Could a Prime Ezzard Charles beat Marciano?

Judging this when I remember watching tapes of a prime Charles, my answer is a "No!", IMO Marciano would always beat him...

 

A Charles win is quite plausible in this scenario.

Archie Moore thought so incidentaly.

Truth is that a prime Charles would have a shot at anybody.

 

Of course, but that´s the case with every ATG, you know what I mean?

 

Just out of curiosity: Why do some guys here always pick Marciano losing on cuts? He wasn´t unimmunized for cuts...

 

:yep

 

Charles was not "coming off a few losses" when he fought Marciano. He had won 13 of his last 15 fights. He had had two losses the previous year; one to Valdes and one to Johnson. For the Valdes loss, note here that Valdes was supposed to be just another stay-busy guy you fight along the road at the time; he was more or less an unknown and no one knew he would prove to have world-class potential. Reportedly, Charles came in cold, didn't seem to have vigor for the fight and lackadaisically lost the decision. The Johnson fight was a very close split decision(to one of the best heavyweights or light heavyweights around and a future Hall-of-Famer) which many who have seen the fight felt Charles won.
And since then, Charles had rebounded with resounding knockouts over two top 10 opponents(Wallace and Satterfield).

Admittedly, Charles' career was slightly on the slide at this point, but he was far from being a shot fighter. Further, many observers considered his performance in the first Marciano fight to have been the best of his entire career, or close to it- for example, Wilfrid Smith wrote that "Charles unquestionably offered the greatest fight of his long career" against Marciano, and W.J. McGoogan of the St. Louis Dispatch wrote that Charles fought a "wonderful fight, possibly the best in his career of about seventeen years". And while there is a lot of dramatization of the Charles/Marciano fights in the lore of boxing (much of it deserved, but it sometimes gives the wrong impression), the fact is that ultimately, Marciano soundly outpointed Charles in their first fight and dominantly knocked him out (NOTE: the nose cut was a freak-of-nature occurence and consitutes nothing more than a stroke of incredibly bad luck for Marciano, and he still won nearly every round and knocked Charles out) in the rematch.

So, all-in-all, I would expect Marciano to win over Charles at any stage of the latter's career.

 

Take The Rock!....Great chin....Great stamina...a very high work rate.....
power in both hands.....never say die attitude....he's too much for a lot of fighters to overcome...never mind Charles!!!

 

..Prime Charles was about 171...a little to small...but the still great Charles at 180 would beat Marciano.

 

Marciano ended Ezzard's prime.