Could Marciano make 168lbs if he turned pro today?

I doubt it very much, he trained his ass off to get as lean as he did. Cutting an extra 10lb would be near enough impossible imo.

 

If he started early and trained for 168 from the beginning.
Then I could see him starting in that weight class.

But hypothetically if we have a time machine and we take Rocky from 1953 or so to our time.
I don't think he would make 168 without some complications.

He may become like Roy Jones who went from around 195 extremely! lean to 175 cutting a lot of muscle weight in a short amount of time and be completely gaunt.

But I can see Rocky going to 175.
9-10 lbs isn't that much water weight and there's always some extra waste weight in your intestines that can be get out with a laxative like prunes or maybe something less legal.

With PEDs or anabolics he may be able to be cut another 1 or 2 lbs of fat, but he was already very lean. So that's more hypothetical.

If he has some corruption behind him he can easily get away with stronger diuretics like Chavez Jr.
May be able to cut off a few lbs of **** from his intestines.

 

Impossible to know.

You just don't know how he would respond to a modern training regime.

Personally I think it is highly unlikely.

Why this obsession with getting his weight as low as possible though?

He isnt a fighter who would particularly benefit from it, in terms of the weight classes available to him.

 

What do you consider more likely?

Rocky cutting water weight+laxative cutting the amount of feces in your intestines (humans have 5-25 pounds of feces in their intestines at any point) for a total adding up to 10 lbs.

Or Rocky gaining 30 pounds of muscle.

175 is much closer to the weight he fought at than 215, 220 or whatever weight I've seen people say Rocky would be at if he lived today.

 

Though there are some people who are able to get a lot of extra muscle and first sight, not even look overly bulked.

Nobuhiro Ishida has fought at 154/160 for a long while.
Against Kirkland he was 169 in the ring.

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Ishida at 200-205 pounds
[url]http://www.asianboxing.info/uploads/7/1/4/4/7144872/515305948.jpg[/url]

That's probably close to 30 pounds of muscle added.
It can happen.

But nobody is going to tell me Ishida is better at heavyweight than he was at 154/160.
His body looks functional, but at heavyweight he's nothing more than Japan level.


Marciano could bulk up, but would it be functional?
Would it be such a functional increase that he would do better against heavyweights than he would do fighting light heavies or cruisers?

Adding a lot of extra weight and expecting the same is a lot more hypothetical than betting on a 10 lbs water cut for the 175 pound limit (which in this day and age is not a big cut)

And the guys who tend to jump a lot of weight divisions as they get older.
Vlasov, Guillermo Jones, Ishida were skinny long limbed guys at the lower divisions. They weren't bulky t-rexes.

 

He could make 168 and still be 185 in the ring. I don't see why not since several MWs today is around 180 lbs in the ring. RJJ was in probably 180-185 lbs in the ring as a SMW. He said himself that he was 180 lbs in the ting when he faced Hopkins at MW, so it stands to reason he would be somewhat heavier as a SMW.

I think it's more likely that Marciano would be a LHW, but if he wanted I can't see why he couldn't make a Canelo and regularly drain 15-20 lbs before the weigh-in and then rehydrate before he went into the ring.

 

Possibly.
But it's worth noting that heavyweights of the past used to cut water and dry out a bit anyway, when they didn't need to.
For reasons unknown, pure superstition probably ; "Makes 'em meaner" kinda stuff.

Cutting weight's not rocket science, you just drinking a load more water maybe 2 - 5 days out from the contest, then reduce down to below normal water consumption in the last 48 hours or so, and you flush out loads of water that way.
It's old school as far as I know.
Saunas and sweat suits been around for years too.

 

I've read about Foreman being dehydrated.
And Joe Louis weighing in below 200 against Conn because he didn't want be seen as a much bigger fighter beating on small men.
And I don't think Louis' trainer was too happy about that.

But besides that I don't know other heavies who tried to be artificially low on the scales.

 

I also find myself questioning whether he was temperamentally suited to an extreme weight cutting regime.

He might have regarded it as being unmanly, and I don't think that he would have found the available opposition in a comfortable weight class too threatening.

How would you sell it to him?

 

Yep, this seems to have been a practice. Norton, for example, guessed that both Ali and Frazier had drained a bit in Manilla after the weigh-in, which was several days before the fight. I've also heard that Foreman used to drain down about 10 lbs in his first career. I have no reliable source for this, though.

If that's was the practice, it seems absolutely bonkers to me. Especially in places like Manilla, where you're going to dehydrate like mad in the ring anyhow.

If someone has any more info about this, please share it.

 

The selling point would be "either you drain down to at least LHW and face guys that weighs about as much as you in the ring or you're going have to face guys 20-30 lbs heavier at CW".