When you read the early reports about Marciano it makes you wonder how he became champ and remained undefeated. His trainer Charley Goldman was quoted as calling Marciano "totally inept" in his first 10 pro fights. Marciano's success was down to his almost superhuman stamina, conditioning, punch power, iron chin, constant pressure and non-stop punching. People could outbox him but struggled to keep him away and eventually either crumbled or were battered into submission. As Goldman also said "A lot of people say Rocky don't look too good in there, but the guy on the ground don't look too good either." He had a point. Here we are nearly 60 years since marcianos retirement, and still no heavyweight has broken marcianos record. If it were so easy, others would have done it
He did not retire undefeated at 49-0 or better. No other fighter can make that claim aside from Marciano.
So, you are saying that Marciano had better career planning than Chavez and Willie Pep. I can agree with that. The Rock should receive a Career Planning Greatness Award.
No. He went through his entire career without losing. Spinning it in the fashion you are doing it implies that you are doing whatever possible to discredit Marciano. There is no career planning in boxing. He beat the legit hwt champion and beat all of the major top contenders. He retired undefeated. That's it. No one before or since has accomplished this and it is one of Boxings great accomplishments I don't know any truly good historian that would attempt to spin this achievement the way you are trying to spin it. Not a very honest way to look at it BTW.
But several could have done exactly the same thing by retiring at the correct time. Marciano's stay at the top was very brief. He didn't really graduate from the NE club circuit until 1951, 35 fights into his career. 14 fights and 4 years later he was done. He was kind of the Marty Jakubowski of his day.
Seamus your sight is so tainted with hatred that your post drips from it. Rocky beat them all and retired undefeated and in the process beat the champion and all top rated contenders. Not respecting this achievement is a huge black eye for you. You are in a very small minority with not only this but most of your twisted beliefs.
It was and still remains an impressive feat. Regardless of what you think of a person's opposition or their path to greatness, retiring undefeated is hard as hell and 49 fights is no small number.. He overcame a size disadvantage in a number of cases and constantly faced boxers of all varying styles and skills. The criticisms concerning the age of his opponents and their origins in other divisions are valid to some degree, but I won't pretend that some of those guys weren't still highly competitive. Would Marciano have achieved the same accomplishment in say the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 2000' or even prior to his day in a decade like the 30's? Who knows? I'm guessing probably not. But for whatever his shortcomings are, he made the very best of what he had to work with and that's what true champions do.
Seamus likes Marciano a lot. Don't let him fool you. He just doesn't think Rocky could put on 1lb without turning into a beached whale and doesn't think he can compete with super heavyweights. But Seamus has gone on record saying NO ONE under 200lb in history beats Marciano
