Wladimir Klitschko vs. Rocky Marciano

[dyna]

Originally Posted by edward morbius

So you are criticizing Moore for his performance against Burley?

Well, Burley is a Hall-of-Famer who many feel was so good Robinson avoided him. Moore was 2 inches taller and six pounds heavier for this fight and went the distance.

On the other hand, Vitali Klitschko, despite being six inches taller and 34 lbs heavier, was stopped by the puffed up lightheavy Chris Byrd. Byrd was dropped three times and stopped at lightheavy by Shaun George.

Size seems to be your only criteria. It is not mine when going decades back and forth through history.

Moore, by the way, scored more ko's than anyone in boxing history. An odd pick to use to criticize a man's chin, especially when they were about the same size.

Between 2 good guys whose other attributes are equal the bigger man will win.
With other attributes I mean things like speed, footwork, skill etc.

Also Vitali is overrated, and Wlad isn't Vitali.

[edward morbius]

Originally Posted by dyna

Between 2 good guys whose other attributes are equal the bigger man will win.
With other attributes I mean things like speed, footwork, skill etc.

Also Vitali is overrated, and Wlad isn't Vitali.

You left off the other half of what I said. I don't see size as relevant when you are talking about fighters who were never even alive at the same time.

You only live in your own world in your own time. Marciano was big enough to beat anyone in the world he lived in w/o losing. Neither Wlad nor Vitali can say as much,

despite being big while Marciano was small even for his own era.

[edward morbius]

Originally Posted by Seamus

Yes, there is no agreement one this point. Here is another article...

[URL]***********.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/04/usa[/URL]

or read the precis to this work.

[URL]********onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2007.00458.x/abstract[/URL]

It seems the US has stagnated at best in growth and fallen behind in regards to European countries. Perhaps we should wonder how tall Marciano would have been were he born in the Netherlands? How tall would Wlad have been were he born in the Netherlands.

I think at this point we begin to realize how silly this question is. The Marciano who reigned was stout sub-6 footer with T-Rex like arms and the reach of a decent lightweight. I boldly propose he does not do well against modern super heavyweight, especially those very skilled, and perhaps even those of lesser skill.

Of the two issues, the more interesting

1---Americans heights are declining--neither of these articles prove that or even address it. Komlos does not list the heights of various European countries except the Netherlands. But the Dutch are tall compared to the Brits, French, Italians, Germans, or even Swedes. His conclusion about health care seems flawed and tendentious. Japanese-American women live longer than Japanese-Japanese women and in fact at a life-expectency of over 87 years are the longest lived group of such size in the world. How is this possible if the American health care system is so bad. And sure the Dutch are taller than Americans, but they are taller than the French and Germans also and the Germans at least seem a better genetic comparision than America with its huge Latin and Asian populations.

If the relative gap between Americans and the Brits, French, etc was greater in the 18th and 19th centuries, the narrowing of this gap is not because Americans are shrinking but because these countries are getting taller, but Americans are still on the average taller.

**that said, I am certain bad habits such as smoking or eating junk food does hurt growth.

***bottom line--according to the CDC, the height of the average American male has increased from 5' 8" to a bit over 5' 9.5" since 1960. This does seem like a good source.

2--"I boldly propose that he does not do well against modern super heavyweights"

Irrelevant as his world didn't include anything "modern" including modern super-heavyweights. A modern super-heavyweight should be judged on how he competes against other modern superheavyweights, not flipping back into a vanished world of decades ago.

**The best analogy I can think of is criticizing an elephant for being too small to survive in the world of dinosaurs. But why must it? An adult elephant is so big in its world that it has no serious predators,

(other than men with guns)

[edward morbius]

Originally Posted by Synthetic Decay

His record at lightheavyweight is great. Unfortunately Wlad is a superheavyweight and Rocky has no tools to close distance or anything at all on his record to indicate how he would fare against a true heavyweight. It is completely speculative and pretty illogical given his hardships and stylistic limitations to think that he would manage much of anything against Wlad.

