Joe Louis

From New World Encyclopedia

Joe Louis
200px
Statistics
Real name Joseph Louis Barrow
Nickname The Brown Bomber
Rated at Heavyweight
Nationality American
Birth date May 13, 1914
Birth place LaFayette, Alabama
Death date April 12, 1981 (Aged 66)
Stance Orthodox
Boxing record
Total fights 72
Wins 69
Wins by KO 55
Losses 3
Draws 0
No contests 0

Joseph Louis Barrow (May 13, 1914 – April 13, 1981), better known in the boxing world as Joe Louis and nicknamed The Brown Bomber, was a native of LaFayette, Alabama and is regarded as one of the greatest heavyweight boxing champions of all time. He held the heavyweight title for over 11 years and made a record 25 successful heavyweight title defenses to bring the number of heavyweight title fights to 26, a record that currently still stands. At a turbulent time in history, just before World War II, he became a popular and national American hero, along with Jesse Owens, for both black and white America.

In 2003, Ring Magazine rated Joe Louis No. 1 on the list of 100 greatest punchers of all time. In 2005, Louis was named the greatest heavyweight of all time by the International Boxing Research Organization.[1]

Early life and career

Joe Louis Barrow was born in Lafayette, Alabama. The seventh of eight children, Barrow was the grandson of slaves and one quarter Cherokee. As a small child he moved to Michigan. He was the son of Barry Barrow, a sharecropper, and Billy Reese, a homemaker. When Barrow was only two years old, his father was committed to an asylum, where he would die just two years later. His mother got married a second time to a man named Pat Brooks. Brooks was a widower with eight children of his own. When Joe was seven, the family moved to Detroit. In his teens he worked for an ice company and would later credit lifting the heavy blocks of ice with helping build his arm and upper body strength. It was during this time that he first became interested in boxing.

He used money given to him by his mother for violin lessons to pay for a locker at a local recreation center. His mother was not pleased but encouraged him to do his best.

Uninterested in school, a friend of Barrow took him to Brewster's East Side Gymnasium, first establishing his love for the sport of boxing. In order to keep his mother from finding out, Barrow changed his name to Joe Louis, but to no avail, as his mother would later find out.

Louis had a successful and lucrative amateur career which he ended with winning Michigan's Golden Gloves title. He turned professional in 1934, making his debut on July 4 of that year, knocking out Jack Kracken in the first round at Chicago, Illinois. He won 12 fights that year, all in Chicago, 10 by knockout. Among his opponents in 1934 were Art Sykes and Stanley Poreda.

Barrow won 50 of 54 amateur bouts and gained the attention of John Roxborough, one of the local gambling kingpins. Roxborough and Julian Black, a speakeasy owner who also ran numbers, convinced Louis to turn pro in 1934, and thus became his managers.

Originally, Joe's trainer, Jack Blackburn, wanted him to only fight other African-American boxers. However, Joe decided to ignore this request and would later fight white boxers as well.

Ascendance

Louis vs. Schmeling, 1936

In 1935, Louis fought 13 times, creating an extraordinary sensation. He knocked out his first world champion, former world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera, in six rounds. Louis then knocked out the iron-chinned former heavyweight champion Max Baer in four rounds. Before losing to Louis, Baer had been knocked down only once, by Frankie Campbell. Louis also knocked out Paolino Uzcudun, who had never been knocked down or out before Louis KO'd him.

In his next fight, he was matched with former world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling. Although not considered a threat, the German had studied Louis' style intently, and believed he had found a weakness. By exploiting Louis' habit of dropping his left low after a jab, Schmeling handed Louis his first loss by knocking him out in round 12 in New York.

Louis, despite the loss, was awarded a title shot by champion James J. Braddock after negotiations with Madison Square Gardens number one contender,Schmeling, broke down. Braddock, looking to retire on a large payoff, was promised a more lucrative fight with the Brown Bomber after Louis bounced back up the pecking order by knocking out former champion Jack Sharkey.

