Who DOESN'T Rocky Marciano beat in a H2H match?

Prime Seamus bears Allah. I caught you past your prime

 

And that's my issue with Rocky fans. They sometimes have a hard time being critical and objective. Nobody is criticizing Rocky due to the fact the best fighters of his era were past their prime, he fought who he was supposed to fight. But if a 38 year old Walcott who had been through some rough wars was the champion at the time, and some of the other contenders were also pretty worn out and past their prime (Charles, Moore, etc), it speaks to the quality of that era as a whole. Rocky is obviously strong, tough, etc, but the fact he went life and death in such an era suggests his ceiling/peak potential as a fighter h2h wasn't particularly high. Rocky would struggle with prime Walcott, let alone a prime 6'3 220+ mover with slick footwork.

 

No definitely not when Lewis retired there was some pretty weak champions aka John Ruiz for one.

 

Nothing about that is strange. I rate Frazier higher on my ATG list, but I'm not sure Frazier could ever beat Vitali with modern rules.

 

Somewhere just below average. I haven't done a comprehensive list of the various HW eras. Definitely not the worst, I'd say the current era of HW's may be one of the weakest because almost nobody is fighting each other and many contenders simply look horrible. Usyk is the exception in terms of skills and ability. The Jim Jefferies era was also pretty bad with 2 of the best heavies (Corbett and Fitz) being glorified super middleweights.

 

Yeah early 2000's post Lewis was...horrendous. You had John Ruiz, Chris Byrd, an ancient Holyfield, and James Toney as 4 of the best fighters.

Post Ali was a similar situation. You had old Norton, Young, Spinx, Shavers, Cobb, Cooney, etc. Holmes finally cleared all that up and became the top dog for a while, but it was horrible between 77-82 with a fat old Ali holding the title hostage before he finally went away.

Generally speaking, whenever a great champion retires, the next era can get pretty bad.

 

Even contemporaries considered the era weak. This is what Sharkey had to say on that matter back in 1954 (instagram post with quote):

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25 sparring partners seems a bit much. What exactly does he mean? Over the course of their whole career? In one training camp?

Rocky and Al Weil were both pretty stingy and didn't like spending money, so maybe that's why they didn't have many sparring partners.

 

He's too small for a modern heavyweight but he's still good enough to beat some quality heavyweights imo.

 

25 to prepare for a fight. I think he meant it as a the uppermost limit.
The gist of it was that there were not as many talented people fighting at the time, which might explain the dominance of the old guard during the time period.

 

Who does Rocky Marciano not beat in head to head matches?

Literally nobody.

He literally beat everybody he ever fought.

He lost an amateur match if you take any comfort from that.

We can't reasonably ask a lot more of him.

 

I personally think that Sharkey's era was stronger.

Some will disagree.

Even so, Marciano didn't loose key fights, then break down and cry for no apparent reason.