Why did Marciano Choose to defend against Charles than Valdez ?

Yes. Nino was better than Don. In the ring and in the ratings and according to everyone who was eager for Marciano to defend against Nino.

So why did Weill pick ****ell instead of Valdes - if everyone at the time wanted Marciano-Valdes?

If offers were pouring in for a Marciano-Valdes fight, and the orgs would've been happy if they fought, why did they take Don ****ell instead (and lose money in the process)?

Didn't Al Weill say Marciano would fight Valdes "when we're ready."

I guess Rocky didn't have to "get ready" for Don ****ell ... like he did Valdes?

They ducked Valdes and fought ****ell because he was a safer fight for Rocky's damaged nose.

Go ahead. It's okay. Rocky will still be an undefeated heavyweight champ if you say it.

 

Anyone with any sense knew ****ell was a poor challenger before the fight..I've said Rocky ducked no one , but I think Weill may have ducked Valdes.

Vlades was a seen as a dangerous challenger ,as I have said.

 

Weill gambled on Cokkell being a better sell to the paying customers than Nino. I imagine Weill thought because Tommy Farr drew a lot of fans against Joe Louis that Cokkell would too, but it backfired.

Perhaps it was entirely because of the nose injury or like you say because Wiell did not fancy Nino, after all he thought Layne would beat Rocky.

I think Wiell knew Rocky would have to fight Moore or Nino sooner or later and Cokkell looked like a bonus fight to keep Rocky ticking over until then. I don't think there is much wrong with that. The longer Nino and Moore wait the bigger the fight.

Moore and Nino did the most to force a challenge. It is logical to get them to face off against each other "one more time" -after all Archie had a already beat him..

 

Well, there is no evidence Valdes was a draw either. A J Liebling's coverage of the Valdes-Jackson fight has this line--

"The show had drawn 4500 cash customers"

The draw as a contender was Moore. He drew 27,000 to the Polo Grounds against Olson and his fight with Marciano drew over 61,000 to Yankee Stadium and did very well with theatre TV.

The reason is Moore was a proven top level fighter.

Don C drew 14,868 and $96,000 against Matthews in Seattle in 1953, a record gate for the state.

Possibly one reason he got the shot is that the promoters considered him the better draw.

 

Thing is boxing news did pick Don over Rocky. Some of them must of had some sense...yet still they ran that prediction. Maybe it would have seemed unpatriotic to pick Rocky but they went out and picked Don. You can do it Don! Was the headline I think.

 

Do you realise that the champion fighting the #1 contender is actually a comparatively rare occurrence?

Marciano is pretty much the only dominant champion who did it with any degree of consistency!

If we were to accept that Marciano avoided Valdez, on such a flimsy pretext as taking the ****el fight, then the ramifications would be huge, and frankly it would damage every other champion a lot more than him!

 

Where is your proof Weill ducked Valdes?

Where is your proof Valdes was seen as a dangerous challenger?

If he was so dangerous, why is it he lost in the most important fight of his career to a 38 year old fat blown up middleweight? Had Valdes won that fight, it would have GUARANTEED him a title shot his next fight vs Marciano.

 

I said may have ducked Valdes.Valdes was a bigger draw and several cities wanted that fight, who wanted ****ell?
I'll try and find some of the old mags to illustrate Valdes standing.

Valdes was the number one contender in 1953 an 1954 ,why did he have to beat the unranked Moore to get a title shot?
Moore a blown up middleweight? He hadnt been a middleweight for a decade.

 

This seems a logical possibility.

 

Don't waste your time. They can't hear anything.

"After" Valdes won the I.B.C.'s "eliminator" against Hurricane Jackson, and the I.B.C. president wanted Marciano-Valdes, Marciano fought two different guys over the next year instead.

Hell, Marciano signed to fight ****ell before a Valdes-Moore eliminator was even brought up. They ducked Valdes straight up when they signed to fight ****ell.

There was absolutely no reason to fight ****ell (no financial reason, no public demand reason, no political reason) ... other than they simply didn't want to fight Nino Valdes.

And had Valdes won against Moore - and there were people there who thought he did, Valdes included - Weill would not have given Valdes a title shot.

Weill's track record shows he didn't want the Valdes fight. Rocky didn't make that many defenses, and Weill dodged Nino Valdes in favor of someone else twice.

Marciano-Weill wanted Valdes about as much as Riddick Bowe-Rock Newman wanted Lennox Lewis back in 1993.

If the N.B.A. stripped fighters in 1955 (like sanctioning bodies do now), they'd have stripped Marciano for fighting ****ell.

It was a straight up duck.

And, on that note, I'm going to go. There's a big storm coming.

Have a good night.

 

"Eight months later, Marciano journeyed to San Francisco to fight England’s Don ****ell.

****ell looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy. In reality, he was a fat light-heavyweight who’d been knocked out five times by opponents far less imposing than Marciano.

The British public was intrigued by the fight. Liebling described the challenger as “a fat man whose gift for public suffering has enlisted the sympathy of a sentimental people.” Sullivan puts the matter in perspective, noting that the bout “was widely cast as a test run for Marciano’s nose.”

Only 15,000 fans were in attendance at Kezar Stadium. ****ell played the role of a human punching bag with valor. Marciano looked clumsy and amateurish. “That was a very bad fight,” he admitted afterward. “I wasn’t sharp and I knew it.”

Marciano also fouled repeatedly, head-butting and hitting ****ell below the belt and after the bell several times. More flagrantly, he hit the challenger when the Brit was on one knee after being knocked down in the ninth and final round.

“On my wife and baby,” Marciano pledged when the fight was over, “I don’t do one of those things knowing I do it.”

“He was a bit deaf when it came to hearing a bell,” ****ell said.

Meanwhile, Marciano wasn’t making the money he wanted to make. Three decades earlier, Tex Rickard and Jack Dempsey had ushered in an era of million-dollar gates. Dempsey had been paid accordingly. But Marciano’s biggest purse had been US$250,000 (for his first fight against Ezzard Charles). For the ****ell bout, the amount was $115,000. None of his championship encounters had captured the public imagination."


Yeah big draw.

 

"Valdes was a bigger draw"

If Liebling's stats are correct, 4500 attendance for a fight between top heavyweight contenders isn't very impressive. What is the evidence prior to 1955 that Valdes would draw?

"Why did he have to beat the unranked Moore"

I think this amounts to playing games with words. Moore was not ranked because he was the champion of another weight class, but was clearly the outstanding heavyweight contender, having wins over Valdes, Baker, Johnson, Satterfield, Slade, etc.,

Once Moore threw his hat into the ring to campaign for the heavyweight championship, he was the man to beat.

 

Well, considering Harry Matthews was from Idaho, and considering the Marciano-****ell fight only drew 15,000=16,000 fans (they projected 30,000), I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Brit wasn't a big draw on the West Coast.

I think Marciano and Matthews were kind of the draws in those two fights.

Gotta go.

 

He wasn't the outstanding contender in 1953 and 1954 Valdes was, he was the number one contender.Moore didnt get ranked at heavyweight till the end of 1955and he was still the lhvy champion so it had nothing to do with him being a champ in a different weight class.Moore was rated in both classes for two years.

 

http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=/&gl=GB#/watch?v=mMYnbBY0nAI

This is an interview with Archie Moore before the bobo Olsen fight where he says he has been chasing Rocky for two years. Very interesting.