Rocky Marciano: 49 - 0

KnightTemplar

KnightTemplar

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Rocky Marciano was born 100 years ago today.

On paper, he never should have been Champion, much less one of the greats. Marciano stood only 5'11" tall, and never wieghed more than 85 kilos in any fight. Which is lower than the current Cruiserweigtht limit. He also had one of the shortest wingspans of any Heavyweight Champ. The fact he didn't even start Boxing as a professional until he was 23 should have been the final nail in his coffin.

But Marciano was blessed with ungodly natural power, and his fanatical dedication to conditioning gave him incredible stamina. Marciano not only hit very hard, he hit constantly. His sheer work rate allowed him to overwhelm bigger or more skilled opponents. And Rocky could soak up punishment; he was only knocked down twice in his carrer, in spite of walking through his opponent's shots to land his own in almost every fight.

The Brockton Blockbuster remains the only undefeated Heavyweight Champion.

 
Great, great fighter. Emmanuel Steward once said that he wanted "one Rocky Marciano" someone that committed to the sport. And I don't think anyone ever threw more punches than Marciano, Ali maybe but no one else comes close. Regularly over a hundred punches a round, aimed at the head, the body, the arms, the elbows. could take a frightful beating and still win and would never give up until he was dead.
 
In my opinion one of the greatest p4p fighters ever in the true sense of the word. His standing as a heavyweight can be debated, but the fact that he beat Ezzard Charles and Archie Moore without significantly outweighing either, puts him up there with the all-time greats.

He had the rare type of bone crushing power which hurts you even through the guard, and his stamina and workrate were ridiculous. Just watch the 15th round against Charles, he threw about a hundred power punches in that round and looked ready to go 15 more.
 
TheGreatA said:
In my opinion one of the greatest p4p fighters ever in the true sense of the word. His standing as a heavyweight can be debated, but the fact that he beat Ezzard Charles and Archie Moore without significantly outweighing either, puts him up there with the all-time greats.

He had the rare type of bone crushing power which hurts you even through the guard, and his stamina and workrate were ridiculous. Just watch the 15th round against Charles, he threw about a hundred power punches in that round and looked ready to go 15 more.
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Size wise Rocky was probably fighting with a similar frame to modern super middleweights. It would have been pretty easy for him to make light heavyweight (175) but he fought at HW and did so with success.

Granted he fought in his era and HWs were much smaller then, but he was still the smaller guy in most of his fights.

67in reach is one of the shortest in HW history.

So I would agree, he is very much the embodiment of P4P.

(In a certain sense of the word)

The way that Rocky took cardio and turned it into a lethal weapon was really impressive, because that same elite cardio and well trained muscles that allowed him to deliver a massive output of crushing power punches also gave him the physicality to endure the power punches his opponents were throwing at him.

When you think about it, it is pretty crazy that he was known for "bone crushing power" and flatline knockouts and he achieved that as the smallest HW champ of the last 100 years. And when you look at the film of his KOs, they were absolutely BRUTAL. He left a few guys as lifeless corpses.

 
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KnightTemplar said:
On paper, he never should have been Champion, much less one of the greats.
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Quoting his coach Charley Goldman:
Rocky's short, stoop-shouldered and balding with two left feet.
A lot of people say that he doesn't look too good in there, but the guys on the canvas don't look too good either.
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jeff7b9 said:
Size wise Rocky was probably fighting with a similar frame to modern super middleweights. It would have been pretty easy for him to make light heavyweight (175) but he fought at HW and did so with success.

Granted he fought in his era and HWs were much smaller then, but he was still the smaller guy in most of his fights.

67in reach is one of the shortest in HW history.

So I would agree, he is very much the embodiment of P4P.

(In a certain sense of the word)

The way that Rocky took cardio and turned it into a lethal weapon was really impressive, because that same elite cardio and well trained muscles that allowed him to deliver a massive output of crushing power punches also gave him the physicality to endure the power punches his opponents were throwing at him.

When you think about it, it is pretty crazy that he was known for "bone crushing power" and flatline knockouts and he achieved that as the smallest HW champ of the last 100 years. And when you look at the film of his KOs, they were absolutely BRUTAL. He left a few guys as lifeless corpses.

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Good points. Rocky averaged around 80 full power punches per round, and as you pointed out, could throw up to 100 in some rounds. To put that in perspective, 60 punches per round is the average for a good Welterweight.

Marciano was fanatical regarding his conditioning. He ran every single day. When not training for a fight, he would run 5 - 6 miles per day. During a training camp - and Rocky would go into the Catskills Mountains for months to prepare - this would rise to 8 miles per day, and then 10 - 12 miles in the week before the fight.

Marciano also did a lot of hill sprints, running to the top of the hill at full speed, then jogging down the hill backwards. Calisthenics were done every day, hundreds of Press-Ups, Pull-Ups, Leg Raises etc. He spent hours hitting a 300lb Heavy Bag, that he'd had made specially.

This brutal training regime meant that Rocky was as dangerous in the 15th round as the 1st.
 
mozfonky said:
Great, great fighter. Emmanuel Steward once said that he wanted "one Rocky Marciano" someone that committed to the sport. And I don't think anyone ever threw more punches than Marciano, Ali maybe but no one else comes close. Regularly over a hundred punches a round, aimed at the head, the body, the arms, the elbows. could take a frightful beating and still win and would never give up until he was dead.
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One of Marciano's opponents, I can't remember which one, had a really good guard. Marciano found it difficult to reach the man's head, so he just concentrated his punches on the guy's arms until he couldn't hold them up anymore. Then he knocked him out.

