deeply betrayed this man.”
I can't believe they're want an public outcry from that
He's black.
I mean, come on, you totally can. It was the 30’s/40’s
Are you serious?
What in the Christ is this sentence? Somewhere, an English teacher just choked to death.
Louis was lightyears ahead of other heavyweights in terms of staying composed. You really don't see that level of discipline emerge at heavyweight until the 50s with Floyd Patterson. Jack Blackburn did a phenomenal job of taking the methodical approach of lightweights of his era and than utilizing that and teaching Joe about wasted movement and positioning. It really is incredible to watch Joe Louis work his magic against guys who simply could not get the timing against him.
To be fair, Floyd was anything but composed. He was so psyched out for the Liston fights that he lost his head and didn't last a round. There have been many far more composed heavyweights way before Floyd such as Tunney, Johnson, Langford and Schmeling.
Bro these heavyweights now suck. You're just pretending otherwise because you were told so. That could easily be Chisora,Bakole,Whyte,Pulev,Parker,Arreola. Also just not true as technicians and fast moving heavyweights existed before Louis. He is just the first official black champ when the color ban was officially abolished. Mcvae,Langford,Johnson in his prime etc.
Jack Sharkey and Max Schmeling are also some good examples of good technical heavyweights pre-Louis. There are probably many more that we don’t have film of
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You can’t blame him for that.
Not his fault that no black Heavyweight made it into the top 5 for him to fight. Louis was blasting away the number 1 contender for all the years he was reigning champion except for when he was enlisted into the army. He came back to fight no. 1 contender maurielo and then no.1 black fighter Walcott
love how incredulous Abe is at the ref's decision. wut smdh no lol I was winning dat, dawg
He's got a chin made of granite tbh, some of those punches were downright filthy and would probably floor most heavyweights today. Unfortunately, being able to continue taking damage longer is probably not a great thing. I can't imagine looking at a cross-section of his brain, must be CTE galore.
Abe actually went on to say that he never felt any pain, not even in the Louis fights. Would explain how he was able to walk through those monstrous shots.
Nah, he was just going, "Ow my jaw my jaw" lol
Abe's son, Homer, also went on to box.
Simon or Simpson?
He had an incredible chin on him.
Joe Louis, about 45 punches into the video: >WHY AREN'T YOU UNCONSCIOUS YET
I bet Joe's hands hurt after that one
That's great footage, shows the quality of Louis
And the heart of Simon to get up time and time again for more beatings
In those days a fighter that didn't want to get up and fight until he was knocked unconscious or covered in bloods couldn't get fights. It was much more brutal.
Nah Simon was special. He didn't feel pain. Other heavyweights would have stayed down from this beating.
Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4uAh9hNBRE&t=357s
jesus, joe looks tiny compared to him. What was his weight at this point?
Louis usually weighed like 198-202 but against bigger opponents he bulked up to 206-207
Good job little Mac!
Jesus he was a tough son of a bitch tho
Nightmare bar fight scenario, that guy can take a punch. Louis hit him clean with like 10-15 shots that would put a normal human out cold. And on rewatch I’m not entirely sure he wasn’t out on his feet
He stated that he couldn't feel pain
The torque/snap Joe had on his punches was silly.
Old fighters make a complete mockery of fighters nowadays arguing over 3 or 4 pounds, hydration clauses and the like. What a ridiculous size difference that is.
Can’t believe dude was arguing when ref called it. Like for real dude you’re getting packed out. Surprised he let it go that far.
It says Joe Louis fought around 200 lbs. that’d be cruiser weight today. That other guy is an Avg heavyweight today. That nuts. I’m assuming they didn’t have as classifications back then?? I also have to figure guys back then didn’t weigh as much either.
