Was Muhammad Ali Really The Greatest Boxing Champion Ever?

Who knows. In the first place, it's difficult, or impossible, to compare athletes who lived in different eras. For instance, in Joe Louis's day the average weight of a heavy weight boxer was around 195 pounds, today it's closer to 235. Thus, any comparison between Muhammad Ali and any previous champion is meaningless. Pound for pound though, I believe Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest price fighter to ever set foot in a boxing ring. In any case, I want to address this issue from a slightly different angle and ask the question, "who was the most significant boxer ever?" Certainly it was not an earlier version of Donald Trump, the braggadocios Muhammad Ali who was behind another door when the humility genes were being passed out. No, the award for most significant boxer ever would have to go to the legionary Joe Louis. The stage was set for Louis by Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics. Owens, a black man, ran away with the 1936 Olympics winning four gold medals and he did it on German soil. More significantly, Owens's feat was the first nail in Adolph Hitler's coffin since it brought into question Hitler's claim of Aryan superiority in all things, big and small. Joe Luis drove the second, and final, nail in Hitler's intellectually deficient coffin when he knocked out the German heavyweight champion Max Schmeling in 124 seconds of the first round at Yankee Stadium on June 22, 1938. Because of its political implications this, arguably, was the most important sporting event of all time.It took a few more years for the west to eliminate Hitler and his axis partners but the bloom was definitely off the Aryan rose when Joe Louis made mincemeat out Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium on that summer evening in 1938. As for Muhammad Ali, great men do not wave their hands and gloat over their fallen opponents, only real low lives behave in this fashion.