For the people insisting Rocky was "hard to hit" and had "underrated cleverness"

It's no secret Marciano improved enormously after the Louis fight, it's heavily documented. He was a crude raw wild swinging slugger. Goldman honed him into so much more. He tied his shoelaces together to greatly improve his balance, put towels under his arms to make him throw straighter tighter punches with no loss of power, greatly developed his left hook, got him punching to the body far more often, tied his right arm behind him developing the left and countless other little "tricks". They did it slowly so he wouldn't drastically change the basic way he punched, with great leverage and power. That was just the offensive changes tho some of those, by nature, helped him defensively.

 

Jones and Beterbiev were far more dominant than Marciano and were fighting young prime opponents not faded guys. What is there on film to cause one to pick Marciano with any confidence?

 

It’s better to watch the film, it wasn’t quite that bad lol but I’ll add that Louis is the greatest heavyweight of all time and the finest boxer to ever be at the weight, all he had left was his mind, I can’t think of many heavyweights who’d have kept Marciano at bay the way even that Louis did.

 

That’s also withholding the fact Marciano is more skilled then Artur by a bit of a margin.

 

Better balance improves defense as does tightening up punching technique - this is boxing 101. In Rocky's case quite a bit. They also targeted specific defensive improvements to go along with the improvements already achieved by association.

 

Of course, as does tightening up punches.

 

You might as well not have mentioned it, because whilst Joe Louis is using a superlative (vastly improved fighter), your sentence frames it as more of a rudimentary, ad hoc inclusion of certain defensive maneuver (he had to actually learn how to bob, weave etc.)

Label it as moving the goalpost if you will, but my point stands.

Those two do not convey the same message and attempting to equate them is insensitive to nuance of the language, if not outright intellectually dishonest. It's twisting Louis's assessment to suit your point. The very same point of which premise is fundamentally flawed, because it attempts to use a version of Marciano at a point in time to attack a strawman, generalized opinion without providing context for his subsequent development as a fighter, and him being a late starter learning on a job meant he could rapidly adjust under proper tutelage.

I wasn't even attempting to pick sides with my initial comment. Genuinely tried to inquire whether you not consider future Rocky to represent what you claim he was not at the time of fighting Louis.

 

Nobody came close to beating Roy prior to 2003. We should assume Marciano can based on what exactly? A faded Walcott was ahead on points after 12, Charles gave him a terriffic battle. Roy is quicker, more athletic, a good puncher, where is Rocky's advantage?

 

It's crazy that the right he finished Walcott with probably wouldn't even knock down a game Foreman