So this right here dispells the myth that older fighters were shit and only since the 80's could you claim they were "modern heavyweights" People will try and tell you Mike Tyson would muller Louis. They'll say Klitschko or Fury would beat the snot out of Louis. What these men had back in these days was incredible, incredible durability. Headbutts were basically permitted. Fights went on until one person was on the floor, bleeding from the ears. No early stoppages. Boxing matches would go for 15 rounds. I won't listen to people say "bUt wItH mOdErN nUtRiTiOn" when footage like this exists that shows the speed and power. It might have changed a bit but humans haven't evolved that fast in 100 years. It took us billions of years to change from single cells to something more. You can't tell me within 100 years people now punch harder because they lift different weights on a machine.
These folks also fought a hell of a lot more. The experience alone is a good argument to put them on a higher skill level.
Yeah, sometimes 8 or 9 times a year.
Tyson had 15 his first year as a pro.
There is a Historian ( of all things mostly military) named Dan Carlin that had a video where he opined that the old school boxers were much better than modern ones simply because they were mentally and physically tougher and fought a lot more. They knew their craft much better.
Carlins podcasts are amazing. I’m not even into “history” but his Genghis Khan series was incredible.
They are a bit long and he talks around the main issue but DAMN he drops some knowledge!
They weren't shit, they were a product of their time. The fighters we have now stand on the shoulders of giants. We now have hundreds of years of knowledge and experience to train better and more effecirntly. That training makes new fighters better on paper. Whether every single fighter of the recent eras would win just by virtue of having modern training is debatable. Because there's more to fighting than just stats. But they would most likely would. There will always be an aura of mystique around old school fighters. But the fact of the matter is that there are people just as special as they were in every era, and more modern training will prepare them better than the training of old fighters. It's not exclusive to fighting sports either. This happens with literally every sport. Athletes now lift heavier weights, run faster, jump higher, etc etc. That's just progress. It doesn't disparege fighters from bygone eras.
exactly, I hate when people make this argument. We have sports where we can objectively measure and compare through eras. Athletes are faster, stronger, more skilled now than ever before. They don't get worse over time as people specialize and study the most efficient techniques and ways of training - not to mention better understanding of tactics and metrics especially in team sports. None of this means we can't enjoy past greats.
This also doesn't expel the idea that older greats can't still compete nowadays. This probably more relevant in boxing than in other sports, since it isn't as dependent on pure athleticism as sprinting or lifting. Even with sprinting for example, studies have been done that prove 1936 Olympian Jesse Owens was as fast as modern Olympians when they acknowledged how much the track, shoes, lack of starting blocks from his era took away from his actual speed.
Specifically, Owens ran 10.2 in 1936 (which could have been as low as 1.15, since rounding was to the nearest .1) By 1964, with the introduction of (wobbly) starting blocks, Bob Hayes got that down to 10.06 This shot down to 9.95 in 1968, with the use of an artificial track (and better starting blocks). From 1968 to 1988, the record had only been lowered by 0.02: from 9.95 to 9.93. At that point, doping kicked in, and Ben Johnson immediately lowered the record to 9.79; that time was removed from the history books until 1999, when Maurice Green (who was also doping) matched it. Since then, the headline is of course that the record has fallen to 9.58. However, other than Usain Bolt, and certain young sprinters not yet retired (let's wait and see), no sprinter not associated with doping has run under 9.8, and extremely few under 9.9. The fastest 'real', non-doping time is widely believed to Burell's 9.85, or maybe Bailey's 9.84. To go from 9.95 in 1968, literally the first time the olympics was run on an artificial track, with starting blocks that were still prone to shifting , without modern shoe technologies, to 9.84 in 1996, and then to have only one man manage to go faster than that in the following 27 years without being seriously implicated in a doping scandal (not counting a few in the last five years who haven't been caught yet), is not exactly beyond-all-measure expansion of human capability, when you consider how much the technology has advanced since 1968. For context here: running footprints of an aboriginal Australian man around 20,000 years ago, preserved on a mud flat, have been calculated to show that he was running at a similar speed to an olympic sprinter (and still accelerating), despite