David Tua vs. Rocky Marciano.

Then why is Marciano excluded from the list? What about 210 Evander Holyfield

Power effective up to 30lb? So you want me to believe that..You think Evander Holyfield at 190lb couldn't take Lennox Lewis,245lb, shot like he did at 215..There are exceptions to this rule,Marciano clearly is,Holyfield,Tyson,Holmes

Don't assume anything, he clearly states GGG punched harder, but your logic makes that impossible,every 250lb beats 200lb HW..Why can Wladimir hurt Byrd a lot harder then his brother Vitali? You are categorizing every fighter with the weight argument and there's no exception to the rule..ye right

 

Greb was not a pressure fighter!!!atsch

I have heard it all now!

hmmm i wonder why there wasnt a Windmill willie pep? or windmill ray robinson?

 

Pressure fighters are either swarmers (close range) or high-volume sluggers (mid-range). Greb was neither.

 

So despite everything ever written about harry greb being a "highly agressive fast puncher who burried his opponents under a blizzard of blows" he was not a high volume windmill?:nut


fancy....

 

Because we have a cruiser class for 190 pound fighters. Also, Marciano isn't just light, he's physically small. His reach and height would give him ridiculous problems trying to fight someone tall who could box him outside like say Ali. He might beat some guys who are 6'1 or even 6'2" but I don't really see him beating guys like Foreman, Dokes, Holyfield, Ruddock, Norton, Thomas, in their primes. Great power at 190 is average power at 220 and I don't think he could wobble them.

I think he could take some of the more chinny 6'3" guys who could be knocked out by average power and a lucky punch. I think there are weak 6'3" guys who can't punch hard enough to knock Marciano out. And I think there are clumsy inexperienced fighters who would fall victim to Marciano's skill or persistence. But I don't think he beats any really great fighters that size or above. That's his ceiling.

What a great modern cruiserweight does now is build up a good rep fighting other cruiserweights, and then pick off the weaker heavyweights. This is well within the Rock's power to do, but he'd not be one of the top heavyweights of any era after the fifties.

 

Small but big boned. Moore had a modern physique and same size.

Who succesfully outboxed Marciano and won? No one. If he could be easily outboxed as you suggest he would not have gone 49-0. Wladimir couldn't even beat washed up Sanders,Rookie Purrity and journeymen Brewster, not great fighters yet still managed to easily beat Wladimir.

If you say there are average power and chinny guys at 6'3 250lb then you must accept that some 180-190lbs can hit and take punishment above their weight.. eg, Wladimir can't take a punch ANYTHING like a 210lb Evander Holyfield yet Evander Holyfield cant throw a straight right or jab like Holyfield but 220lb George Foreman does better than them both.

As for your last example, how does Evander Holyfield go from a 188lb cruiserweight to a 210lb HW and become one of the best heavyweights to ever grace the ring,22lbs cannot make that much of a difference to his style so it wasn't his size but his.... his very similar qualities to Marciano.

 

The irony is that Marciano probably fought the most disagreeable fighters, stylistically, and yet he overcame all of them.

Give him a bigger target and he'll prove more hazardous.

That many picking Tua can't even allude to the possibility of a Marciano win smacks of a crude bias; enamoured by poundage, dismissive of older eras.

Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis; are these men similarly doomed?

 

He was, but that doesn't mean he was pressuring his opponents. He preferred to get to mid-range for long enough to throw several punches, then get away quickly (to long range) to avoid a counter. I don't know why his name even came up related to Marciano. It is difficult to find more different fighters than these two.

 

Meaningless question. Marciano is the size of an average LHW in the ring today. How many light heavies with face-first mauler styles do you see storming the heavyweight ranks?

Holmes and Foreman have nothing to do with Marciano. They are both much bigger men.

If you believe that, you need to be institutionalized. Seek help. Now.

 

Are you claiming that Ruiz's chin was regional level and then magically became world class further down the line after being shattered to smithereens by Tua?