"His record at lightheavyweight is great"

He was the champion of an unlimited class and outweighed more often than not.

"Wlad is a superheavyweight"

Yeah.

**I don't know what nationality you are, but in American gridiron football the players have gotten so much bigger that almost any team could defeat the best of decades ago. But what is the point? Does a losing team in 2012 become great, good, or even satisfactory, because it could, or at least we judge that it could, defeat a championship team of decades ago.

I just don't find that an acceptable criteria.

**I know someone who is a relative of John Madden. I asked to him to ask Madden if Madden thought a top COLLEGE team today would defeat the Lombardi Packers or the seventies Steelers.

Madden's answer was most likely.

[ChrisPontius]

I don't really see the relevance of comparing Marciano to the likes of Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko. Yes, it does concern the weight division without limit, but these are different times we're comparing. Today's athletes are built on better nutrition and healthcare than those who grew up in the 30's. Not to mention all of today's athletes are on a truckload of steroids.

Can I prove that they all are on steroids? No. But let's look at the facts:

• The 80's were full of doping and it wasn't even a secret. Look at the 100m sprint. Ben Johnson was taking pretty much any PED (except HGH which wasn't around yet) and ran an almost impossible 9.83 s. After that, they started testing and the sport was "cleand up". Yet, within 4 years Johnson's superhuman steroid record is pretty much equaled by Carl Lewis, Bailey and Burrel. A few years later, Johnson's record is smashed to pieces and right now we're 30 milliseconds below that which is an insane improvement considering how much harder each next millisecond is. Yet I'm supposed to believe these guys are clean? If someone says he removed the supercharger from his engine, yet he takes 2 seconds off his 1/4 mile drag time, do you believe him?
• Armstrong was strictly and randomly tested and used HGH (Human Growth Hormone), Steroids, EPO, Cortisone, Testosterone and more. Using some many drugs, you won't possibly pass a modern, randomly timed drug test, right? Wrong, he fooled all of us for more than a decade. Testing clean doesn't mean shit. Especially when you're bringing in a shitton of money for the sport; anyone can be bought. The cost of buying drug test people is much less than the cost of losing your cash cow.
• Contrary to what most people think, you don't instantly look like Schwarzenegger when using them. James Toney was caught several times and he's a fat tub of lard. The largest benefit may well be the quick recovery it allows, which means you can train more.
• Athletes are the most competitive guys in the world. I don't believe that they'll give up a great advantage with low risks (in terms of getting caught) to their opponents. Next, it's very widespread. Just look at how many stories there are of high school football players using them.
• They weren't even illegal in the 70's.

[Seamus]

Originally Posted by edward morbius

Irrelevant as his world didn't include anything "modern" including modern super-heavyweights. A modern super-heavyweight should be judged on how he competes against other modern superheavyweights, not flipping back into a vanished world of decades ago.)

Perhaps it did but they were not recruited either because of politics, geography or other sporting interests. Marciano was basically a regional fighter for most of his career. When he fought for the title, 31 of his 42 fights were in Rhode Island, the rest all in the US NE. I'll give you New York for being a world class fighting town, but the rest was strictly regional circuit stuff. It's not like he was getting exposed to a vast panoply of heavyweights, just your typical assortment of Carmine's and Vinny's. His true window of world class opposition was just 3 or 4 years.

Contrast this with Wlad who fought his first ex-champ 29 fights in and has been fighting almost exclusively against world class heavies (of modern size) for the intervening 14 years.

Point being is there probably was super-heavy talent out there. Just in this post-war window, it was not being recruited in the right places or it was just an anomaly fortuitous to a fighter of Marciano's physical abilities.

[Synthetic Decay]

Originally Posted by edward morbius

"His record at lightheavyweight is great"

He was the champion of an unlimited class and outweighed more often than not.

"Wlad is a superheavyweight"

Yeah.

