4 Black Fighters Who Shook Up Boxing

There have been a number of incredible boxers, and in them have been a number of great African-American boxers.  

This article is meant to show not only those who were the best in the ring, but who also made the greatest social changes within their time period and changed the world they lived in.

Lets take a look at who made the world a little bit different because of their own two hands.

Sugar Ray Robinson

The greatest of all time. Even Ali said so after people questioned him in an interview.

Robinson didn't really enact any social change, but he did get people to admit that he was the best boxer ever. Now it seems of little consequence, but to have a black person be the best at something only 50 years ago was scandalous.

"Sugar" was too sweet, though, and he made everyone acknowledge his greatness back then and even now.

To this day, there is still not a soul who has surpassed him.

Muhammad Ali

Shocking I know, but I believe that two men caused more change then Ali.

That isn't to say he didn't cause any change. He shook people up and defined a generation. He was one in a billion, and that might still be cutting it short. Ali was the entire package.

He pissed off white people who didn't want to see him act so confident. He pissed off the government by protesting the war. He even pissed off boxing fans by being so full of himself before his matches.

Yet without a doubt, he was someone who changed the face of his era, and is still remembered as an icon before being counted as a boxer.

Joe Louis

Joe Louis was the opposite of Ali. He didn't talk trash and he certainly didn't agitate society's expectations.

So why did he make the list?

One reason alone: June 22, 1938.

That was the night that Joe Louis stepped into Yankee Stadium in New York and knocked out Max Schmeling. After previously beating Louis before, Schmeling had become a hero to the German people and "proof" of the Aryan supremacy.

In other words, if Louis lost again, the Nazis would have won a moral victory.

That didn't happen, though, and it was one of the first times that the American public had cheered a black man to beat a white man in the ring.

Louis was the hero to the American people, and whether white or black, they supported him. Though he never did anything of this magnitude again, Joe Louis cracked open society just a crack and helped start a change.

Jack Johnson

The original.  

The first black champion who really got under the skin of the American public.  

The first man to flaunt his wealth and relationships with white women in front of the press.

He enraged sports fans so much he began having to make defenses in foreign places like France and Argentina. When he finally lost the title, he didn't lose his dignity, and when he got thrown in jail under false charges, he found time to make patents on tools he created.

In the turn of the century when the US was barely 50 years past abolishing slavery, Johnson barreled forward doing whatever he pleased and breaking taboos.

In this alone, Johnson set the stage for Louis, Ali, Robinson and the many more that followed.

Your Thoughts

Did you think I missed anybody? Maybe that I put someone out of order.

Let me know what you think.