Anyone read Mike Stanton's new book on Marciano, "Unbeaten"?

Good head's up. Hadn't heard of it, but I checked my local library and they just ordered it for me from another library

 

Yes, stuff like that was all the more remarkable really.

 

Just think how Tommy Burns must've felt...

I've heard that Marciano was a talented street fighter since the beginning, so maybe it wasn't too far a stretch for them

 

Well the story came from an official document, a mug shot photo is supplied proving he was sentenced, and his commanding officer was more scathing of Rockys worth as a soldier in comparison to the accomplice in the crime murphy who appeared more of the leader.

There are a lot of unsatisfactory army records of boxers who served in the war, I’m thinking specifically of Rocky Graziano and Tommy Farr, but Rocky wasn’t even a boxer then. He was a civilian with a clean record.

 

That's what the story felt like, the other person stated it and Marciano just went along.

Marciano was described as a moral figure later on, so I'm sure that gave him a good lesson lol

 

Yeah, it appears Rocky was a always bit of an urchin who ran with the tough guys. There were a few more scrapes (even into his boxing career) than the legend lets us believe. The army was a wake up call from a sheltered life of delusion where he had been a big shot in the play ground.

He was a high school jock who dropped out of school to peruse a baseball career that he hoped might pan out after the shameful blot on his army record. Boxing was his last hope that he could be a star at something that took him away from laying paving slabs on sidewalks and digging the ditches that he thought he was somehow above doing.

Having said all that, it’s taken an awful long time to find this dirt on him. There is a heck of a lot more evidence that marciano worked extremely hard to successfully and commendably reinvent himself.

 

I agree. The commanding officer described Rocky prior to the event as an already untrustworthy, worthless soldier who had misbehaved as much as anyone can without actually getting court marshalled. The other guy murphy was seen as having the makings of a good soldier but whom had become a bully and domineering character among the other soldiers.

Reading between the lines I assume Rocky and Murphy were the toughest two guys in the regiment who had likely teamed up together (as tough guys often do) in order to make things easy for themselves. The two of them knowingly left their tents on the eve of a mission overseas (that they had trained for with men who unlike them actually went into action) to go into town and rob a civilian.

The money stolen (£24 at a time when there was four dollars to the pound) was not chicken feed during the war and the sentencing was justifiably serious. Seven and ten years initially!

 

Also accounting for inflation, assuming £24=$100, that'd be $1400 in today's money

Would've actually been a good take, had they not gotten caught...

 

Yes it would. I’m wondering what the civilian thought he was doing inviting two G.I’s to his lodgings at that time of the evening?

Maybe if they hadn’t got caught the two of them might have went on the run? They were supposed to be going overseas in the morning.

 

I'd rather not assume that about my favorite hero/inspirational figure in life lol

 

Agreed!

 

https://www.theday.com/article/20180716/ENT02/180719545
Published July 16. 2018 11:13AM | Updated July 16. 2018 3:52PM

By Tim Cotter Day staff writer

This content is protected

tcotter_theday
When Mike Stanton was researching what would become "The Prince of Providence," his riveting book about mayor-turned-felon Buddy Cianci, he learned that Cianci's father used to take him to the fights at the old Rhode Island Auditorium. One of the headliners in those days, the 1940s, was Rocky Marciano, the heavyweight from Brockton, Mass.

"I was drawn to that colorful world of vice and virtue that embodied Buddy’s life — in Rocky’s case, the inspirational triumphs in the ring fused with the corruption that engulfed boxing and typified Providence, the Mafia capital of New England," Stanton said in an email interview last week. "Buddy and Rocky were both larger than life, and operated in corrupt environments."

Stanton, a former Providence Journal reporter who now teaches journalism at UConn, will sign his newest book, "Unbeaten: Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World," Wednesday at Bank Square Books in Mystic. He answered a few questions for The Day.

Q. What was Marciano's place in a sport that, at the time, captured the attention and the imagination of the world?

A. Rocky was the heavyweight champion at a time in America when that crown carried real weight. Everybody knew who you were, and you were on a first-name basis with presidents, celebrities and movie stars. Boxing rivaled baseball as America’s pastime, with smoke-filled arenas like Madison Square Garden teeming with a Damon Runyon cast of characters. Rocky was 49-0, history’s only unbeaten heavyweight champ, and one of its fiercest punchers. His explosive right was nicknamed the Suzie Q. I even found outtakes from a Beatles recording session in which Paul McCartney and John Lennon joked about Rocky’s conditioning.

Q. All good "sports" books have universal themes that transcend the world of sports. What's in the Marciano book that will interest non-boxing fans?

