Marciano lost on a DQ in an amateur fight under the name 'Rocky Mack'. He himself admitted in his autobiography that he was losing badly, as he had run out of steam, and fouled the guy on purpose to get disqualified rather than lose.

Rocky never again made that mistake and he was probably the best conditioned heavyweight champion that there has been.

IN terms of the brawl in Swansea, he did knock someone out with a left hook on the Mumbles mile. Later that year, he also boxed a 3 round exhibition with a British Army soldier. The son of that soldier wrote into the 'Mail' newspaper recently to answer this very question.

He said that his dad was enormously proud that he was actually one of the few people to see the end of the third round against marciano (as he was later known, being plain Rocco Marchegiano at the time) He also said that he was shocked at the raw strength and power that a reasonably small guy was able to generate even before he had been training seriously.