Would a Marciano born in the 80s or 90s have been trained as a HW?

I could cite Fragomeni as an example.

The "everybody in history has to fight in the lowest weight class possible today" argument , is quite frankly nonsense.

That is not everybody's choice.

Fighters often skip a weight division, or in some cases two.

Byrd could have fought two weight classes lower, if he had wanted to.

Chambers could have been a small cruiserweight.

Not every small fighter, is focused on fighting the smallest guys possible.

 

Re: "Would a Marciano born in the 80s or 90s have been trained as a HW?"

So 1980-1999? If Rocky had been BORN in the 80's or 90's (taking 1990 as the midway point), he would only be 33 years old right now, and possibly still fighting. The actual Rocky Marciano was born in 1923, so he was a product of his time, in that he was about 5 feet 10 inches tall and usually weighed in the 180's in his boxing matches. SO. 5 feet 8 inches was about average in Rocky's generation so the Rock was about 2 inches above average, maybe slightly more.

Better nutrition changes things. From that we can safely assume Rocky would be somewhere slightly over 6 feet tall if born in 1990. And it would also be a safe assumption that he'd be slightly over 200 pounds (if no PEDS were involved, which may NOT be a safe assumption - product of his time again). That means, if he became a boxer again, he would be a Cruiserweight or Heavyweight. Rocky liked money. I doubt if that would have changed in a Rocky born in 1990. Therefore I believe, for better or worse, he would have been a Heavyweight.

 

With todays sports medicine and resistance training… Rock would be a devastating cruiser weight. EASILY would build himself 10-15 pounds bigger than he was. I think he would be advised against attempting heavyweight with his reach and height.

He’d be an awesome cruiser though

 

Sorry that is just not correct.
Firstly there are immense benefits in virtually all sports in weight lifting.
Many for pure strength & muscle mass, others more for muscular endurance.
You are describing how boxing stimulates the muscles.
Sure, but there are many ways to do that.

The actual science of progressive resistance affords tremendous advantages.
There are many very specific rationales & ways of training.

The powerlifting exercises you list certainly involve muscle boxers use!
I can go through them in isolation or working together.
Now there are better methods to lift for some-I met a sometime boxer who said he did weight "throwing" stressing explosive lifts like on the bench similar to pliometrics.

But just gaining power & often muscle mass means a lot for many boxers!

 

Well...He would be a tiny HW today still by your numbers.
Whether he could be as successful a little bigger, or very successful-that is an open question.
He might do it IF he thought it could work & if it was producing results.

By the way, Rocky would only be taller IF he was specifically undernourished as a child &/or adolescent.
He may or may not have reached hi full genetic potential there.

 

Sometimes memory fails us all, but this was exactly as I recalled & was announced:
Marciano was exactly 1/4 lb. more than Archie Moore.
[url]https://boxrec.com/en/proboxer/9032[/url]

 

Yes, bench throws and landmine throws are important staples in modern strength and conditioning for boxing.

Many don't seem to understand that weight training for boxing differs in several aspects from weight training for body building.

 

That your example, Fragomeni, weighed more at his recorded lowest than Marciano did at his highest and never seemed to have won the a major belt (only lesser versions of the WBC?) shows how rare it is among top CWs of today to be below 190 lbs.

As for Chambers, he looked fairly fit vs Wlad at 210. I don't think the 20-25 lbs between him and Marciano was fat.

Byrd was some 20-25 lbs heavier than Marciano so it would be decidedly harder for him to make LHW.

Chambers and Byrd could absolutely have made CW, but the financial rewards are much higher at HW than CW. The same isn't true for CW compared to LHW, so I don't see the incentive for Marciano at 185 to fight guys weighing 210-215 at CW, when it doesn't pay more than fighting guys his own size at LHW.

I don't think anyone has competed at top level at CW at 185-190 since it moved to 200, so he would certainly be an outlier. Even more than Chambers and Byrd was at HW and without the financial incentives. I just don't see why he would, if weighing the same as he did in the 50's.

 

Speaking of Marciano and modern heavyweights Emanual Steward said it all. "He's just too small." I'd add especially for his style.

 

I don’t believe it, for the most part. Just because weightlifting is being recommended now for sports does not mean it’s right. Especially for boxing.

I already explained . The blood in your body goes to where the muscles are worked. By sparring , bag and mitt work the blood is going to the right places. You get stronger in the right muscles if you limit the other muscles you don’t need. Plus your heart is working more on pumping blood to the right muscles and not to over developed muscles that are not doing much. Being more balanced is not important or natural most things are unbalanced like boxing.

There is also a time and energy problem. If you were training a boxer would you want him using up his energy weight lifting. Sparing, light sparing , studying film, working on situations with lots of drill work takes a long time then there is bag work, mit work and running. You have no time to lift weights unless you sacrifice other training and the weight lifting is not going to do much except add weight but Marciano I would want at around 200 pounds,yeah you could build him up to 230 or 240 with weight lifting but it would not be good.

 

Hunter is an interesting fighter to cite (I appreciate you were listing him amongst fighters who recently competed at CW that wouldn't weigh 184-187lbs if they were in shape, as Janitor had claimed, and I'm not questioning you in that regard), if you go to 0:57 of this video, his fight night weight vs Usyk is given 197.5lbs (vs 207lbs for Usyk) -https://[url]www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqjlaj8B3Go[/url]

I've done a fair amount of research into fight night weights this year, prompted when another poster on this board challenged me after I postulated that the average weigh-in to fight night increase was c.10% of body weight. His position was that I'd read about some extreme increases & assumed they were typical.

I took the average of 40 x weigh-in to fight night increases, from here - [url]https://basementgymboxing.blogspot.com/2014/01/fight-night-boxing-weights-list-of.html[/url] - and calculated the average increase was 8.64% (so I hadn't drastically overestimated) of body weight, or 11.84lbs in absolute terms.

The thing I found the most surprising was, it was the % of body weight, rather than the absolute number of lbs, increased, that changed from the lower weights to the higher weights. i.e. on average there was very little difference in fight night gains in absolute terms (lbs gained) between a FW & LHW, and therefore obviously the % increase was lower at LHW. As another example above & beyond the 40 x fight nights I recorded, there are 26 x LHW fights nights listed in post #66 of this thread, the average of which is less than 10lbs over 175lbs - [url]https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/matter-of-fact-who-would-win-between-usyk-and-tyson.704850/page-5[/url]

The conclusions I drew from my research was not to go the full way to the view of the poster who challenged me, but I did realise that I had previously assumed that the high profile fight nights weights I'd seen reported and cited, were representative of typical increases, whereas having researched in detail, I now realise the average is likely a little less than I'd previously imagined, particularly in the high weights divisions.

I agree with you, btw, that a fighter today who typically weighs 184-189lbs around lunch time on the day of a fight, as Marciano did, would much more likely be a (heavier than average on fight night) LHW, than a (much lighter than average on fight night) CW.

In the 80's and 90's though, when the CW limit was 190lbs and extent to which fighters dehydrated for weigh-ins and rehydrated by fight night was typically less, I think a fighter who weighed between 184-189lbs at lunch time on the day of the fight, would have most likely fought at CW.

In summary, my best guess, assuming Marciano was the same natural size, had the same training & diet, etc, is that he'd have competed at:

80's & 90's = CW
Today = LHW

 

Between shredding down a bit and day-before weigh in, he'd make LHW.

 

In the 80's he'd definitely be a CV. He could quite well have spent at the very least a part of his career at CV during the whole time it was at 190 lbs.