Rocky Marciano v Mike Spinks?

This is where Jowcol comes in...........................

 

It makes for an interesting question. You have one guy who made a living beating hall of fame former light heavys while you have another guy who WAS a hall of fame light heavy and who won the heavyweight title in a more advanced era. Most will pick Rocky on the basis that spinks lost to a man very early who had a similar style to Rocky. But it should be noted that the man he lost to was bigger, stronger, faster harder punching and Spinks was on the slide. In his heavyweight form Spinks would have 4 inches in height and roughly 20 lbs in weight on Marciano. If we're going with the version who fought Holmes then he was still around 29 years old. How well Michael could take a good heavyweight punch was a question never truly answered. He did take some pretty direct shots from a very angry Holmes in the rematch and also from Gerry C. who although was in poor shape could still crack. And Marciano was 185 lbs who mostly dispatched sub 200 pounders so who knows how well his power would transition to the 80's.. I'm not sure to be truthful.

 

You make some interesting points. I have watched a lot of Spinks fights recently and I think he is criminally underrated because of the Tyson fight. OK, he was much better at LH, but with Marciano being a small heavy, that might not be such a factor.

What might be is Marciano's power. Holmes shook Spinks in their second fight with a glancing uppercut, and surely Marciano could hurt Spinks repeatedly? Doubtless the "size is everything" gang will claim Holmes hit harder than Rocky, though.

Interesting match up!

 

my hesitation in picking Spinks was that I'm not sure how he'd handle a swarming puncher of Marciano's style. Tyson was the closest thing to Marciano he fought and lost in 91 seconds, but also when he was past it and not really into the fight mentally from his facial expressions. Dwight Braxton ( Qawi ) may be the next best comparison but I'm not sure exactly how similar he and Marciano are.

 

Marciano knocks his block off.

 

Spinks slices and dices his way to a stoppage within 10 rounds. He's too tall, has too much reach advantage and could box carefully as well as punch. If Marciano comes in with his typical crouching style, Spinks may just decapitate him with an uppercut.

Unless you really believe Rocky was Superman without the cape, there's no basis for picking him in this fight.

 

Marciano did have a punch ya know. His knockout percentage is amongst the highest in history...

Re read marcianos biography, he always had that deadly Suzy Q right hand, even from an early age. Read about his street fight with the big black tough kid in the Brockton neighborhood.

 

They both got knocked out, just like every rated contender and hall of Famer who fought Marciano. That's the point, marcianos knockout percentage never dropped when he moved up in competition. That's why he was so special. He knocked out great fighters as well as bad ones.

 

Only Ali Louis George foreman and buster Douglas actually knocked out great heavyweights in there primes. No one else did. Yet you still have to take into consideration the hall of famers Marciano beat were world champions or number 1 contenders at the time of the fight

Marciano is one of the division's all time great punchers, his record film backs this up.

 

Marciano knocks out Spinks round 9

Only 3 or 4 heavyweight champions in history ever beat a great heavyweight in his prime. So what if Marciano didn't? Others weren't doing it either