After the fight, the guy was found to have broken blood vessels in both arms from the power of Marciano's shots.

Marciano rarely felt pain in his fights, in spite of being willing to walk through three or four of his opponent's shots to land one of his own. Ezzard Charles, himself a great boxer, split Marciano's nose open. The injury was so bad the ref told Rocky he would stop the fight after one more round. Marciano was barely even aware he'd be injured. And of course knocked Charles out in the next round.
 
KnightTemplar said:
One of Marciano's opponents, I can't remember which one, had a really good guard. Marciano found it difficult to reach the man's head, so he just concentrated his punches on the guy's arms until he couldn't hold them up anymore. Then he knocked him out.

After the fight, the guy was found to have broken blood vessels in both arms from the power of Marciano's shots.

Marciano rarely felt pain in his fights, in spite of being willing to walk through three or four of his opponent's shots to land one of his own. Ezzard Charles, himself a great boxer, split Marciano's nose open. The injury was so bad the ref told Rocky he would stop the fight after one more round. Marciano was barely even aware he'd be injured. And of course knocked Charles out in the next round.
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yup, and that's what made him great. People sometimes think it's too hard to expect a modern boxer to win a fight like that but those are the kinds of things we used to expect out of our champions. I can think of some superstars who've never done anything like that, a couple had plenty of chances to turn a bad night around and they didn't.

Incidentally, I bought a book about Muhammad a couple weeks ago, the author is kind of just an old bitter guy. But that's why I bought it, he seems to be eager to spill some beans on some old time fighters to sell his stuff. He says that Sugar Ray Robinson's wife caught him in bed with another man and had it in her unpublished bio, he says the mob left Ray alone because they thought he was insane (never heard that, always heard they respected his talent though). And he said that Rocky was a real horndog after boxing, (nothing new there) and that hie wife and daughter were broke and forced to work at burger king after he died. Hope that's not true but knowing how The Rock hid money all over the country and was cheap, I could see him dying with his stash hidden god knows where. Boxers seem to always get screwed, in fact, they say that was at least part of the reason Rocky retired, Al Weill was ripping him off.
 
randomg1t said:
lol at the ref counting all the way to the end, while the guy is faceplanted and shows no signs of life. brutal KO.
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the thing I noticed which is rarely mentioned is that they traded rights and rocky's knees sagged ever so slightly like he was hurt too but he came right out of it and managed to club Walcott one more time for good measure. The infamous "rubber face" pic of Walcott which was always said to be from that right was actually a punch from a couple rounds before but it's one of the more famous boxing pics just as the kayo is one of the all time great kayoes in the sport, right up there with Robinson-Fullmer or what have you.
 
mozfonky said:
yup, and that's what made him great. People sometimes think it's too hard to expect a modern boxer to win a fight like that but those are the kinds of things we used to expect out of our champions. I can think of some superstars who've never done anything like that, a couple had plenty of chances to turn a bad night around and they didn't.

Incidentally, I bought a book about Muhammad a couple weeks ago, the author is kind of just an old bitter guy. But that's why I bought it, he seems to be eager to spill some beans on some old time fighters to sell his stuff. He says that Sugar Ray Robinson's wife caught him in bed with another man and had it in her unpublished bio, he says the mob left Ray alone because they thought he was insane (never heard that, always heard they respected his talent though). And he said that Rocky was a real horndog after boxing, (nothing new there) and that hie wife and daughter were broke and forced to work at burger king after he died. Hope that's not true but knowing how The Rock hid money all over the country and was cheap, I could see him dying with his stash hidden god knows where. Boxers seem to always get screwed, in fact, they say that was at least part of the reason Rocky retired, Al Weill was ripping him off.
Click to expand...

Never heard either of those stories about Robinson. Rocky being cheap was well known, though. And yeah, a lot of fighters get screwed over. The old joke in boxing is, if you want to get rich, don't be a World Champion, be his Manager.
 
randomg1t said:
lol at the ref counting all the way to the end, while the guy is faceplanted and shows no signs of life. brutal KO.
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Yeah, I found it funny as well. There's an urban legend that when the first responders found Rocky's body in the plane crash, one of them quiped,

"Start counting to ten - Rocky will beat it!"
 
KnightTemplar said:
Never heard either of those stories about Robinson. Rocky being cheap was well known, though. And yeah, a lot of fighters get screwed over. The old joke in boxing is, if you want to get rich, don't be a World Champion, be his Manager.
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Well, there was the Bundini (Ali's sidekick, who apparently knew about it) account in Ali's autobiography where a pound for pound, unnamed, fighter wanted to sleep with him. It stopped just short of saying the fighter was gay and rationalized that the fighter just needed to absorb "strength" and love. Stories like that actually do have a tradition in boxing and they're fucking weird, Cus D'amato used to sleep in the same bed as Patterson. Floyd said many years later he thought Cus might have been making a pass at him once. It's weird but those stories have been around in the sport.
 
mozfonky said:
the thing I noticed which is rarely mentioned is that they traded rights and rocky's knees sagged ever so slightly like he was hurt too but he came right out of it and managed to club Walcott one more time for good measure. The infamous "rubber face" pic of Walcott which was always said to be from that right was actually a punch from a couple rounds before but it's one of the more famous boxing pics just as the kayo is one of the all time great kayoes in the sport, right up there with Robinson-Fullmer or what have you.
Click to expand...

Walcott was one of only two fighters to put Rocky down. Marciano said that he was caught with a beautiful left hook. He looked up at Walcott and thought,

"It's the first round, and that old man's just knocked me on my ass - this is gonna be one Hell of a fight!"
 
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