Marciano- interesting stuff

Here's a great article on Rocky Marciano.

One of the best I've seen.


Here are a few things I learned from it.

*Rocky was offered $2 million to fight Ali in the '60s. He turned it down.

*He was offered a substantial sum of money to throw the fight with Don Cockell, in which he was a 10-1 favorite.
He went into a rage at the Mob representative who made the offer.

*Marciano never did business with the Mob, but he hung around them quite a bit after he retired. He was a particular friend of Vito Genevese.



Rocky's stinginess was legendary and bordered on nuttiness.

*He carried slugs and trip wires around with him to use on pay phones.

*He ate in restaurants a lot, but he never paid. If it wasn't complimentary or someone else wasn't buying, he wouldn't eat there. The same with staying at hotels.


*One trick he pulled often: if he was scheduled to speak at an event (always paid, of course), he would arrive at the airport wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He would claim something had happened to his baggage, and the event people would have to buy him clothes.


*He insisted on being paid in cash and would stash it in curtain rods, toilets, light fixtures etc.
It was estimated that when he died, he had $2 million hidden across the country that was never found.

* There is a lot about his womanizing. There was a lot of it. I'll let you read it.




http://www.secondsout.com/columns/thomas-hauser/rocky-marciano-revisited--part-two