I have my doubts prime Rocky could've beaten Tunney. Let alone one (hypothetically) who'd been inactive for 3 years.
Tunney by decision. I would pick most champs to lose being inactive for 3 years against an ATG. A rockista has arrived.
A prime Tunney is a very tough match up for a prime Rocky .. to match up a Marciano we never saw, one highly inactive against a prime Gene is a mismatch.
I can't see Marciano being very good after a three year layoff. It probably harms him more than it did Dempsey quite frankly!
There is such an enormous gap between the heavyweight accomplishments of these two, and given that Marciano never arrived to fight (during his prime) in anything but the top level of fitness, this is easy. Marciano batters Tunney from ringpost to ringpost, sloppily, overenthusiastically... but effectively. Tunney has almost zero pedigree at heavyweight.
Given his track record and standards for preparation, I will assume he would only fight if he were in top notch fitness and form.
Marciano would take a 3 year training camp to get back in shape if he had to, in his prime he was nothing less than obsessed
And I would assume that given his lack of boxing finesse and stature,he would fail .Very ,very few men can lay off for 3 years and come back as good as they were.Marciano is not one of them imo.Matched with a Brion or a Layne I would pick him,even if just around 70% of his former capabilities. Against a clever ,fast,fleet footed , cool headed boxer , no.
Look, Tunney had a lot of things going his way in the Dempsey fight, not the least of which was the long count. The 10 round championship distance BOTH TIMES, the rain soaked ring in Philly. I can't remember significant details of the camp reports from Dempsey for these fights but I assure you the one thing Marciano would not lose, at least at that age, is his stamina and endurance. Timing? Sure. Back issues? Likely. Hunger? He admitted to losing that when the prospect of the Swede arose.
If Marciano follows the exact same trajectory as Demspey, I've got him losing the first fight by decision, but beating Sharkey (maybe under similar circumstances) and managing to track down Tunny and stop him late in the rematch. Nice to see you back, @mcvey.
Luckily his back issues werent a problem until he ruptured a disk in '56 so he should be fine in that regard
