Just finished Somebody Up There Likes Me, the book Rocky wrote in 1954 and describes his life up until a few years after his retirement. It was an amazing book filled with so many life experiences before he even gets to his boxing career. The bulk of the book is devoted to his youth with the crimes he committed and time spent incarcerated. Assuming what he wrote was accurate, he led the kind of life that was so close to living on the edge of society and getting to go from there to being the best middleweight in the world was an incredible feat. More power to him. Very good book.
I read it many years ago, just as I was really getting into the sport. The only thing I remember was that part where he's talking about health and fitness, and he says something like 'When I see a guy with a *** in his mouth, I want to slap it right out of his mouth' or words to those effect. Different times.
I remember watching the movie of it with Paul Newman years ago as a midday matinee on TV. I remember I enjoyed it quite a bit. A really good story well acted and filmed.
Very good book. Better street fighter than a boxer and that's saying something considering he was a world champion
Rocky, what a personality, great spin by him said that when Marciano would come stay with him not only would he not bring any cash he didn't bring any clothes either and would stretch out all of Graziano's shirts and anything else he borrowed.
I've never read either, unfortunately, but I seem to remember that Rocky wrote a second volume, "Somebody Down Here Likes Me Too." Yep, just checked on Amazon. It's there.