Contemporary Evaluations of Marciano

That very sentence alone should be enough to make you question the rest of the article!

 

It doesn’t matter what his skill level or ability was like.
He got the job done.
End of.

 

Tell me then, do you think that the giants of the 20s were better than Marciano or Charles?

You have been very critical of Gene Tunney for example.

 

Fair call.

 

Everybody knows you hate the guy. What inside you makes you have to constantly make threads to put him down? Stalking the dead? Necrophilia maybe?

 

Marciano's, Charles, and Walcott's certainly have.Boxing Illustrated did a heavyweight champion ranking in the early 1960's Charles and Walcott came out as; "stick a pin in the middle,not the best and not the worst 2.Marciano was somewhere abouts no 9 if I remember correctly.Of course this is before Ali,Holmes,Foreman,Frazier,Lewis Holyfield,Bowe.

 

Plenty of fighters have been unorthodox but still been credited with skills.Locche,Ali,Jones,Mayweather,etc.
I've Ring magazines from the early 50's nobody then mentioned Rocky and skill in the same sentence,unless they were referring to his opponent.Did all those writers eg
WC Heinz,A J Leibling,Bob Waters,Red Smith,Jimmy Cannon,Arthur Daly,not know what they were talking about/watching?

 

Well you can’t pick and choose. Even EMmanuel in the latest video was crediting Marciano with being a smart tricky fighter (Archie as well). Plus how does Marcianos defensive stats come into play? How is one so unskilled so adept at avoiding being hit? How was someone so “off balance” able to knock out so many opponents and not be knocked down himself? The math doesn’t add up. I remember what writers said about Lewis and Wlad. I’ve read what men thought of Liston, Ali, Holmes as they were champs. These things must be taken with a grain of salt.

 

Generation bias. By their logic anybody who came before Rocky and Charles were better. I would agree with Joe Louis being one such man but some of these guys are claiming that Dempseys sparring partners were superior. If we’re going to use these opinions to conclude that Charles and Marciano “ weren’t that great “ then we’d also have to except that men in the 20’s were godlike and I’m not willing to do that

 

It goes up yes, being perceived as great only a blind man can't recognize greatness when he watches early film of Ali or Louis, Tyson was seen as becoming the next Louis a well mannered lightly spoken darling super athlete champion before his spiral to self destruction.

 

Sparring. Sparring? We're talking about sparring again. Not the fights, which "fights still excite me" but sparring. Sparring with sparring partners. Not an actual fight, but sparring.

I suppose Harry Greb would toy with Marciano like he toyed with Dempsey. In sparring. Sparring sessions. Not a real fight, but sparring.

Riiiiiiiight.

 

And by the end of his career, after the moore victory, they were heralding him as a superchamp who wiped out any and every person who could pose a threat to him, even dubbing him "boxing's Caesar"

And by the 60s people were arguing he had GOAT heavyweight status, and he was generally considered the #2 to Joe Louis lmao

 

Exactly

 

This simply isn't true. The debate was between Dempsey and Louis for number 2. Granted Rocky was in the discussion but "generally" is a bit of a reach.