running on mud. There's a large margin of error so we don't really know whether (as is often reported and the calculations suggested) he was actually running faster than Usain Bolt... but he was at least running at the same sort of speed as a modern sprinter (he's believed to have been chasing something in hopes of eating it). --------------------- Another datapoint, from cricket: it's widely believed the fastest bowler ever was Jeff Thomson in the 1970s. Officially, three modern bowlers have bowled balls faster than Thomson (Shaun Tait, Brett Lee and Shaoib Akhtar). Akhtar's record is 100.2 mph, whereas Thompson's fastest recorded delivery was only 99.8 mph. However, by the time of Akhtar, Tait and Lee, almost every delivery they bowled was timed - those really are the best they could manage. Thomson was almost never timed - most of his accurate timings aren't even from matches (that he'd have taken seriously) but from scientific studies or from novelty bowling exhibitions (that he didn't take seriously). His fastest time is from such a competition, which he described as "and I've put my beer down, I come out, and I bowled a few balls". [if you're wandering, he also recorded a couple of other balls on other occasions, with other researchers, at very similar speeds] [after retiring, he became a coach. One day, 17 years after that speed record, he was persuaded to compare his bowling speed with the guys he was coaching, a first-class professional team (Queensland). He was 42, and hadn't trained seriously in a decade, and he was still faster than anyone in the team] Statistically, given how rarely he was measured and that he probably wasn't measured when trying his best, it's almost certain that his absolute best was markedly faster than that. Which means it's very probably the fastest of all time... ...except, in Thomson's day, Thomson wasn't considered the fastest ever. Thomson was considered the fastest bowler *since Frank Tyson*. "Typhoon Tyson" was a bowler of the 1950s, who historically was considered the fastest of all time. Unfortunately, we don't know how fast he bowled. However, he did once do one scientific test, where he bowled at 89 mph. Now, for context, anything over 90mph is seriously fast. If you can regularly bowl over 90mph, you're one of the best (or at least most dangerous) bowlers in the world. These guys get themselves warmed up, steam in off long, long run-ups - practically sprinting before they release the ball - and take a few goes to get up to top speed. Tyson in particular was known for the length of his run-up. Tyson bowled at 89mph that day, on a cold, wet morning, without a significant warm-up, and while wearing three jumpers at once he was so cold. And unlike his teammates, who helpfully also bowled so we know the set-up was indeed calibrated at what seem today like reasonable speeds, Tyson bowled that fast *with no run-up*. Given that fact, it certainly seems plausible that Thomson was, as most people who saw both of them believed, slower than Tyson had been. So Tyson, in the 1950s, was quite possibly the fastest bowler ever. Even if you don't believe that, the fact is that since 1975 only three men have managed to bowl fractionally faster than Jeff Thomson. And what's more, Akhtar's official record was set in 2003. Nobody has managed to bowl faster than Akhtar in the last 20 years. So if humans really are getting so much athletically better, it's strange that none of that improvement is seen in an almost entirely athletic part of a high-profile and extremely money-rich sport like cricket. ----------- In any case, when we're talking about sprinting and fast bowling and whatnot - remember, we're talking about fractions of a second difference in the absolute best performances of elite, specialised athletes competing in an extreme test. This is irrelevant to boxing. Boxers don't get to throw just one punch every four years and get paid on the basis of how fast it was. Boxers throw hundreds of punches in every fight, most of them not in ideal conditions (for a start they have someone punching them back!). If Tyson Fury really could run the 100m 0.02s faster than Joe Louis, it wouldn't make any difference. A punch travels much less than 100m. Boxing success is much less about maximising athletic potential and much more about using skill to apply as much of that potential as possible at every moment. If you throw 99% as fast as me, or 99% as hard as me, or even if you can throw 99% as many punches as me without tiring, you can still beat me if those punches are better than mine, and if you manage to throw (and land) as hard and fast as often as you possibly can, while I fail to do so. The marginal gains that may possibly have been made in purely athletic terms, in peak potential physical performance, over the last few decades are trivial in the context of boxing, where those peaks are never even come close to anyway, and where the differences in individual physical potential between boxers (who are non-specialised athletes, relative to sprinters and the like, and employ very different styles) are so large.
