One of my favourite fighters coming out of my homecountry Germany. Rocky was born in Duisburg in 1963 to an Italian father and a German mother. He grew up in Duisburg but later moved to Berlin and nowadays he lives in duisburg again. Before turning pro he worked as an industiral cleaner. As disciplined as he was inside the ring, outside of it he had no discipline at all. He was sentenced to quite a few jail sentences due to assault - he punched a Taxi driver once who was disrespectful - damage to property and driving without a license. He also is known to have good relationship to the bottle. In 2006 he opened his Gym in Duisburg called Rocky´s gym. He has a brother Ralf Rocchigiani who was also a pro and WBO cw champion. As an amateur he had over 120 fights and was able to win the German jmw title in 1982. He was a southpaw with a peek-a-boo defence - similar to Winky Wright - very disciplined, good tactician, good stamina - fought a part of his career in the 15 round era - very accurate with only average power but a good chin - he was only stopped once against one of the top2 lhws of his time while he was quite past it himself - and a good workrate. Due to his defence, workrate, stamina and good chin he was very hard to beat. He turned pro 1983 at age 20 at mw and built quickly a good record. In his 14th fight he won the German mw title but never defended it, only 4 fights later he won the German lhw title but never defended that one either. Both titles were stepping stones on his way up to becoming a legit world level contender. In his 24th pro fight, aged 25 he fought for is first title in 1988. The IBF smw title and won it by beating the American Vincent Boulware. He defended it three times - inclusive the last 15 round smw title bout - and than moved up to lhw. In his 31st fight he won the European lhw title against Crawford Ashley and retained his unbeaten record. In his 36th fight he lost the first time when he challenged Chris Eubank for his WBO smw title in 1994. Three fights later he fought Frederic Seillier of France for the european smw title but just managed to get a draw. In his next fight, his 40th, he fought his biggest up to date against the symbol of the German Reunion Henry Maske and got badly screwed. He dhould have won the IBF lhw title but was robbed - that fight was a robbery and no close fight imo, he even knocked down Maske in the late rounds but the ref didn´t count it. He fought Maske again in his next fight but got clearly outboxed. He fought a filler between this one and his challenge for his next big fight against the man at lhw: Dariusz Michaelchweski. He was beating DM, ahead on two scorecards when he hit DM after the break command of the ref and DM clearly acting as if he was badly hurt - which is just a joke, DM is known to have an iron chin and Rocky only had average power at best. The fight was ruled a technical draw but later changed to a DQ of Rocky. So, he got screwed again in a big fight. After that he stayed busy by winning a decision against John Scully and was matched with Michael Nunn for the vacate WBC lhw title. In a good fight he beat Michael Nunn by SD in his 45th pro fight. Shortly after he won it he was first downgraded from champion to interim champion and than was stripped to award the title to Roy Jones while Rocchigiani became his mandatory. Jones didn´t want to fight him, and Rocky even went to court but the fight still never happened. Nevertheless Rocky was successful in another courtroom by sueing the WBC and getting 31 million Dollar for his damages. Another court gave him his WBC title bakc but only from the Nunn to the second DM fight. Thanks to this disaster and this confuse situation he was inactive for 2 years and then fought the rematch against DM while beeing quite past it and got beaten clearly. Over a year later he tried to comeback but went back into retirement when he looked lackluster against a mediocre opponent, also he still won. He was brought back from retirement 2 years later and was matched with German lhw hope Thomas Ulrich but lost a wide UD and it was visible that he was just there to collect some money. He finished with a record of 48 fights, 41 wins, 6 losses and 1 draw. He won the IBF smw and WBC lhw title and was unsuccessful in 5 tries for worldchampionship belts also he was screwed and 2 of those. He was a top contender at smw and lhw for over two years and beat quite a few good names. He was only the third German world champion after Max Schmeling and Eckhard Dagge. Despite not having the big TV stations and promoters behind him like his ravals Maske and DM, he still had a big fanbase and was people´s fighter, especially with the blue-collar. He´s mostly known today for his win over the WBC in the courtoom what nearly leaded to the insolvency of this organisation. Well, what´s you oppinion of him. How would he do in other era´s?
I always liked the guy as well. He was definately one of those ---who needs this guy?---type of opponent and never got the big paydays in big money bouts. Like Jones for example. I thought it was one of Eubanks finest ring performances and a bout where he definately came in at 100%. And an opponent had to come in at 100% when they signed to fight Rocchigiani. I thought when Manny Steward trained him for that Dariusz bout that his career was going to improve. But during that timeframe, there were tons of matches that were never made & we the fans suffered for it. Michalczewski was a tough opponent at that time & I'm sure Steward would've preferred someone else & wait a little bit for Michalczewski. I always thought it was a real loss for us boxing fans when so few of the American fighters==with or without belts==refused to take their act on the road. Then again, very very few american fighters have ever travelled well whenever it came time for them to fight in the other guys backyard. That's one helluva timeframe when you combine the Maske/Dariusz title reign & there would've been more money on the table from the german promoters than the paltry amounts those guys got from America. Aside from Jones of course. We've seen that a southpaw with boxing skills and a good chin has trouble getting those kinds of matchups that display their skills. Almost always, that's the guy that is avoided and it's a big problem. And we, the boxing fans, suffer the most.
I've always said Rocky was the light-heavyweight Winky Wright - or perhaps Winky was the jr. middleweight Rocchigiani? Not only did Rocky have a similar style as Winky, but he was also a notoriously tough and difficult fighter, and was very much feared/avoided by the other top fighters in and around his division. I think Eubank's win over an unbeaten Rocky in Rocky's homeland was Eubank's defining moment. I didn't think Eubank could pull it off. Also like Winky, Rocky often did just enough to fall short in his biggest fights. I didn't see his first fight with Maske as a robbery, I thought Maske outboxed/outworked him through most of the middle rounds. The one-sided scores for Maske were definite BS, however. Rocky was definitely robbed against Dariusz, that should've been a TKO in his favor. He wobbled Dariusz several times and was clearly schooling him when Dariusz basically quit. The referee also lost control of the match and allowed Dariusz to butt and wrestle Rocky, and then basically DQ'd Rocky when he retaliated. The whole incident with Roy was BS too. I'm glad that Roy and the WBC got exposed on those shenanigans.
