Printable View
Marciano fought 8 years and fought everyone. Floyd has fought for 19 years and has been cherry picking for 9 of those or ever since he split with Top Rank.Quote:
Originally Posted by Beanflicker
I'm not knocking Floyd for tiptoeing through a minefield of boxers but it does piss me off when you guys want to hammer Marciano for fighting whoever was placed in front of him for the best money.
Rocco Marcheggiano would blAST THEM ALL AWAY......HE COULD FIGHT 25 ROUNDS----Lennox was huffing and puiffing after 7.
Balderdash and poppycock. I remember men being completely f***ed in their 70's and 80's. Life expectancy was nowhere near what it is today and at 40 people thought you were going over the hill. Rose tinted spectacles.Quote:
Originally Posted by FreedomBack in those days, nutrition was actually better than today.Quote:
Originally Posted by Master
People ate healthy, balanced home-cooked meals with vegetables and fresh meat. I remember when I was a child, many men in their 70s and even 80s were still very physically healthy and active.
Nowadays, people eat too much sugary junk food, and lots of high-sodium fast food.
If we're talking about the quality of fighters Floyd beat compared to what Rocky beat, it's not even a discussion. Floyd's resume DWARFS Marciano's.Quote:
Originally Posted by beenKOed
I love this fairy tale that gets told about guys from the old days fighting nothing but the best guys, never picking their fights, ect. What a load of shit. Rocky fought in an era where boxing was controlled by the mob, and if you weren't connected then good luck getting a shot. And if you were a black fighter without the proper connections, good luck. There was no internet, no great access to information. Unless you were an insider, you knew only about the guys that were pushed by the papers and TV. Read Lamotta's book, he talks all about it. He wasn't playing ball with the mob so he had to fight on the smokers in New York and Detroit, which were filled with great black fighters who weren't connected. A lot of whom, according to Jake, were ducked by the champs and top contenders, and would have chased a lot of them out of the ring.
Do we really believe that Don Cockell was the best HW contender when Rocky fought him? That there wasn't some young black kid, some athletic freak, he could have fought instead? I mean how naive are we?
That quite possibly may be the most ignorant thing I've ever read here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Freedom
We're not talking about what the average man eats, we're talking about high-level athletes.
If you think high level athletes of 70 years ago had more nutritional advantages than athletes of today, you're retarded.
People on here are so binary, and we don't live in a binary world. It seems that either Marciano is one of the greatest fighters who ever lived and who could compete with anybody, or he was a small unskilled white guy fighting hand picked nobodies. As usual, the truth will be somewhere between those black and white terms.
It's hard to say who could have defeated somebody who was never beaten! It also seems to me that Marciano didn't duck anybody (and Al Weil made all his fights anyway, Rocky would have had little say in who he fought or ducked). He beat everyone in his era and the 1950s was a tough competitive time to be a fighter. He fought for three minutes of every round for 15 rounds, was certainly one of the fittest guys who ever stepped into a ring and his power and chin were tested many times ...lol he came through every test.
Yes, he was a small heavyweight, but he was a small heavyweight in the 1950s too and that didn't seem to matter too much. Yes, he was a white Italian at a time of mob influence, but nothing has ever been proven and nobody has ever come out with a compelling argument to convince me that people took dives against him. If you're going to take a dive, you wouldn't fight like Walcott, Charles and Louis did. Yes, he got cut easily and might have been stopped by today's referees, but he wasn't stopped.
Comparing old time fighters to today's fighters is pointless.mthe sport has changed,mthe rules have changed, the gloves have changed, nutrition has changed, human beings size has changed.
I think Marciano is one of boxing great great champions. Others may disagree but one thing is certain ..... 60 years after he last fought and decades after his death, the ghost of Rocky Marciano continues to haunt every heavyweight who came after him.
I don't think it's hard at all. He had a lot of tough fights, lost a lot of rounds, and arguably lost the first fight with Roland.Quote:
Originally Posted by X
I think he was a great champ and true boxing royalty, but I can't stand when people anoint him the best because he was never beaten, and when they assume he fought all the best competition he could have.
And when I say that, I'm not insinuating Rocky was scared of anyone or ducked anyone personally, but all these guys have handlers and those handlers were paid good money for a reason.
No one really unbeatable it just seems that either com around when the talent is not there or they stay around to long. Rocky only fought top comp for a few years and they were old and sick and then his back went out and he was done very young he lucked out and should be thankful.