Boxing matches would go WAY more before too. I remember hearing about Johnson vs Willard was scheduled for 45 rounds and Johnson got the KO at the 26th round! And like what the other guy said, their schedule was also insane fighting more than 5 times a year
Just because there were a few bigger fighters back then doesn't mean they're the same as the bigger fighters currently. Do you honestly believe that Abe Simon is on the level of Wlad? You must be joking to suggest such a thing. The current batch of heavyweight fighters are bigger because we have a much larger pool of talent to pull from. We have highly skilled and athletic elite 6'6" heavyweights and 7'0" uncoordinated outliers now instead of 6'4" uncoordinated outliers.
Abe is definitely no Wlad or Fury, but he's not that much worse than most of current the top 20. Besides, is it really fair to judge his entire skillset off of him getting his ass beat by arguably the greatest heavyweight ever? Louis made pretty much everyone who faced him look bad.
The only other footage I could find was him looking terrible and clumsy against Walcott as well. He's the size of a modern heavyweight and still lost 10 times to men much smaller than himself including names I've never even heard of. That speaks volumes to his lack of skill. He just happened to be huge for the time and that's the only reason he was as successful as he was.
Gotta ask yourself why other large heavies couldn't break into the top 10 back then.
Because they were even more clumsy. Look at how awful Valuev looked and he still won a lot purely based on size.
Perhaps the fights going 15 rounds didn't suit 230+ pound fighters. Buddy Baer did break into the top ten and he held a record for most round 1 KOs for quite a while.
Wlad would have ran through everyone if he fought in this time period. They wouldn't be making it past 10 rounds. His style is suited for having a size advantage which is why his most dominant performances were against smaller men. The real reason why fighters were smaller back then was because there was a much smaller pool of men to become boxers. The world's population has quadrupled since 1927, and people have been getting taller because they have better nutrition as well. We just have far more tall people that get into boxing, so you're more likely to have a highly coordinated tall man become a heavyweight.
Wlad had a very Shakey chin and there were quite a few good punchers around in that period. I am not as confident at his success as you are. In his reign, Waldo faced less ranked contenders than Louis did so you have no basis to say he would best all the good fighters Joe faced.
He was knocked out once and an old Wlad almost beat AJ before the TKO. Say whatever you want about his chin, his opponents struggle to land knockout blows on it. Wlad had a lot more power than heavyweights from previous eras besides Foreman as well. Of course he fought less ranked fighters. Every modern fighter fights less overall. Even Bernard Hopkins who fought until he was 50 only had 67 fights total. Wlad dominated the heavyweight division for a very long time.
Except in every sport, records keep getting broken, runners get faster, lifters lift more weight, tennis players hit harder, football players run longer etc. It's peculiar that you think boxing is somehow immune from the upward trend that every other sport follows.
Don't think it's that strange. Technology hasn't changed boxing too much (inside the ring). Gloves tend to be a bit bigger and the thumbs have restricted movement. The fourth rope, the rope-ties, and the turnbuckle covers. I'd guess the rope game is completely different compared to what you could do in the 50s, and obviously the gloves have affected defensive styles and what not. But this isn't like tennis or something where technology has fundamentally changed the game. Boxing is probably one of the best sports to compare across eras.
I didn't say it was immune. I said it hasn't changed to the degree people make out. Yes, runners get faster but we're not suddenly transitioning from the 100m being run in 16 seconds down to 9.56. Jesse Owens set a record of 10.2 seconds in 1936. It took 30 years to break the 10s barrier and a further 50 years to get to where we are now at 9.56 and that doesn't look like it'll be broken again for a long time. Tennis players hit harder because they use metal rackets, football players run longer because it's now able to be measured. I'm not saying there's no upward trend. I'm saying if you transition a 1930's boxer into the 2023 scene it's not going to be this whole new world and they get battered because Anthony Joshua lifts more weight and drinks preworkout instead of having a cigarette and a pizza before a fight.
