Why was rocky marciano so good

Ezzard Charles was another. Charles, one of the truly underrated fighters of this time also never got his breaks until late in his career and was actually considered to be passed his best and above his natural weight before he even won the title in It was by the time Marciano got to him.

Rocky Marciano was an Italian American, a hero amongst his people and his most die hard fans insist on ranking him among the very best of all time, however I look at it though, I just cannot conjure with that theory. His grit, heart, determination and undeniably big punch make up for his lack of skills and technique, and for that I class him as a good fighter and an outstanding champion.

But I cannot in good conscience rank him among the top 10 heavies of all time. And although he was certainly a huge puncher, fighters like Liston, Foreman and Tyson had a more lethal punch. Even a fighter such as Jack Dempsey, who fought in a very similar style to Marciano, coming forward aggressively throwing bombs from start to finish, had much better technique.

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All Rights Reserved. He earned it the hard way and was determined to keep it'. I'm talking big money. He didn't even associate that with money. To him a check was just a piece of paper. He believed in green stuff.

But while there were million-dollar siren calls from promoters, Marciano resisted the temptations to slip the gloves back on. His record, with 43 knockouts, remained pristine and unimpeachable. Still, he missed the spotlight and loved risk, which is why the idea of a 'fight' with Ali might have appealed — especially when he knew the dice were loaded. Jab and move wasn't something Marciano ever practised.

He was as subtle as a sledgehammer. He never tried to outguess you. He just kept trying to knock your brains out. It was the Marciano way. His left hook was almost as crushing, and one sparring partner described getting hit by a single Marciano blow as equivalent to four from Joe Louis, no mean puncher himself.

The Pulitzer Prize winning writer Red Smith called Marciano "the toughest, strongest, most completely dedicated fighter who ever wore gloves," adding "fear wasn't in his vocabulary and pain had no meaning. He had as much determination as any fighter ever. There was no quit in him at all.

He knew what his limitations were and he made up for them by working as hard as any fighter who ever lived. Out of the thousand or so days that he was champion, I'll bet he was in the gym and working hard for all but of them.

If there was a problem in training camp, it was that they had trouble getting sparring partners because Marciano hit them so hard. He wouldn't even take a phone call during the 10 days before a fight. That's how focused his mind was. Time has not been kind to Marciano's reputation. He is regarded as a second-tier champion. Too small, too crude, too hittable. In his time, though, he was accepted as one of the greats. It helped that he also embodied the post-war American dream: if an undersized son of a poor Italian-American shoemaker could make it, anyone could.

I'm rather staggered by the size propositions. Marciano about 5ft 11, Cassius Clay about 6ft 3, perhaps a little bit more. Marciano is the shortest man Cassius has fought and Marciano is looking at the tallest man he has fought …".

In July , the month that Neil Armstrong took one giant leap for mankind and technology, Marciano and Ali stepped into a gym with blacked-out walls on the north side of Miami and boxed 70 one-minute rounds. They, too, were supposedly guided by computers; marionettes punching and parrying to the whims of the NCR Like the Fantasy Heavyweight Tournament two years' earlier, the outcome of the Marciano v Ali contest would apparently be based on data collected from boxing experts, who — according to Sports Illustrated — had filled in sheets that took "58 rating 'factors,' ranging from the obvious speed, susceptibility to cuts, ability to throw a left to the sublime hardness of punch, killer instinct, courage.

The magazine made the process sound rigorous and illuminating. They knew how often and where each fighter cut his opponents, where he was cut most often himself, how many punches and what kind he usually threw in a round, what pattern, pace and rhythm he preferred, what blows hurt him most, how many fouls he had committed.

It was largely spin. As Ali later admitted in his autobiography, "there was no computer telling us what to do".

Instead they laboured around the ring, avoiding head punches and mostly tapping at each other's stomachs. A duvet of flab embraced Ali's mid-section, and his jabs contained the spite of a well-fed labrador. Marciano, who had lost 45lbs in case his opponent took liberties, was more serious. But a new toupee, which he believed made him look well-groomed and youthful, further turned this curiosity towards cartoon: he looks like an undersized hoodlum from Dick Tracy.

At one point the pair were exchanging blows when Ali's jab flicked the back of Marciano's head and scooped up his toupee. I remember when he got the first one. It was terrible. It looked like a dead cat. I said, 'Rocky, watch out. The thing might get up and run away. The theatre is further enhanced by knowing that the 'blood' from Marciano's cuts to his nose and forehead, which he develops in the fight, is ketchup.

Wrote Ali: "My glove never hit his face, his glove never hit mine … the promoter asks me if I can think of some ending, and I plan the one that is actually used: I show Rocky how to hit me and I fall as though it's real.

We have seven different endings — some with me winning, some with Rocky winning. Some segments we fake so good they are left untouched by the editors. Ali has a point with the knockout sequences, which are realistic enough. And there are moments where a fight hints at breaking out, especially in the 12th where Ali connects with a series of playful flicks that get a snorting Marciano swinging widely.

Mostly, though, the action was sloppy and forgettable. Ali followed with a shot to the head. They were hungry and tough resourceful fighters who learnt their craft by fighting regularly. Joe Louis was 37, diminished yes, but still quite formidable and entered the contest on the back of eight straight wins. Yet nobody had battered Louis into submission the way Marciano did. Ezzard Charles was pure class and a threat. Walcott and Archie Moore were skilful big punching champions who could look after themselves.

That gives you an idea of how tough Marciano was and how hard he hit. His critics ask how would Marciano have handled modern era super-sized heavyweights? Peter Marciano refutes this argument. It was guys who were a little smaller, a little quicker, who threw punches in combinations that gave Rocky a more difficult time. Forget size, Rocky was tremendously strong.

His strength was, and I hate to say the word, but it was almost superhuman. Big guys were made for him. The bigger they were, the easier it was for Rocky to tire them out and then to knock them out. Rocky never threw in the towel. He had the physical and mental attributes of a great fighter: Tremendous heart; tremendous durability; knockout power and the belief that he could not be defeated.

He was not as easy to hit as he appeared. His style was deceptive. He did not throw one punch at a time. His volume of punches per round is among the highest of any heavyweight champion. They were thrown in a continuous pattern. No heavyweight could keep up with this incessant pressure and was either knocked down or worn out by his almost superhuman physical specimen. A fighter who has the one punch knockout power to end a fight at any time is very very dangerous.

Walcott and Charles were not washed up when they fought him. They both fought the first fight brilliantly. These and the fight with [Archie] Moore showed why Rocky was great by defeating much better boxers. What he lacked in speed, he more than made up for by the volume of punches he threw. When he was caught with a good punch, his world class chin held up admirably.