Why was Marciano so successful?

Not everyone could marshal the mental focus like Marciano could.

 

I think he's trying to focus on the boxing aspects. What people see on the footage available.

 

Watching some of his fights it looked like you couldn't clinch him. Inside was like most guys outside his arms were so short. Used a disadvantage to his advantage.

 

Correct. In examining Rocky as a live ringside spectator, as well as evaluating the films, Archie was convinced Marciano was an available target for the left hook. But going into their title rematch, LaStarza knew better. "Rocky's not as easy to hit as he looks. He hides behind that shoulder using that jab you laugh at until you realize he's setting you up for his bad medicine, his right hand." Roland also properly articulated the reality behind the suggestion Marciano was becoming an even harder puncher. "It's not that he hits any harder now, but he developed his left hook, and there's more coordination between mind and muscle. So he keeps improving."

When Moore actually face him in the ring, he discovered the reality of how deceptive Rocky could be from even the most careful scrutiny aside from actually swapping leather with him. LaStarza was probably the best prepared challenger Marciano actually defended against, but Rocky had improved tremendously since their ten round introduction.

The Rock had been developing his physical strength from childhood, obsessed with being the strongest kid on the block, and getting his hands on everything he could find about muscular development and strength training. He centered the gridiron line on his high school team, no asset to cultivating lateral movement, but tremendous for planting himself in position to force the other guy to move. He had the low center of gravity mastered from his teenage years.

His hand speed has been badly underrated at times, but he was much faster with his fists than Layne, and decimated Rex with that hand speed, while using his gridiron center background to hold position when the larger Layne banked everything on trying to shove him backwards. His double hook behind the jab knockout of Matthews struck like lightning, and he didn't pull back to wind it up. Neither did he wind up when he knocked out JJW for the title.

Charley Goldman developed him brilliantly, always making sure he felt natural and comfortable with his positioning consistent with his bodily attributes and limitations. (Because of his bad back, this was especially critical.) He'd run up steep hills, then paddle backwards down them before sprinting upwards again, a low impact/high intensity training method reflected in his ring movement. This strengthened his leg muscles without damaging his joints. (Anybody contemplating this method however would do well to use protective arch supports or maybe something like PediFix elastic bands around the feet before hand to safeguard against the risk of plantar fasciitis, an injury which can occur in an instant, then take forever to heal with complete rest and inactivity typically recommended for the feet. I've had personal experience with this.)

Good expose clip highlighting his defensive deceptiveness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b0yHvw-vW0

Rocky did have a great athlete's ability to perceive things as they happened in slow motion, and as a baseball catcher in high school even investigated trying out for Major League Baseball. (He attributed his slowness of foot to his background as a gridiron center and baseball catcher, but with the upper body, quick reflexes and reactions are required, sufficient enough for him to develop some defensive proficiency in the ring.

So far as heart is concerned, he epitomized Vince Lombardi's axiom that the harder one works, the harder it is to surrender. He came into his Brockton debut overconfident and out of shape against amateur veteran Ted Lester, convinced his strength would prevail before his home fans, and wound up kneeing his opponent low to save himself, getting himself DQed and eliciting a groan from his supporters "as if Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, had hit the villain in the nuts," as Everett Skehan put it in "Biography of a First Son."

It was a vivid humiliation which fueled him for the rest of his boxing career, incentive he drew upon again to get in presentable shape for the staged Woroner bout with Ali in 1969 (where Ali discovered something of what Moore had learned about the reality of sharing the ring with Rocky in 1955). There was speculation during Marciano-LaStarza II that the Rock may have over-trained after he got worked up over Roland's speculation that he might get punchy from all the punches he was taking, but otherwise there seems to be no question of his ever having left his fight in the gym with over-training.

Many ATGs in various sports were not originally heralded, but dismissed as too small, slow, or under-equipped in various ways. Often, the top prospects fall far short of the mark from lack of incentive, while those who get short shrift acquire the chip on their shoulder to prove themselves and never lose that motivation.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana had hellish two win seasons to start their NFL careers before winning multiple Super Bowls, and the QB wearing a fourth ring of the current SB Champions is forever driven by the fact he was a mere seventh round draft choice. (Meanwhile, that QB's predecessor was the first overall pick in his draft, never applied himself like Tom Brady, and while Drew Bledsoe did earn a Super Bowl ring coming off the bench in the AFC Title game on the road to lead the Patriots to the Lamar Hunt Trophy over top seeded Pittsburgh in 2001, he never really met his potential without the motivation to earn it. Neither did other overall first round pick Peyton Manning or the QB class of 1983. John Elway, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly are in the HOF, but only went 2-8 in Super Bowl competition, those two wins coming at the end of Elway's career when Denver's offense was keyed by their running game.)

Going back to Goldman, of course Marciano was friends with and idolized Willie Pep, and Primo Carnera was a major hero to Italian-Americans when he upset Jack Sharkey, but Marciano was what he was, and that was never going to be a cutie or somebody using height and reach to maintain distance from his opponents. He also admitted he wanted to be able to fight more like Louis, but he wasn't really even more like Dempsey. He was no imitator of anybody, but a product of the materials he and Goldman were given to work with. They took advantage of what he had, rather than try overcoming what he didn't have.

 

Marciano probably had the greatest endurance in a hw champion ever.

 

As champion his single minded dedication to his craft extended to having a rubber ball suspended on a length of elastic above his bedroom pillow,and he would lie on his back and time his shots at it .Peter Wilson, the English boxing scribe was astonished when he saw it.

Layne was a poor facsimile of Rocky he wasn't hard to hit and his fitness was always suspect, he was soft in the belly and ,once Rocky found the range there was only ever going to be one winner.

 

Perhaps, but that doesn't really explain anything. The physical aspects don't really weigh into why he was what he was. Lots of fighters fought out of a crouch. Lots of fighters were aggressive. What set Marciano apart was mental.

 

Anything my ass. His method was pretty much his own. Describing Marciano an aggressive fighter fighting from a crouch is too broad a representation. There was a lot more to what he was doing.

 

PLEASE!!!
Marciano fought bums and all the names he fought were old and tired! He fought less quality opposition than Klit did.

 

There's more to him than a crouch? Really? Thanks for filling me in. :roll:

I'm saying that his fighting style didn't factor as much into who he was and what he became as did his mental game. If you disagree, whatever.

 

Don't forget Paulie.........there's always a Paulie.

 

I don't disagree. But from the OPs posts that's not the point of the thread. And I don't understand why the irony. You're the one who generalized saying that focusing on his boxing aspects don't explain anything.

 

Paulie is in the bathroom right now.

 

Layne was highly regarded up and coming hwt and many pegged him as a future champion. His bout with Marciano ruined him. It's only in today's world that the truth of that time is lost.

 

Actually, I didn't generalize. I merely used a crouch and aggression as two examples of the physical aspects that described him. You're the one who added two and two and came up with 22.