**I don't know what nationality you are, but in American gridiron football the players have gotten so much bigger that almost any team could defeat the best of decades ago. But what is the point? Does a losing team in 2012 become great, good, or even satisfactory, because it could, or at least we judge that it could, defeat a championship team of decades ago.

I just don't find that an acceptable criteria.

**I know someone who is a relative of John Madden. I asked to him to ask Madden if Madden thought a top COLLEGE team today would defeat the Lombardi Packers or the seventies Steelers.

Madden's answer was most likely.

He was outweighed in about 60% of his fights and all credit to him regardless of opposition, most heavyweight champions are bigger in the majority of their fights. Although there isn't much in it for the larger part, 10 lb weight discrepancies.

It's not just his size, it's his style, potential for growth even applying modern methods and so on. Because if you start going down the lines of, people have grown due to dietary changes....Then it is impossible to speculate on any fight across era's. His genetics seemed to be indicative of a naturally squat guy, short, arms, legs, wide torso.

Modern sports equate to PED usage. But a bulked up Marciano is not going to be any more effective at closing distance on tall, athletic fighters. If anything it would **** his stamina up and make him slower.

[Synthetic Decay]

Originally Posted by ChrisPontius

I don't really see the relevance of comparing Marciano to the likes of Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko. Yes, it does concern the weight division without limit, but these are different times we're comparing. Today's athletes are built on better nutrition and healthcare than those who grew up in the 30's. Not to mention all of today's athletes are on a truckload of steroids.

Can I prove that they all are on steroids? No. But let's look at the facts:

• The 80's were full of doping and it wasn't even a secret. Look at the 100m sprint. Ben Johnson was taking pretty much any PED (except HGH which wasn't around yet) and ran an almost impossible 9.83 s. After that, they started testing and the sport was "cleand up". Yet, within 4 years Johnson's superhuman steroid record is pretty much equaled by Carl Lewis, Bailey and Burrel. A few years later, Johnson's record is smashed to pieces and right now we're 30 milliseconds below that which is an insane improvement considering how much harder each next millisecond is. Yet I'm supposed to believe these guys are clean? If someone says he removed the supercharger from his engine, yet he takes 2 seconds off his 1/4 mile drag time, do you believe him?
• Armstrong was strictly and randomly tested and used HGH (Human Growth Hormone), Steroids, EPO, Cortisone, Testosterone and more. Using some many drugs, you won't possibly pass a modern, randomly timed drug test, right? Wrong, he fooled all of us for more than a decade. Testing clean doesn't mean shit. Especially when you're bringing in a shitton of money for the sport; anyone can be bought. The cost of buying drug test people is much less than the cost of losing your cash cow.
• Contrary to what most people think, you don't instantly look like Schwarzenegger when using them. James Toney was caught several times and he's a fat tub of lard. The largest benefit may well be the quick recovery it allows, which means you can train more.
• Athletes are the most competitive guys in the world. I don't believe that they'll give up a great advantage with low risks (in terms of getting caught) to their opponents. Next, it's very widespread. Just look at how many stories there are of high school football players using them.
• They weren't even illegal in the 70's.

It's extremely widespread. 15 year old kids in my gym are using and 90% of the gyms i have trained at, anybody that has been training for more than a few years has used.

It's not even a taboo, steroids were first properly synthesized in the 30's and were being used by athletes on a pretty widespread level in the 50's. This is not a new problem and although i have no interest in it, for recreational purposes i don't see a problem. Sport is another matter, but when you have millions of $ on the line, fame, career and your health, 99% of people will use every advantage imaginable.

No, the largest benefit is quickly building and then maintaining lean muscular weight past your natural platau. Visual is determined by genetics, bodyfat and so on unless on a bodybuilders protocal and then genetics largely don't matter.

But i agree it does make it very difficult to compare across era's due to such factors.