It's easier to knock out smaller men in small gloves. There can be individual exceptions to the rule, but in general, that's the way it is. Deal with it, codger.

Because Marciano has Chris Byrd's style and defense?

Which one of Tua's opponents was a face-first undersized mauler? You're trying to claim that since Tua didn't beat Lennox Lewis and Chris Byrd, that he wouldn't beat Marciano, but that doesn't make sense because these are very different fighters with different styles.

 

He came in 188lbs,12lbs under current HW limit but because of this he cannot take a punch from a modern puncher but Evander Holyfield can put on 22lbs and because of that take the bombs of Bowe,Tyson,Lewis? Don't think so.

Yes but they came up in a "weaker" punchers era and took the best shots which other younger,heavier,modern athletes could not. You can't take on lesser punchers,walk into a modern era which you say is the strongest and take the best shots and survive let alone win the Lineal and HW title because you have an extra 20-30lb of fat

Holmes was 240/50 and it was all FAT and he was OLD. Can't you see how ridiculous you sound BTW if that's the case than every 240lb whether its muscle or fat should be able to take a punch from a opponent who weigh much less..that's not the case.

He said it. Seek help

 

Right, and Moore was a light heavyweight.

Brian Nielsen went 49-0. Floyd Mayweather has retained his 44-0 by consistently ducking his most difficult competition. You put too much stock in the 0 and act like someone with one is unbeatable when what it really means is they haven't been tested. Even Ali, Louis, and Ray Robinson lost sometimes.

But he avenged his loss to Brewster, fixed his style, and hasn't lost again in 9 years. He's fought 63 times now, 25 title fights to Marciano's 7, 21 different contenders to Marciano's 5. Pre-2005 Wladimir had a defensive flaw. Now that flaw is gone and he's a much better fighter. You're still judging him on his earlier incarnation instead of what he became.

Some people punch above their weight like Jack Dempsey who hit like a 220 lb heavyweight. Earnie Shavers was only six feet tall 210 pounds but he hit like he was much larger. Holyfield and Ali could take more punishment than their weight suggested. But of course, there are limits. Holyfield was knocked out by Bowe after all, and Chuvalo was stopped by Foreman and Frazier. I think power is a little like punch resistance. Great power and punch resistance becomes average power and punch resistance 30 pounds above your natural size.

If the biggest guys in the division are 6'6" and 245 you'll have to be at least 6'3" and 215 to handle them. If the biggest and best guys in your division are 6'3" 215 pounds you only need to be 6' and 195 pounds to handle them. Marciano was lucky to be living in a time where the best guys were 6'0" 190 and a 5'10" guy could handle them. 6'2" Joe Louis would have squashed him in under 6 rounds in his prime. 6'1" Max Schmeling would have walked all over him. Max Baer would have shown him what real power was.

The short answer is he stops cutting weight, grows into his frame, lifts some weights and puts on a little muscle. If he hadn't put on that extra weight the big superheavies would have bounced him around the ring and he couldn't have taken the blows as well. Just look at Bob Foster.

Bob Foster had the same measurements. He had the height, the reach, the power, but he'd go up against heavyweights weighing 180 or 190 pounds and get knocked out. Zora Folley outweighed him by 30 pounds, beat him up. Joe Frazier outweighed him 21 pounds, knocked him out. Ali outweighed him by 41 pounds, toyed with him for awhile, and then knocked him out. Bob Hazelton outweighed him 39 pounds and knocked him out. It starts to become a pattern after awhile.

Then along comes Michael Spinks 6'2 1/2" 76" reach. Puts on some weight and beats an old past prime Larry Holmes, partly because he managed to get within 20 pounds of the man. If Bob Foster had been smart about his weight training he might have been a lot more competitive against Ali.

 

Another point I will make is that the average size of heavyweights, has not consistently increased since 1900. There were actually a lot more big heavyweights in the 1920s and 1930s, than there were in the 1950s and 1960s, as Ovids Exile has already hinted at