Marciano was amazingly well conditioned and had great stamina (unlike Bean, he was not afraid to sign for fights more than 4 rounds). There is no comparison. None at all.
Just discussing keys to Rocks success. 1. Stamina 2. Weight advantage 3. Lucky career timing 4. Fouling 5. Will to Win Anything else? Any 178 to 185 pound man in good shape with the Will to Win could replicate his career with fouling.
Great question! I think it comes down to his reliability and the fact that he made you fight his fight. When did Marciano not deliver in a big fight? When did he lose unexpectedly or not turn up in shape and focused? He turned fights into brawls and took fighters out of their comfort zones; he made all his opponents FIGHT, they couldn't rest for a minute. He was not as bad as is made out from a technical point of view; if he was he would have been destroyed by Charles and Walcott.
When he pulled the trigger you never knew if it was going to be a left hook or a right hand. He came up out of a crouch and it was impossible to prepare for his punch. Also, he never gave a fighter the range he needed to operate efficiently. It broke a conventional fighters flow and rythem anticipating him and reajusting. Therefore he offered no real target at a range he could not reach you.
No, it is not the ONLY difference. Marciano also had skill, Bean did not. It is such an obvious statement, I did not want to make it earlier.
The usual reasons most have listed.. Heart, Stamina, Conditioning, chin, Power, fast hands, great trainer and a style that worked for him.
I think his most under rated aspect is his foot speed. He was constantly moving never giving the opponent chance to set themselves and unload. Plus he had a cracking leaping left hook which is just as good as Fraziers in my mind. That constant forward movement and crouching defence made him a lot harder to hit than any man expected him to be. He did come in square against Jersey for that knockdown, similar to how Dempsey came in on Firpo.
His footwork looks different at least from his fight with Valentino forward to me. Something about the right leg. It looks stiff in comparison to Walcott I and Lloyd Marshall II. Hard to tell on Bivins 4 since there's only glimpses of each round and you can't see the fighters' legs and feet. Back to the thread, like apollack pointed out, Rocky used the momentum of his offense, the awkwardness of his crouch and his high output to get inside. Once on his range he could grind his man down with his rough work, bang to the body and head (and to whatever he could hit), you know do his thing. His usage of momentum (his own and his opponent's) is also one of the reasons he punched heavily. He was strong for his size, that coupled with the fact he was short and had short arms made him hard to tie up and control on the inside. Conditioning, obviously, was key.
You should know it is sacrilege to comment on Rocky unless you are unqualified and unstinting in your praise. Acknowledging his power,will to win,courage,determination,disdain for punishment,total dedication to his profession,unparalled conditioning ,etc is simply not enough. During his reign he was seen as a very good champion,who ducked no -one but his style was often compared unfavourably to Dempsey's,and after several of his fights contemporary writers commented on his clumsiness ,lack of balance, rudimentary defensive ablities , crudeness of execution and sometimes innacurate punch placement . That has been subject to some serious revisionism in the last two or three decades. This forum has seen posters aver that he was very clever defensively, had good balance,and deliberately targeted opponents arms to bring their guards down.He wasn't and he didn't, he did improve markedly and Lastarza was one opponent who said he was 5000 times better in their second fight than their initial encounter,which was a very close go. For his size Marciano hit tremendously hard,possibly only Dempsey,Langford and perhaps Fitz were in his ball park ,the fact that he was never the most accurate of punchers was more than compensated by the fact that he simply never stopped coming. His desire to overcome any obstacle ,any setback may perhaps have been equalled. I don't believe it has ever been surpassed. To put the icing on the cake as it were, he was a modest unassuming man, a regular guy,an excellent round by rounds ****yst,and if he was known to be cautious with a buck ,well, no one ever earned it harder. If this isn't enough for one particular rectum licker , then tough sh*t.
A lot of it- maybe most of it- was mental conditioning. Marciano had grown up in poverty during the Great Depression. Before he started boxing he had worked in a shoe factory and on a road construction gang. He said that prior to a fight, he convinced himself that his opponent was determined to send him back to poverty and manual labor. He worked up a hatred for his opponent. He wouldn't even look at him until the bell rang. He didn't want to remind himself his foe was a human being. He also convinced himself that he could not lose. It sounds like a bunch of hocus pocus, but that's what he contributed his success to.
Yeah, but it has to come from a deeper well than that.......everyone in his generation grew up poor. Nothing special about that.