[edward morbius]

Originally Posted by Seamus

Perhaps it did but they were not recruited either because of politics, geography or other sporting interests. Marciano was basically a regional fighter for most of his career. When he fought for the title, 31 of his 42 fights were in Rhode Island, the rest all in the US NE. I'll give you New York for being a world class fighting town, but the rest was strictly regional circuit stuff. It's not like he was getting exposed to a vast panoply of heavyweights, just your typical assortment of Carmine's and Vinny's. His true window of world class opposition was just 3 or 4 years.

Contrast this with Wlad who fought his first ex-champ 29 fights in and has been fighting almost exclusively against world class heavies (of modern size) for the intervening 14 years.

Point being is there probably was super-heavy talent out there. Just in this post-war window, it was not being recruited in the right places or it was just an anomaly fortuitous to a fighter of Marciano's physical abilities.

"point being is there probably was super-heavy talent out there"

There is absolutely no evidence of this. None at all. The Soviet bloc entered the Olympics in 1952. They were not able to dominate heavyweight boxing. Ed Sanders won the gold in 1952 and did little as a pro, getting killed in the ring. Pete Rademacher won in 1956. He was mediocre as a pro. So basically was the 1960 olympic heavyweight champion Franco DePiccoli.

As boxing was popular in the British Empire, Western Europe, and Latin America, where exactly were the great super-heavyweights hiding?
China?

in the 1950's, 230 lb'ers such as Ernie Stautner and Andy Robustelli were all pro NFL defensive linemen. Let us just say they wouldn't be at that size today. The 1955 Philiadelphia NBA team won with a 6' 7" center.

The argument that athletes haven't gotten bigger simply doesn't wash.

[Bummy Davis]

Originally Posted by edward morbius

"men in Southern Italy still only average 5 foot 8"

Yes and I agree that there is no way of telling if Marciano would have grown taller today.


"height of the average adult American male is going down"

This is not what I found.

CDC (Center for Disease Control) has the average adult American male going from 5' 8" in 1960 to slightly over 5' 9.5" in 2006. That is not getting shorter by any means.

WHO--has the average adult American male between 20-39 at 5' 10.2", taller than Great Britain, France, Italy, or Germany, or in fact most of the rest of the world. This despite a significant percentage of Mexican-Americans who average 5' 7" and pull the total average down.

Army--Komlos seems to be selecting facts here. The average soldier in the Civil War was 5' 7". In WWII it was 5' 8". I don't know what the average soldier would be today, but off the WHO figures, if a cross-section it should be about 5' 10". If it is not, the volunteer army is shorter than the average male while the conscript armies were not. That is possible. Those turning to the army as a way out and a way up would probably be from the lower classes, and upper class folks tend to be taller, all other factors equal. The conscript army was everyone with the sickly (who I assume would average shorter) weeded out.

growing up in the NY area I have had the experience of being around many different kinds of ethnic groups and I can tell you American Italians and Italians are 2 different types of people. There are many types of Italian Americans ...not all Italians are tough but there are shortish Italians that have freakish strength, I know 2 brothers that are smaller than 5"8 that are legends in the boroughs of NY for there street fighting and are known for there one punch power. I know Italian,Irish,Poles,Germans,Jews of all nations that are tougher than there European cousins... Italian Americans for one have some shorter but wider and heavier boned or steel boned people and some are freakishly strong...they may be 5'8 5'9 and 230 lbs, not always suited for the boxing ring but strong dangerous people...I have also seen tough Jews and Puerto Ricans and Blacks that are small in height but freakish strength.....Northern Americans may not be as tough today as in the last 100 years but have been historically tougher than Europeans

I have to say these days it seems like Europe has a large edge on America today but America mostly dominated in the past 10 decades

[Bummy Davis]

Originally Posted by Seamus

Remember the old Scotty Pippen commercial where he's playing in the 1950's and the recruiter says... "Son, you could make hundreds of dollars playing this game"?

Well, now, it's millions for not even playing very well, and many millions more if you get a shoe deal... and many, many millions more if the shoe company gets the right endorser. So, the recruitment has been ratcheted up about a billion fold.