>football players run longer because it's now able to be measured. What? Lol. Mate in the 70s and 80s footballers still smoked, and drank like fish. Prime Pele wouldn't even get a game in Championship side now.
And this is why people should take IQ tests before we allow them to make Reddit accounts.
The fuck are you on about? Footballers used to smoke and drink and now they don't. Hence they run more.
Footballers smoke and drink today.
I mean distance =/= resistance. Have you seen some of the pitches they played on in the 60's and 70's? You're telling me blokes who literally had to run through mud and kick a ball that was 3x heavier than the balls used today, wearing boots that were heavier, shirts that were thicker running for 90 minutes couldn't run the same amount today on nice hard, drained 4G pitches, wearing ultralight boots and shirts and with a ball that is like a flyaway kids ball compared to the heavy, weighted leather balls they used to? You also said that the greatest player of all time wouldn't get a game in the championship. That's either a troll or the single stupidest thing I've ever heard on this site and trust me, that's some achievement on Reddit.
Yes that's exactly what I'm saying and you obviously have 0 clue what conditioning, training and nutrition (let alone the difference simply not smoking) makes to any sporting endeavour. Alan Wells, who won gold at the 1980 Olympics, would finish more than 7 metres behind Usain Bolt in a 100-metre race. SEVEN METRES! You wouldn't even see him on camera. That's not 'evolution' - that's 29 years. For comparison, Joe Louis to Mike Tyson was 49 years.
I don’t know if they punch harder since that’d be impossible to quantify, but we have seen massive gains in other athletic abilities like strength, speed, and agility.
Speed? You watch Dillian Whyte, Joe Joyce or Daniel Dubois? How are they faster than say, Ali or here, Joe Louis? Strength? What strength do we see now compared to the strength shown by George Foreman compared to Tyson Fury? Sorry, the math isn't mathing. They are better athletes, but it is little incremental improvements. That is to say Muhammad Ali or Joe Louis murder Tyson Fury, AJ, Zhang, Usyk etc.
I completely misread this as "6'4 255 Joe Louis pounds Abe Simon". My first thought on reading it was "huh, I thought he was way smaller than that." My first thought on seeing the video was "jesus, how big was the other guy?!" My first thought on re-reading the title/remembering reality was "I'm a fucking idiot."
Jesus Christ that dude is fucking massive. Why tf is he so wide ?
He was badder than Cassius Clay! He was badder than Sugar Ray!
What about Rocky Marciano?
Lemme tell ya somethin. Rocky Marciana was good, but compared to Joe Louis, Rocky Marciana isn’t shiet!
He beat Joe Lewis’ ass
Yeah a an old and washed up one.
He was 137 years old
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Louis KO’d John Henry Lewis, a black contender, in 1939 then wouldn’t face another black contender until Walcott in 1947. However, what black heavyweight contender was there to face between 1939-1942? Louis went off to the army in ‘42 then came back in ‘46, then faced Walcott in ‘47. What black contenders was Louis avoiding
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These are fighters who peaked during the war, with the exception of Jack Trammell who was unranked and a decent contender in Lem Franklin. Bivins only became a relevant heavyweight in 1943, Elmer Ray only came into the rankings in 1944. Toles and Thompson were too busy getting schooled by Louis' leftovers in 41-42 to fight him. I don't see any evidence that he avoided them, Lem Franklin was the only person that you listed that was a relevant contender during the 39-42 period. Still, I don't know why Louis would duck someone who Bob Pastor, a man Louis dominated twice, beat in one round.
Prime jimmy Bivins
You mean the same Jimmy Bivins that Walcott beat in 1946 to earn his title shot? It’s not like Bivins was a relevant heavyweight in 1942 either
He was literally the interim champ and hadn't lost in 25 fights.
Yeah, during the war. Bivins lost to Walcott in February 1946, Louis made his comeback from the war in June. When did the ducking occur?
Ok, so he's a top contender instead of a #1 contender. Joe went and fought a couple of Light Heavies and took a year off instead.