Schmeling (and the Nazi government) were furious, and insisted that a win over highly ranked Sharkey did not reverse the Louis defeat by Schmeling, which was considered a title eliminator. The matter was settled in court, and Madison Square Garden and Schmeling lost. The fight was staged in Chicago, and Braddocks heavyweight championship would be up for grabs. Despite a knock down in round 1, Louis defeated the plucky 'Cinderella Man' by KO in round 8. On June 22, 1937, Joe Louis became heavyweight champion of the world.

One year to the day that Louis was defeated by Schmeling, he received another opportunity. The match is considered by many to be one of the more meaningful fights in history not because of the ramifications as related to boxing, but rather the fact that it represented the fight against the Nazi party.

Leading up to the fight, there were reports of messages that Hitler sent to Schmeling warning him that he was fighting not only for the title, but for the Third Reich as well. Hitler would not be happy, however, as Louis knocked down Schmeling three times in front of 70,000 people at Yankee Stadium before knocking him out in only a little over two minutes, thus solidifying his legendary status.

During World War II

WWII poster featuring Louis

From December 1940 to March 1942, when his career was interrupted by World War II, Louis defended his title ten times, a frequency unmatched by any heavyweight champion since the end of the bareknuckle era. His nearly-monthly fights against every challenger, and his convincing wins, earned his opponents the unfair group nickname "Bum of the Month."

In all, Louis made 25 defenses of his heavyweight title from 1937 to 1949. He was a world champion for 11 years and 10 months. Louis set records for any division in number of defenses and longevity as world champion non stop, and both records still stand. His most remarkable record is that he knocked out 23 opponents in 27 title fights.

Other notable title defenses before Louis enlisted were:

  • His fight versus world Light Heavyweight champion John Henry Lewis, knocked out in the first.
  • His fight with Two Ton Tony Galento, who knocked Louis down in the third round with a left hook. Giving Galento a terrible beating, Louis knocked Galento out in the fourth round.
  • His two fights with Chilean Arturo Godoy. In their first bout Louis won by a decision, and then Louis won the rematch by a knockout in the eighth round.
  • His fight with world Light Heavyweight champion Billy Conn, the first of which is remembered as one of the greatest fights in heavyweight history. Conn, smaller than Louis, said that he planned to "hit and run," prompting Louis's famous response, "He can run, but he can't hide." After 12 rounds, Conn was ahead on points, only to be knocked out by Louis in the 13th round. In the rematch, held when the two fighters returned from World War Two, Louis won by a knockout in the eighth round.

Louis retired after two fights with Jersey Joe Walcott. In the first fight, Walcott scored two knockdowns over Louis but lost a disputed decision. In the second fight, Walcott again knocked Louis down, but the aging Louis came on to knock out Walcott in the 11th round. Obviously no longer the fighter he once had been, Louis wisely retired.

Louis served in the Army from 1942 to 1945 and spent that period traveling around Europe visiting with the troops and boxing in exhibitions - and the money awarded to him during the fights he would sign over to the U.S. government to show more of his support and belief in the U.S. participation in the war. During this time, he became a national spokesman for the Army. After he came back to keep defending his title in 1946, Louis looked somewhat slower in his fights, and his best years were obviously behind him. On March 1, 1949 Louis announced his retirement from boxing.

1950s

In 1950, he was harassed by the I.R.S. (it is reported the IRS took away not only the $600 his mother left to him after her death, but also his children's trust funds), he announced a comeback and he lost a 15 round unanimous decision to world champion Ezzard Charles, who had won the vacant title after Louis retired. Overweight and much slower than he had been in his prime, Louis kept boxing, but at a level far below that of his championship days. In 1951, Louis lost by a knockout in eight rounds to the future world Heavyweight Champion, Rocky Marciano. He retired with a record of 69 wins and 3 losses, with an amazing 55 of those wins coming by knockout.

Louis became a professional wrestler in 1956. Because of injuries suffered during a match, Louis retired in 1957.