I even heard an interview last week with Kobe Bryant lamenting the demise of the big man, asking "Where did they all go? It's like someone pushed a button and they disappeared." He was speaking entering the league in an era of Shaq, Rik Smits, Ewing, Mourning...

From my Google warrior research, it seems the height of the average adult US male is in fact going down, even accounting for immigration, due to sedentary lifestyle and poor diet (junk food), two problems from which Marciano did not suffer. You can follow the links I posted above to read more.

If you take further in consideration that he was the son of immigrants from Abruzzo and Campania, both in Southern Italy, you will realize he already was a giant for that particular gene pool. Having often visited there I can attest anecdotally that the folks just aren't that tall down there. Statistically, men in Southern Italy still only average 5 foot 8, about the same as Japan.

And again, the point has been made, that all the conjuring, compensating and imagining has nothing to do with Marciano, the actual fighter.

growing up in the NY area I have had the experience of being around many different kinds of ethnic groups and I can tell you American Italians and Italians are 2 different types of people. There are many types of Italian Americans ...not all Italians are tough but there are shortish Italians that have freakish strength, I know 2 brothers that are smaller than 5"8 that are legends in the boroughs of NY for there street fighting and are known for there one punch power. I know Italian,Irish,Poles,Germans,Jews of all nations that are tougher than there European cousins... Italian Americans for one have some shorter but wider and heavier boned or steel boned people and some are freakishly strong...they may be 5'8 5'9 and 230 lbs, not always suited for the boxing ring but strong dangerous people...I have also seen tough Jews and Puerto Ricans and Blacks that are small in height but freakish strength.....Northern Americans may not be as tough today as in the last 100 years but have been historically tougher than Europeans

I have to say these days it seems like Europe has a large edge on America today but America mostly dominated in the past 10 decades

[Seamus]

Originally Posted by Bummy Davis

I have to say these days it seems like Europe has a large edge on America today but America mostly dominated in the past 10 decades

We has gotten soft, we has. Fast food, video games, sense of entitlement... the death of Ronald Reagan... it has led us down the path of perdition. And now we only breed blobs of soft, whining flesh.

[Bummy Davis]

Originally Posted by Seamus

We has gotten soft, we has. Fast food, video games, sense of entitlement... the death of Ronald Reagan... it has led us down the path of perdition. And now we only breed blobs of soft, whining flesh.

all kidding aside you may be very right

[edward morbius]

Originally Posted by Seamus

We has gotten soft, we has. Fast food, video games, sense of entitlement... the death of Ronald Reagan... it has led us down the path of perdition. And now we only breed blobs of soft, whining flesh.

"the death of Ronald Reagan"

Naw. It was the death of the Lone Ranger. When Clayton Moore went, we went.

The only argument you have made that I agree with is that America has gone to pot.

[edward morbius]

Originally Posted by Bummy Davis

growing up in the NY area I have had the experience of being around many different kinds of ethnic groups and I can tell you American Italians and Italians are 2 different types of people. There are many types of Italian Americans ...not all Italians are tough but there are shortish Italians that have freakish strength, I know 2 brothers that are smaller than 5"8 that are legends in the boroughs of NY for there street fighting and are known for there one punch power. I know Italian,Irish,Poles,Germans,Jews of all nations that are tougher than there European cousins... Italian Americans for one have some shorter but wider and heavier boned or steel boned people and some are freakishly strong...they may be 5'8 5'9 and 230 lbs, not always suited for the boxing ring but strong dangerous people...I have also seen tough Jews and Puerto Ricans and Blacks that are small in height but freakish strength.....Northern Americans may not be as tough today as in the last 100 years but have been historically tougher than Europeans

I have to say these days it seems like Europe has a large edge on America today but America mostly dominated in the past 10 decades

"Europe has a large edge on America today"

In boxing for certain.

But I have to say that boxing is not even on most people's radar out here in the west anymore.