Fritz Sdunek confessed in his book that Michalchewski wasn't really hurt when Rocchigiani hit him after ref O'Neil told them to break in their first fight. Michalchewski knew that he was way behind Rocky on the scorecards, so Michalchewski acted and pretended to be injured. Rocky was disqualified for that and the Tiger retained his WBO lhw title. Sdunek was Michalczewski's trainer back then and is now trainer of WBC heavyweight king Vitali Klitschko.
What´s new there? That was such an obvious acting job. Rocky got also rocked against Maske the first time and arguably beat Eubank. Together with his win over Nunn that would have made quite a resume. But, well, he stood of the "old" boxing in Germany which was part of "red light culture" and promoters and TV stations (namely RTL) wanted then to move it away from there. Rocky´s career was the one which suffered most from it.
When Hopkins talks about watching the old timers to learn from their skills, this is the fight he's referring too
Michalczeswki is crossed with Fritz Sdunek and made a statement about what Sdunek told Bild and wrote in his book. The former lightheavyweight champion told Bild "I don't know what's going on with Fritz. That's bollocks. If I had organized everything, like Fritz said, I should have been awarded a prize for that".
Rocky won but Maske got the decision. Had it 8-4 for Rocchigiani and most people I know had it the same. Of course Rocky lost the rematches against both Maske and Michaelchewski but he was very past it by then. Started his pro-career in 1983.