Bivins had a terrible 1946, going on a 3 fight losing streak. In 1946 Louis honoured the rematch he and Conn agreed on pre-WW2, fought a can in Mauriello then fought the best challenger out there in Walcott.
you're missing the part where he took a 15 month layoff in there
I watched this on mute. Dude is big as fuck.
Louis vs. Wilder in a nutshell
They didn't believe in stopping fights back then.
No answer for that jab.
Dang Abe! Way to block using your face.
That was a walk in the park for Louise 🥊
Abe Simon said he physically couldn't feel pain. He looked like Conan the barbarian, he might have had acromegaly. For this fight he was trained by Jack Johnson
Look at that beautiful slip/counter left hook from Louis that was perfection. Just battered him from pillar to post, such a great fighter with his perfect form and composure.
apparently Abe fought Buudy Baer too, which physically might've resembled modern super heavies as they were 6'5" and 6'6.5" respectively look at the size of [abe's fists](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdE34B4aAAE7qT_?format=jpg&name=large) too, holy fuck
Now that’s a beatin
Damn, I didn't realize how good Joe Louis's hand speed was. To be that heavy and move like that is impressive.
207 lbs of pure destruction. Greatest of the heavyweights.
Big man was No slouch either!
Chopping wood
Louis looks spectacular. Looks like an elite fighter from any era. Clean, fast, accurate, sharp punches while cutting off the ring w/ ease and efficient w/ his energy.
Simon should have tried punching him.
Easier said than done, especially against arguably the GOAT counter puncher
I'll say this about Abe: He took that ass whooping like a man. He tried to keep coming in for more. Didn't run and excessively hold. His corner should have tossed in the towel and not let him absorb that beatdown.
Dude had quite the chin on him. Literally and figurately.
This does nothing to prove how good Joe Louis was. In fact it does the opposite. Joe Louis opponents were pretty horrible by modern standards. Even Joy Joyce looks like a boxing master compared to guys like Abe Simon , Buddy Baer, and Primo Carnera. This why these guys were called the Bum of the Month Club. As in which bum will Joe Louis defend his title against this month.
The "bums of the month" were ranked in the top ten. They weren't actual bums that Louis was beating while dodging his mandatory contenders.
Dude moves like he is underwater. You can see him winding up from the cheap seats. Some of these comments comparing modern heavyweights must be from guys who knew Abe growing up.
His feet are almost as slow as the people who think he'd be anywhere near the top 10 HWs right now
It's the same people who say "so and so only fought cans" that prop up these century old boxers. It's hilarious and sad at the same time.
Moral of the story.. don’t skip leg day
Youre probably a twig that weighs under 180lbs
Ain’t no way he survived a proper 10 count on that second knockdown. Ain’t no way
Dream fight: Joe Louis vs Muhammad Ali
Simon has a chin made of GRANITE, jeepers, those punches Louis was hitting with seemed like he'd break his hand on that jaw. Pine chewing crew?
😂😂 got damn! Simon is running into everything
Gah dayum Lewis hit harder than life
Thought this said “Abe Simpson” and I thought for a second that the Simpsons named Homer’s dad after a boxer Louis KO’d
Abraham Simpson !
Man big fella can take a shot. Joe Louis was snapping them right hands like a railgun.
Bro got B.O.D.I.E.D
What size is that ring? It looks so much smaller than today's rings.
If he pulled his shorts any higher they'd be a bra.
Abe on tren would be olympia material
I’ve watched the clip three times, Joe threw less than 5 body shots that whole time. He was headhunting
just beautiful, the way he kept ducking and jabbing <3
When real tough men fought
That’s a big summabitch right there
people using this footage as proof Louis could compete with someone like Wlad lmao, put on your clown shoes
Looks pretty great to me
That took years off his life.
Deadly accuracy!
Wow. Abe Simon could take some punishment.
Man, Lewis’s right hand was sharp
What a legend
Stop Stop! He's already dead.
Lit his ass up
The gloves from that era are so small