Contemporary evaluations of Rocky Marciano

Part 2! This time from an equally bias source, from the opposite side

(Floyd Patterson)
"He was the most determined heavyweight I have ever seen in my life. That man got in the ring and there was no way he was going to lose... Determination is based in the mind. How far can you go? What is your limit? With Marciano there was no limit."

(May 12, 1952 issue of Quick "Rocky Marciano: Is he a 'Bum'?")
"MARCIANO: Ring Riddle
The hardest working, most promising heavyweight in the ring today is the Brockton, Mass., block-buster, Rocky Marciano. Yet, at a time when fight fans desperately sought a new idol, Marciano still hadn't convinced them he was championship material.
One big reason is that in the ring, although his style is exciting, Marciano is a brawler- and few brawlers have achieved greatness.
Still unbeaten, Marciano has compiled an amazing string of victories, beating such "name" heavyweights as former world champion Joe Louis, Rex Layne, and Lee Savold....
...his famed left hook and right cross should make him the most feared puncher in the ring today.
With the experts, Marciano is rated no "bum", but a potential champion who might, with a little more seasoning, become truly great."

(Jack Dempsey, interviewed in the 1953 fall edition of Fight magazine)
"What everyone forgets is that Marciano can punch harder with a right hand than any modern-day heavyweight. In his first fight with Walcott, Rocky needed only one blow to win the title. The power in his right scrambled Jersey Joe's brains at Chicago."
"I've scored my share of knockouts along the way, but more often than not my opponents got up after being knocked down and had to be knocked down repeatedly. The same is true of Joe Louis. But Marciano needs only one solid smash and it's all over. That's why I say Rocky Marciano is the hardest-hitting heavyweight champion I have seen."

(Gettysburg Times - Sep 20, 1955)
"Heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano's awesome, meat-grinder destruction of gallant, ancient Archie Moore in one of boxing's great battles may have been the invincible Brockton Blaster's last fight.
This was the one the indomitable rock from Brockton wanted to win the most wanted to win more than any other since he knocked the crown off Jersey Joe Walcott's head three years ago in Philadelphia. And he won it in the typical fashion with a relentless, bulldozing attack that smashed Archie's defenses with a knockout in 1:19 of the ninth round.
Now, with the light heavyweight king out of the way, there were no more worlds for boxing's Caesar to conquer and he mulled over retirement...
... A great champion
To 51,574 spectators at Yankee Stadium and to millions who saw and heard the fight by modern communication, the well named "Rock" established himself as one of the game's greatest champions."

(Doc Kearns, The Ring, Dec. 1952: Marciano Another Dempsey?)
"Marciano hits harder than Jack Dempsey did"


An extra that wasnt from Rocco's specific championship time frame but is still relevant to the discussion, especially to a certain someone else's thread:

(Ferdie Pacheco)
"He was chastised by the press every time he fought as being a Neanderthal, no concept of boxing, who was going to get beat as soon as he got in with someone who could box, who was gonna make him look silly…It took a long time for the boxing scribes to realize they were in the presence of sheer power."

 

They won't even give us that, some like to argue with us that he was a relatively weak attrition puncher whom only won because his opponents were so ungodly bad that his completely untalented and "having no outstanding physical traits" (a literal word for word quote by Pat M) boxing was able to defeat them

Every time a thread meant to bolster Marciano's credibility and legacy, they have to go on it and call him a small attrition puncher and retort the same rhetoric. It makes me sick, ive begun to laugh at it. It makes me not want to post Marciano content at all. I have 3 different writeups/news articles involving Marciano that I wanna post, so I wait for the heat to die down, but it doesnt, every time we go a few days without a controversial Marciano thread, someone has to make "Marciano vs (Modern Fighter)"

I mean look at this, he's responding to a comment that was tagging Seamus with rhetoric against Marciano for absolutely no reason.... It has nothing to do with my post, it doesn't debunk anything I said, it's just an assortment of negative quotes dug up for some reason or another (to hate on Marciano). The Joe Louis quote wasn't even negative, it's just out of context ffs.

Sorry for the long rant

 

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I don't believe I said Ali said Marciano would beat him, only that Marciano had the only chance to, in Ali's mind. Ali always highly regarded Marciano's h2h abilities

"Ali watched the film of Rocky's epic first title fight against Jersey Joe Walcott. 'He'd be hell to fight,' he said. 'It wouldn't be no fight- it would be a war.'" -from unbeaten.

I said he was regarded by some, when did I say boxing historians? They were too busy still overrating Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey at the time

World Boxing 1974 Readers Poll
Joe Louis
Jack Dempsey
Rocky Marciano
Jack Johnson
Muhammad Ali
Joe Frazier
Gene Tunney
Jim Jeffries
Sonny Liston
Ezzard Charles

Quite highly regarded in his time.