At their prime who would win in a fight between Mike Tyson and Rocky Marciano?

I have stated at least a dozen times on this forum that I would pick Marciano head to head over any fighters from 195 (some days 190 and some days 200) on down.

But that is not enough to appease the idol makers.

 

I don't think I am. Why would I be?
Perhaps if anything the information on Marciano is richer, thus making the picture clearer for me.
Dempsey has a first round loss in a fight with no footage. I frankly cannot do as good a job there in interpreting that against or for his favor.

When someone starts on Marciano, it bands people together and they pile on.
And the threads extend for pages and pages. If Johnson was getting the same treatment, you'd really start to hate me.

Those examples are typically isolated events that don't have much life.
It's different with Rocky. Things are taken to further extremes.

 

Louis called him a street brawler, Walcott an amateur,Manny Steward said he was too small, beat old men, and had bad balance.Holmes, well we know what he said.For every positive you can find a negative ,and vice versa . Ali was complimentary to just about every champion. None of that means jack ****.

 

Lol!

 

So you think the greatest (trained down) 185lb fighter in history, who went undefeated in the heavyweight division (albeit in an era of smaller physiques) couldn't hang with the 90's HW crowd? Or beat some of the elite giants?

 

And when you weigh it all together, and it all gets balanced out, the testimonials point to him being great.

If Ali was complimentary about every champion, then there is probably a good reason why.
He didn't talk jack ****.

 

No, like other great great fighters @185lb didn´t either. Who was the last 185lb "heavyweight" who could mix it up with the 215lb fighters?
Every one of them needed to put on functional weight. Which brings Rocky into a functional dilemma.

 

They won't let a 185lb fighter fight at heavyweight today, so how can we prove the point one way or the other?

 

This match up has always struck me as a bit ridiculous. Marciano was too small. People talk about older generation heavyweights not standing chance against their modern counterparts, and get this wrong a lot of times, but in the case of Marciano v Tyson, its wouldn't even be competitive. It doesn't matter what will you have when faced with a guy bigger, stronger, faster, more skilled with every bit the killer instinct.

 

Wouldn't your first assertion, suggest that he would also beat a lot of people above 200lbs, who were good but not great?

 

Jeez so let me get this straight....Marciano, Ali, Liston, and Joe Luis suck....there is really nothing left to say to this guy lol. If four of the greatest fighters at HW suck can’t imagine if anyone is great.

 

So, Jones, Jr. v Ruiz never happened?

They would if the lighter fighter and the public thought they had a chance against an elite (not run of the mill) much larger fighter.

 

I think he would be a physical wreck in short order. He was too small, just as contended by Manny Steward. Even in victories his body would be inordinately broken down... as it was broken down by much smaller fighters/ I think the combination of his lightweight reach and utter lack of any fast twitch fiber would get him get him steamrolled too often to rise in the ranks.

Again, we just don't have a broad sample size on which to base Marciano. His 4 greatest "names" were all old fighters, fighters old in age and/or lacking tread on the tires. They were also uniformly tiny by today's standards.