"Rocky, Archie and the Lost Magic" - superb article

When Rocky Marciano knocked out Archie Moore on September 21, 1955, it was a truly great fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, waged with heart and soul in the sacred and cavernous shrine of Yankee Stadium. A crowd of more than 60,000 came to pay homage.
Several years later and a good number of years before the “Fight of the Century” between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, some mournful writers were describing the battle between Rocky and Archie as the last great heavyweight championship fight.
As to whether the old magic and magnetism will return in equal measure, this writer doubts it. The heavyweight championship—once lauded as the richest prize in sport—might now be irreparably fractured and devalued. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to glue it back together again unless the will to start a revolution is there.
Whether we agree or disagree about old champions versus new champions, big heavyweights, small heavyweights or whether the planets have shifted for better or for worse, the hard fact remains that we haven’t seen a great fight for the undisputed heavyweight title for a depressingly long time. Not officially. Not beyond all doubt and dispute.
Lost is the enormous crackle and anticipation. Lost is the heavyweight championship of the world as a single and undisputed entity. Gone, for the most part, are the big stadiums and the big crowds. The electricity has been substituted by a pleasantly numbing gas that has lowered people’s expectations in tandem with the lowering of quality, depth and competitiveness.

Your ordinary Joe doesn’t require a degree in psychology to know when something is special and when it isn’t. Marciano versus Moore (Marciano versus anyone); Frazier versus Ali; Frazier versus Foreman; Foreman versus Ali. These were not just massive fights but massive events which transcended the sport of boxing and captivated the interest of the dilettantes, the neutrals, the detached and even those lofty members of the anti-boxing brigade who blithely justified their presence by explaining that one simply had to be seen at such bashes, darling.
Liked
Rocky Marciano and Archie Moore always liked each other. Archie talked up the fight with some unflattering appraisals of Rocky’s ability, but Marciano took it in good humor and neither man insulted the other’s mother. An avid businessman and arch disciple of the dollar, Rocky didn’t mind playing the role of amiable stooge. Moore even pulled Marciano’s leg at the weigh-in, bringing a smile to the champ’s face by whispering, “My, Rocky, you have such beautiful brown eyes!”
Neither time nor technology has diminished the quality of the glorious battle that ensued between the master scientist and the deceptively smart street slugger. Moore’s cleverness and cunning continue to shine like a beacon, while Marciano’s sheer relentlessness—picking up speed and momentum like an unstoppable rolling stone—still catches the breath.
Marciano’s powers of recuperation were on a par with those of Dempsey. Far from being knocked into a foggy wilderness, Rocky and Jack seemed to come alive after taking a big one. It was their equivalent of an electric shock or a slug of neat whiskey. Moore came to appreciate this when he followed up with another stiff right to Rocky’s jaw. The punch had little or no effect and only Archie knew how that made him feel. With most other opponents, the follow-up wouldn’t have even been necessary.
There was nothing apparently astounding about Marciano. Rocky wasn’t teaching Moore anything that Archie didn’t already know. The Old Mongoose knew the punches were coming and where they were coming from. He just couldn’t do anything about it. The chaos theory was mangling logical science. Marciano, in golfing terminology, took all the funky breaks out of a tricky putt by simply hitting it hard and straight. It was route one stuff, but it was oddly beautiful and admirable in its own way. Only he could do it. Legions of imitators in the years ahead would come to grief by trying to do likewise.
Marciano, with a perfect 49-0 professional record, had one final bomb to deliver. He delivered it with mischievous relish. Seven months after the Moore fight, in the spring of 1956, Rocky announced his retirement, much to the horror of manager Al Weill and Jim Norris. Marciano said he wanted to spend more time with his wife and daughter, but those closest to him knew the real reason. Rocky’s hatred of Weill had finally boiled over.
Norris, gulping at the loss of his biggest box office draw, invited Marciano down to Miami to talk about it. Rocky was very amiable during the somewhat surreal conversation, but also teasing and contradictory. When Norris offered him a million dollars to fight again, Marciano said that money wasn’t the issue. Yet he added that three million might be enough to tempt him back into the ring. Norris told him that kind of money was ridiculous. In that case, Marciano replied, there was no point in any further discussion on the subject.
Everett M. Skehan, in his book, Rocky Marciano, tells of the exchange between Rocky and brother Sonny on their way back from the Norris meeting. “You know something, Rock,” Sonny said, “you never intended to take his offer.”
Rocky laughed. “Are you kidding? Of course I didn’t. I just wanted to see him squirm. That dirty mother.”
It was one last win and perhaps Rocky believed that, theoretically at least, he had rounded off his record at 50-0. But there was nothing wholesome about it. Real life really wasn’t a Gene Kelly musical.
Mike Casey is a Boxing.com writer and Founder & Editor of ALL TIME BOXING at https://sites.google.com/site/alltimeboxingrankings. He is a freelance journalist and boxing historian and a member of the International Boxing Research Organization (IBRO).

Yep, fan of Mike Casey here. Dude's been covering Boxing for many, many years, and still has such a passion for it...

It is kind of stupid, how the 'smart guys' in boxing shot themselves in the foot. In an effort to make each fight a bigger deal, they made every fight a championship fight. Now it is at the point where nobody gives a fuck about the titles any more.
And what does it matter, when everybody gets to be champion, and everybody is 30-0 with 27 KOs. You either see through the BS or you believe it, and Lord knows that plenty do think that all these guys are 30-0 w/27 because they are great.

It's the dudes from poverty from places like Mexico and the Philippines, coming up unprotected, taking some hard early losses and persevering, developing by fighting all manners of styles before they get a title shot: that's the ones really learn how to fight!

These guys like broner, pavlik, devon alexander, coming up fighting decent opponents but protected from the ones they would've really learned something from, they find themselves in title fights and finally in deep against someone that can really fight, and they have no answers! It's too late then. In the past, the techniques and ways to fight different styles were learned before getting title fights. But titles don't mean much anymore and neither does unbeaten records. Unbeaten records mean a guy's just not fighting the best competition available to him. Long ago, a 24 year old fighter in his 1st title shot already had between 40 and 70 pro fights on their ledger, and still at the beginning of their athletic prime.

Pacquiao, Sergio Martinez, Bernard Hopkins came up the old way...