A. This is not just a book about boxing, but a story about a changing America in the middle of the 20th century, a Golden Age of optimism and prosperity when everybody dreamed of being a contender and immigrants and minorities sought acceptance and assimilation in the ring. Rocky grew up in the anti-immigrant 1920s, came of age during the Great Depression, boxed in the Army during World War II and fought his way to the top of a brutal, Mafia-controlled sport in the 1950s, a decade that David Halberstam wrote was “captured in black and white.” In retirement, Rocky wandered through the kaleidoscopic 1960s, fighting his own demons and searching for his place in a changing world. That quest ended tragically when he died in a plane crash in the summer of 1969, on the eve of his 46th birthday. He had delayed a trip home to fly to Iowa in a small private plane as a favor to a mobster pal.

Q. Marciano's story is well-known. Did you find anything that surprised you and will be new to readers?

A. I uncovered a lot of great new stories about Rocky, including his friendship with Frank Sinatra, his ties to mobsters, a barroom brawl in Providence with a Brown football player who grew up to own the Chicago Blackhawks, attempted fixed fights and his trip to the Playboy mansion with a Catholic priest. But two stories stand out. One was my discovery that Rocky was court-martialed while serving in the Army in England just before D-Day for the robbery and assault of two British civilians. I obtained never-before-seen records documenting his case, including time in a military prison, and traced how that led him to stay in the Army after the war and launch his boxing career on an Army team at Fort Lewis, Washington. The other surprise I found involved his unexpected friendship with Muhammad Ali. The two bonded in Miami in 1969 while filming a “computer fight,” when Ali was suspended from boxing and facing prison for refusing to fight in Vietnam. Ali’s wife and Rocky’s brother described to me how Rocky and Muhammad spoke of visiting America’s riot-torn ghettos to preach racial harmony. Tragically, Rocky died a few weeks later — Ali’s wife said it was the only time she saw Muhammad cry.

Q. The title mentions "a crooked world." Boxing has long had a reputation of cigar-smoking thugs making back-room deals. Was the corruption worse than we think?

A. Shady characters have always gravitated towards boxing. But as television exploded after World War II and boxing became lucrative TV entertainment, I found that the Mafia took institutional control of the sport through a notorious mobster and former Murder Inc. hitman named Frankie Carbo – known as the “underworld commissioner of boxing.” Carbo controlled Rocky’s manager and orchestrated fixed fights involving Jake LaMotta, among others. Rocky chafed under the mob rule, but also understood it was a necessary evil to his reaching the top. Hence my subtitle: “Rocky Marciano’s Fight for Perfection In A Crooked World.”

Q. There's a tribute to Marciano of some kind in Wilcox Park in Westerly, which confuses people because, other than a fight in the Armory, he has no connection to the town. Was he, like DiMaggio, seen by Italian-Americans, no matter where they lived, as "one of ours?

A. Italian-Americans loved Rocky. Rocky visited Westerly for a testimonial dinner after he
retired, and was feted by the city’s large Italian-American population. Even the wise guys took pride in Rocky. When he visited dying mob boss Vito Genovese in prison, Genovese told him, “You, Rocky, have made us all proud.”

Q. Marciano fought all over New England. Did you find any Connecticut connections?

A. Rocky fought the forgettable Harold “Kid” Mitchell at the Hartford Auditorium on March 20, 1951. What made his lone Connecticut fight memorable was that he had planned to go easy on Mitchell and let the fight go eight or nine rounds so he could work on some ring techniques. But when Mitchell hit some scar tissue over Rocky’s left eye in the second round, Rocky went crazy and knocked Mitchell down three times in the next few minutes until the referee stopped the fight. But my favorite Connecticut story involves the night in 1952 that Rocky beat Jersey Joe Walcott for the title in Philadelphia. Two of Rocky’s sisters, entrusted with the bloody glove that KO’d Walcott, were driving home through Connecticut late that night when the police, searching for two women prison escapees, stopped their car. The officers were skeptical when the women said they were Rocky’s sisters, until they showed them the glove. Impressed, the officers let them continue on home to Brockton. This was a story I heard from Rocky’s relatives, and which hadn’t been published before.

 

It took me a while to find out where the Hartford Auditorium was. I had to ask a 50 year veteran Hartford cop and he told me. Pep used to fight there as well. There's a couple of old boxing photos inside, but other than that you would never guess what it once was.
331 Wethersfield Ave
https://goo.gl/maps/nRpgq6j1Rz72

 

I got the book yesterday, going to try to start reading today if get the chance .Looking forward to it .