floyd patterson vs rocky marciano in 1956

It's hard to figure how people would do against Patterson. He was a very modern looking fighter. In his early matches he was one of the most aesthetically pleasing fighter's ever he looked like few that came before him. People just mention his chin but he could move so beautifully I think he was underrated myself. I often wondered this result....I just don't know the answer.

 

I agree, Patterson almost certainly would not have been his opponent. I was referring to this part of your post. "Opponent # 50 would have been someone pretty underwhelming, such as Pastrano or Jackson, and it would likely have drawn a disappointing gate." I see no reason he would've faced Pastrano. Pastrano wasn't in the top ten. Moore was still number one, though he'd just beaten him so he'd likely have moved onto his number 2 contender in Baker. Jackson was number 3 so he could've plausibly received a shot.

 

Rocky's back was a real problem at the time of retirement and a motivation to hang it up. Also his long-time hand problems had aged into a further factor. As to "near death" to win that goes for his training camps as well. Still, Cus D'Amato didn't think Floyd was ready for Marciano and would not have fought him but knew Rocky was ready to retire (mostly because of financial conflict) and had time to burn waiting with Floyd. It's insane to realize Floyd was fighting at super-middle #s the year before becoming heavyweight champ and with minimal difference between his walkaround and fighting weights being only 19-20 years old. In contrast by '55-'56 Rocky's walkaround weight was 205+ and that took effort as refraining from gorging on southern Italian food. But for his discipline he'd have easily ballooned to 230.

 

I think that Rocky Marciano, was as intimidating as Liston, in his own way,

His politeness was intimidating.

I have done jobs in the security sector, where I sometimes had to intimidate people, in scenarios where I would be on the losing end if I failed.

I didn't try to become Sonny Liston.

I just tried to be as unreactive and unreadable as possible.

Above all, I tried to make the person threatening me guess what I was thinking.

Marciano might have had that effect.

 

Yes opponent 50 would have been underwhelming, whoever it was.

Marciano's reign up to that point, had been defined Challengers who deserved to be there.

He had created a pile up, by beating everybody.

Baker or Jackson, what does it matter?

 

Fair.