Retirement and later life

Joe Louis' headstone in Arlington National Cemetery.

A few years after his retirement, a movie about his life, The Joe Louis Story, was filmed in Hollywood. The role of Joe Louis was played by fighter Coley Wallace. Louis remained a popular celebrity in his twilight years. Because of Louis's increasing poverty due to heavy taxes, old army buddy Ash Resnick gave him a job welcoming tourists to the Caesar's Palace hotel in Las Vegas, where Ash was an executive, just so Louis could make ends meet.

Louis's health began to deteriorate, and he had two operations, paid for by long-time friend Frank Sinatra. Sinatra flew Louis to Houston to have Michael DeBakey perform surgery. Later Louis suffered a stroke, and a year later his heart finally failed him.

Joe Louis died of a heart attack in 1981. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia with full military honors. Reportedly his funeral was paid for by former competitor Max Schmeling, but recent biographies (of both Schmeling and Louis) deny this fact. His life and his achievements prompted famed New York sportswriter Jimmy Cannon to write "Joe Louis is a credit to his race - the human race."

File:Fight never ends.jpg
Poster from the movie "The Fight Never Ends"

Filmography

  • The Phynx, 1970
  • The Fight Never Ends, 1949
  • Johnny at the Fair, 1947
  • Joe Palooka, Champ, 1946
  • This Is the Army, 1943
  • Spirit of Youth, 1938
  • Max Schmeling siegt über Joe Louis, 1936


Commemoration

Louis was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1982

Louis was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch, in 1982. Congress stated that he "did so much to bolster the spirit of the American people during one of the most crucial times in American history and which have endured throughout the years as a symbol of strength for the nation." He has a sports complex named after him in Detroit, the Joe Louis Arena, where the Detroit Red Wings play their NHL games. A memorial to Louis was dedicated in Detroit (at Jefferson Avenue & Woodward) on October 16, 1986. The sculpture, commissioned by Time, Inc. and executed by Robert Graham, is a 24-foot long arm with a fisted hand suspended by a 24-foot high pyramidal framework. It represents the power of his punch both inside and outside the ring. Joe Louis is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

A street near Madison Square garden is named after Joe Louis.

Louis donated over 100 thousand dollars to charity. Today that is equivalent to one million dollars. When Louis joined the army interest on the taxes increased. Louis lived his whole life paying back his debts to the government until his death.

Trivia

  • During a 1944 promotional tour of Liverpool, England, Louis (as a publicity stunt) actually signed for Liverpool Football Club as a player. The official club records still record him as being "on the books" and is therefore officially classed as having been a Liverpool player.
  • Louis coined two of boxing's most famous quotes: "He can run, but he can't hide" and, "Everyone has a plan until they've been hit."
  • Joe Louis was challenged to but did not accept a vale tudo match against Helio Gracie in 1950. [1]
  • On June 17, 1951 he fought Lee Savold in what was the first professional prizefight carried to theaters on closed circuit TV. He knocked out Savold in 2 minutes 29 seconds of the sixth round.
  • Louis was the star of the 1938 motion picture, "Spirit of Youth." The movie was a cautionary morality fable featuring Louis as an up-and-coming boxer named Joe Thomas. This same motion picture received a public film showing at the September 2006 Mid atlantic nostalgia convention in Aberdeen, Maryland.

See also

  • List of heavyweight boxing champions
  • List of male boxers
  • List of notable boxing rivalries

References and Notes

  1. International Boxing Research Organization (March, 2005). All Time Rankings. Retrieved October 14, 2006.

2.Joe Louis: My Life (Dark Tower Series) (Paperback) by Joe Louis (Author), Edna Rust (Author), Art Rust (Author)

External links

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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Preceded by:
James J. Braddock
Heavyweight boxing champion
1937–1949
Succeeded by:
Ezzard Charles
Preceded by:
Dizzy Dean
Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year
1935
Succeeded by:
Jesse Owens


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