How would Marciano have fared in the 60`, 70`s, 80`s, 90`s or present day at heavyweight?

He would have lost.

 

He ascended into Olympus as soon as that plane augered into the ground. He sits at the right hand of Zeus. He shags Aphrodite nightly. He slapped Ares who didn't say sh1t about it. Hercules brings him his breakfast....two eggs overeasy but not runny. Dude is a god; deal with it.

 

If you said this directed toward Dempsey, you’d be called a hater

 

It could have been way worse had he destroyed a retired boxer/full time rodeo cowboy to win his world title.

 

Of course. Not a fair comparison. He should be compared against men his own size

 

as years go by it gets harder and harder. Bigger guys. He retired at the right time. I think he could do ok with Patterson, but Liston would have probably destroyed him.

 

This.

I'd give Marciano a good chance against even the giants of the division like Joshua and Wilder. (Actually I think he'd bust Wilder up.) I'd go so far as to favour him against the smaller specimens. But could he keep it up fight after fight where every guy has a puncher's chance and every guy outweighs him by 30lb? I doubt it. Another problem might well be that the shorter distance would work against him, since he often did his best work late, when the other guy simply couldn't keep up. His face first approach would be problematic in a division where the skill level might be lower than Moore, Charles etc but where the fighters aren't looking to outbox him, they're looking to accommodate his style and impose their weight advantage.

All that said, he'd be at cruiser today, and that's a division that I would pick him over everybody except Usyk who is an outlier and who might outbox him.

 

Don Turner whom a couple on here say is an excellent trainer, says Holyfield bulking up did not help him at all.

 

A plain, honest, commonsense post that will be castigated by the Rockista's.

 

Why? It seems like a fair enough post to me. And I like Marciano a lot.

 

Dempsey liked his eggs hard.

 

As to why ? Hero worship.

 

His limitations would likely cost him against Ali, Holmes, Lewis or Wlad, but there hasn't been many big heavyweights that good. I think he'd be a top contender in any era.

Hell Henry Cooper was able to do against Ali, he was no bigger. Or how about Spinks, Moorer, Toney, Byrd. Do people think these guys were so much better than Rocky that they could work with size differences he couldn't?

While being smaller is for sure overall a disadvantage, it does have some advantages. Rocky would be comparitively faster and less clumsy than against who he actually fought, they couldn't fight at the workrate that he fought at. I mean what heavys now have the skills of Charles or Walcott?

 

Ali was 207 against Cooper how much do the current top ten weight?
Rocky would never be fast,even against someone like Valuev. I'm getting a bit Rocked out now, could we perhaps focus on another fighter just for a change?

 

The question was going back to the 60's though. I also have a hard time thinking any of the current crop would beat a prime or near prime Ali, let alone a good number of them. They all just have too many big limitations.

Holyfield competed just fine at similar weights in the 90's too.