"GTFOH, you goof, you're ruining the picture..." - opponents out of place in a given run

Rocky Marciano…

Walcott
LaStraza
Charles
Charles
Cockell
Moore

if he’d fit Valdez in there instead I’d be a lot happier considering his short stay but he did pretty much everything else anyway.

 

What was with that Lewis fight against Botha?

Roy against the police officer and the guy he knocked out with behind the back punch?

Holmes against Frank and some other bottom feeders.

 

I wish business allowed Curry and Benitez a shot against Hagler… they wouldn’t win IMO but it would’ve been good to see.

 

Lorenzo Zanon
Leroy Jones
Scott Frank

Big 3 I think.

 

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What I said might just be saying more about me as a know nothing fan honestly… Marciano himself talks about how everybody is expecting him to run over Don, how he was consistently being surprised at just how good he was… maybe he was caught up in what everyone was saying? He realised Don could fight but that wouldn’t change what people thought (something like that) watching the bout you can see Don is a good fighter but to this day don’t we the peanut gallery have our say? lol remember our due respect as fans not the men in the arena look at the fate of Ernie Lopez after he’d lost to Napoles… these guys put everything into this.

 

The bad crap that just about everyone on this forum pours on Cockell has always really rankled me. I think he put up a great fight against Marciano. He was tough and had a lot of heart. His weight issue was not due to a lack of training. With his metabolism, he was in the best condition he could possibly have achieved. And you're right. He was a good fighter. Not a great, but a good one. I don't count anything he did or didn't do after the Marciano fight. Rocky gutted him, and he was nothing but an empty carcass afterward.

 

AGREED KK! The “Man in the arena” poem is an easy fit for boxers “its not the critic who counts; it’s not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better” Cockell did put up a tough fight, Marciano recognised this, good professional fighters tend to do that! but we’ll mostly turn our heads and recite the usual incantations… with all our “knowledge” surely we ought to know better then the fighters and our own eyes? “Fans” tend to look for the most negative angle possible for everything fight related.

 

Joe Frazier squeezing David Zyglewhatever-his-name-is into the midst of his pre-FOTY title run that otherwise included the likes of Mathis, Quarry, Bonavena, & Foster before culminating w/ Ali.

George Foreman squeezing Joe Roman in between his epic wins over Frazier & Norton.

 

So the Manfredo fight was all about Manfredo's popularity from the Contender obviously. It was an easy payday for Calzaghe against the undersized Manfredo who really had no business at 168.

With that said, Manfredo wasn't a bad fighter, he simply wasn't a world class guy. I remember Peter from the amateur circuit and he had a rep for sure. He just simply couldn't beat the top American amateurs of his day which were Jermaine Taylor, Randy Griffin and the late Rhosi Wells. He did beat Carl Froch in the amateurs and at one point was the top east coast guy at Middleweight in the USA program.

 

I've never seen that poem. Thanks.

 

Michael Carbajal already had two good wins over Humberto Chiquita Gonzalez and Kwang sun Kim,only to end the run fighting not that much known Domingo Sosa,what the Dom doin'?

 

Michael Spinks was cleaning up the Light Heavies pretty well and dismissing The Usual Suspects and then somehow David Sears showed up. Nobody was suspecting him either before or after that fight.

One more. Between beating Billy Douglas and Eddie Davis, our hometown Indianapolis hopeful Marvin Johnson worked in a fight at the local Tyndall Armory. His original opponent no showed, so they threw in 14-4 "Ishmael Vargas" from Mexico who was really winless Roberto Reynosa from San Antonio. Big step down there.