Rocky Marciano Biography

[Mars_ax]

Who really cares about the rock paying his taxes, yes he was as tight as two coats of paint
but so what, he was a great fighter in his day , thats all that matters to me .

No doubt about Rocky being a great fighter, but most his "Bios" spend a lot of time recalling his personal side away from the ring, which I find interesting. I intended no disrespect to Marciano or claimed that he was a tax evader.

Agreed. I read a book about him and I think it was written or supported by his brother or close relative and he use to say that Rocky trained 3 months for a fight. That is awesome determination and conditioning. It probably led to his back problems too, as it sounds an intense training regime.

I believe I heard either Angelo Dundee or Lou Duva say that Marciano sometimes even trained up to 6 months for a fight. I don't doubt that a bit, Rocky had incredible stamina. It must have been hell fighting the dude, because he never quit coming after you with punch after hard punch. Archie Moore said it hurt even if Marciano hit you on the arms or shoulders.

[Master]

6 months in too intense but agree he must have been a relentless force in his day. That training regime must have led to him having a short championship career because he retired through a bad back?

[Mars_ax]

6 months in too intense but agree he must have been a relentless force in his day. That training regime must have led to him having a short championship career because he retired through a bad back?

I've heard/read different things as to why Marciano retired, along with back problems, I read that Rocky had taken a lot of trauma to his head. I also read somewhere that Marciano decided that he wasn't going to give his Manager Al Weill another big chunk of his purses. To be honest I don't know the real reason.

A bit of trivia: A few years after Rocky retired in Sept. 1955, then Heavyweight Champion Floyd Patterson, was KO'd by Ingemar Johansson. Marciano considered a comeback, but after only a month of training in three years, he decided against it and never seriously considered a comeback again, that was in 1959.

BTW, Marciano was only around 32 when he retired, and on the eve of his 46th birthday when he died in August 1969. He was still a young dude.

[Master]

Yes I heard about Rocky being very keen and trying to make a fight with Johannson, which implies Rocky did not fancy beating Patterson and that Ignamer was not that good. I think he said his back was not able to allow him to get into fighting condition when he started on the punch bag.

I also heard he retired because of management issues and/or his wife did not want him to carry on fighting (or was that Dempsey?).

[John Cameron]

The biography on Marciano is now available at: Amazon.com: redemption the life and death of rocky marciano...

[John Cameron]

Looking deep into Marciano's life has been a revelation, and delving into his fighting career both amateur and professional has shown a side of his story that has never been told before, most other biographies seem to paint a picture of someone who came into boxing relatively late in life and emerged from nowhere, well although his official amateur career was short by comparison to some we can still trace it back to 1943 when he was representing the forces whilst stationed in Wales.

The truth of his conditioning was that he never really allowed himself to get too out of shape between fights, sure he would be pictured with a slight bulge around the middle whilst lounging at Grossinger's in New York between fights but in reality he was forever training to some extent whether it was walking the 30 miles from Brockton to Providence just to see a promoter there, or fighting in exhibitions (even on his honeymoon his wife recalled that he skipped away to the Hotel's gym to train).

During his championship years he reckoned that he perhaps only spent three-months in total at home with his wife and daughter which was an initial factor in his retirement, although later the yearning to keep moving and the seeking of some form of excitement to replace his fighting years led him to spend more and more time away.

A lot has been made of Rocky's back, he injured it initially by falling from a cherry tree whilst a child, later he was involved in an auto accident which compounded the old injury, it turned out that he had a ruptured disc which required surgery but this was turned down by Rocky due to the chance of it ending his career (later his back almost cost him his life when it locked whilst swimming, the late great trainer Gil Clancey intervened and dragged him out of the water).

Rocky was known for his frugality too, the majority of stories I get from people concern his reluctance when it came to dipping into his own pockets, yet he was generous in other ways especially when it came to other fighters who had fallen on hard times by giving up lucrative speaking engagements and substituting the down at heels fighter in his place. Yet his attitudes to the Dollar and his means of hanging onto it were extreme to the degree (although to be fair Marciano's manager positively encouraged his fighters to be frugal), it is often pointed out that he would use metal slugs, or some other contraption to fiddle free calls out of pay phones, again however this was not unusual and was a trick he picked up from his early professional days. His trainer Charley Goldman stated in an interview way back in the mid-40's before he took charge of the future heavyweight king that he had to search his fighters and confiscate devices they used to make free calls home whilst they were staying with Goldman in a boarding house in New York. So yes Marciano was tight with money, but this was not especially unusual.

There are other factors too that have been explored in the project Redemption: The Life & Death of Rocky Marciano. - Home the first volume deals mainly with the years 1923 through 1949 and attempts to bring not just Marciano but also his opponents into greater clarity, they all deserve to be more than mere footnotes, heck some of them were damn good prospects before they ran into The Rock. There is a contention that a lot of Rocky's early foes were set ups, well sure there were one or two that fell into this category, but ironically this really only occurred when Rocky began to make a name for himself in order to protect his record, or at least ensure a slightly easier time until the big fights came his way. No one can say that Vingo, LaStarza, Louis, Layne, or even Matthews were set ups, neither were the likes of Buonivino, Lowry, et all. In fact in the first six to nine-months of his career he was used as the set up to promising fighters himself. So Rocky's rise was not a forgone conclusion, as his early promoter Sam Silverman commented, "He could have lost any of those early fights."

Thanks for the interest in this one, look forward to hearing more...