Look at the mans eyes and how ****ing high Walcott is! We know why he couldn't get up now, dude was ****ed up on something. :rofl
I think the proof is right there. He put on a great effort at 38-39 years of age, ended up getting viciously KO'd while leading on points, and had little left for the rematch. He didn't even have a single round left in him.
Or - He got knocked out by a sneaky shot from a world class HW puncher and missed beating the count by half a second.
as Fists of Fury says with his analogy of the old guy running he got the count and thought about the last fight and wanted to get out of there, again im not saying he quit as he probably did want to get up to start with. However jersey joe never hit me as a type of guy to moan about stuff unless justified so his talk about a short count does hold a tiny bit true with me
Walcott was a lot more cautious in his start here , but that was to be expected after being kod in their first fight. I do know that Marciano practised that uppercut ,as an article about it was published before the fight. It was a good shot many sports writers present thought that Walcott could have gotten up ,but decided not to .I have that month's Ring magazine.Walcott claimed he blacked out during the middle of the count and lost the "numbers",and ,that's why he couldn't beleive he had been counted out.Could he have gotten up? Only Walcott knew the answer to that . Marciano was seriouly pissed because he felt he had landed a great shot ,and didnt get the credit for it.
I suppose the difference really lies in the fact that Tyson, by beating Spinks, had now fully conquered the division. There were no more irritating questions about who really the boss was. It was his crowning achievement. That said, the win is slightly tainted because of how scared Spinks was. I don't see the 2nd Walcott fight as being compromised personally. It was a fight that Rocky won fair and square, and you'll get no argument from me if you want to call it a great performance. But like the Spinks fight, there is an element of 'mmm' about it. Put it this way: there are other fights in Rocky's career that were far more dramatic; the first Walcott fight for one, both Charles fights, the Vingo fight...maybe even the first LaStarza fight. I guess Walcott 2 just got lost in the shuffle somewhere.
His chin stood up to Rocky's blows quite well in the first fight, until the 13th round KO. How many cases are there of boxers near their 40's coming back from a KO as vicious as the Marciano-Walcott I KO?
But Walcott was unique, and his career was unique. Returning to the Spinks analogy, Spinks also never fought again after being brutally KO'd versus Tyson. His chin had previously been seen as respectable. He never fought again. He was dusted in a single round. Was he, therefore, finished as a fighter when he got in with Mike Tyson? I submit that the only reason Walcott is seen as being washed up is his age, which, as proven by not just Walcott but Hopkins and Moore - who yes, came back at an advanced age after being ko'd by none other than Rocky Marciano - have proven that it's just a number.
I'd agree with all that. The other thing is, Rocky is most famous for his heart and fury, so guys like his come-from-behind KO's.
I've never seen Walcott as washed up for that fight. Maybe just too washed up for Marciano. By the way, Spinks was seriously thinking about a comeback in either '91 or '92. His knees apparently just weren't up to it, and he decided against it.
would a 2nd or 3rd round KO change your idea on this fight (apart from the result) maybe Joe was caught cold
Agreed. To me, this is somewhat similar to when Carlos Ortiz whupped Joe Brown. Before the fight, Brown was favored to win. After Ortiz shut him down and dominated him, people just said, "Brown got old" or "That was just an old man," etc. I think anytime a fighter whups a fighter of advanced age, people will say, "He only beat an old man." Thing is, if Ortiz had goten the fight with Brown a couple years earlier (when he first pushed for it) and beaten him the same way, people would've said the exact same thing. Likewise, if someone had blown out Walcott a year, or 2 years, or 4 years earlier, people would've said he was just an "old man" then too. I think this is one of those strange situations where a fighter somehow gets less credit for dominating a fighter more. If he had struggled a bit with Walcott, perhaps come from behind a second time, people would say, "See! Walcott still had a lot left at that time." But because he blew him out so decisively and never let him show what he might've had, people assume he must not have had anything left.
And Rocky gets that tight, both for Walcott, and less understandably (look at his success post and pre-Rocky), Moore. That's basically the premis of the thread. It was McLarnin-Corbett that got me thinking about it. Obviously this win isn't that special, but as far as a first round KO over a (loosely speaking) ATG fighter goes, it is underated something crazy.
I guess I could see the point but this wasn't a case of a great champion taking on a young challenger at an advanced age, this was a case of a former champion taking on the man who had taken the title away from him with a devastating KO. What if Joe Brown had fought Ortiz again and been KO'd in the first? How do you rate Carlos Monzon's rematch win over Benvenuti by the way? Rocky also had a reputation for ruining men. Charles, Layne, LaStarza were never the same. I don't see the Spinks comparison because Spinks was a 31 year old undefeated linear champion at the time Tyson blew him out in one round.
But the second Walcott fight was intended to settle certain matters for Marciano as well. There were a lot of people who felt his first win over Walcott was just a "fluke" or that he landed a "lucky punch". To many people, he needed to beat Walcott decisively in a return in order to affirm his superiority over him in their minds.