[Clip] Rocky Marciano non stop pressure power punching on Lee Savold

It worked.
He was the most successful of his time.
He did something that worked.
I’m trying to help identify what that is.

Boxing isn’t WWE.
Success is incredibly difficult, it isn’t written in the script.

You must come to terms with Rocky Marciano having been a tremendous boxer. And you must be able to explain it without using glib statements that aim to reduce him to amateurish proportions. Or else you’re not really grounded in reality. And I think every single one of us knows that in our hearts.

Some people are fans of certain fighters, and some people have a distaste for certain fighters.

Like Wass said. When watching Rocky, you either see a brilliant pressure fighter who can balance the tasks of keeping the distance closed, keeping the tremendous power punches up, and keeping the damage flowing with extraordinary ability using detailed skills and tactics in between, or you see a guy that swings his body into punches and throws round houses with his eyes closed in hopes of landing big.

Personally, what I see in the film is clearly the former. I’ve provided many examples of Rocky using tricky, subtle techniques in fights that point to a very high boxing IQ. And I will continue to provide those examples in the future.

 

For some reason Rocky has his own set of standards for Boxing.

Lennox Lewis can fall over while whiffing in the air, throw some seriously goofy looking punches, and plod throughout the fight in sloppy fashion, but is lauded, justifiably, when he lands a straight right that rocks someone’s skull back, as a masterful boxer.

Makes no sense.
It’s the result of Boxiana story telling.
The story telling nature behind the sports history creates different standards of “good and bad” in place of accurate and consistent means of measurements.

We’re used to these boxing documentaries of past legends where they are the hero, and all the other boxers are notable bums. And that trickles into the consciousness of fans when that is what we are typically bombarded with.

There were no documentaries on Rocky. No cool ones at least. They’re all about spaghetti and meatballs it seems. Completely unrelatable stuff in comparison to the geopolitical adventures of Ali, Louis, and Johnson. Rocky has always been that white guy from the 50’s who was exactly the kind of fighter that Ali was a stark contrast to.

These stories had their place and value. No doubt about that. But we have moved beyond that, and are in a world where we also like to judge boxers on their boxing, not just the backstory. You have to take a Kellerman esque approach to to analyzing the old time stuff. And with better access to higher quality footage, this is becoming more feasible than ever.

We can get down to the brass tracks.
Want to compare the amount of canvas covered per round by Marciano versus Holyfield, Lewis, and Wlad?
Or the amount of punches thrown, landed, or the ratio of accuracy?

I am super down for that.
Because I am extremely confident that the results will yield vindicitive results for Rocky.

 

Lastly, I’d like to pose this question one last time, that seemingly keeps getting avoided. However, I think it encapsulates everything I am trying to say perfectly:

Is Rocky Marciano slower than Murat Gassiev? And if the answer is no, do you believe Gassiev suffers, or will suffer a stigma of being a slow fighter?