Marcel Cerdan .. Educate Me ..

Overrated for reasons explained by McGrain above and his untimely death.

 

McG nailed it imo.

 

No I'm not. Lamotta staggered cerdan and was beating him senseless in the first round when cerdan tried to clinch and Lamotta threw him to the ground. Prior to the throw, Lamotta was getting the better of him by a mile

 

So he had the guy "on the verge of a knockout" in the first round when Cerdan had no injury, then after the injury he failed to have him in the same trouble again?

People throw phrases like "on the verge of a knockout" and "almost stopped" about way too liberally.

 

LaMotta belted him from pillar to post before Cerdan got lucky and dislocated his shoulder. After this LaMotta struggled to overcome the disadvantage.

 

Yes. If Marcel had only broken his neck he might have been the first to ever knock LaMotta down. Jake dodged a bullet there and shows a boxing match hinges on the finest of margins.

 

Holman Williams and Jake LaMotta had already seen their best days and had quite a bit of wear-and-tear before they fought Marcel Cerdan. Compare the opposition that Williams, LaMotta and Cerdan faced during their careers. Compared to Cerdan, Williams and LaMotta were faced vastly superior opposition on a constant basis.

Of course, Cerdan also beat Tony Zale when the latter was far past his prime. That means much of Cerdan's reputation is based on how he fared in bouts with three fighters who had seen better days before fighting him. As a result, it is hard for me to rate Cerdan among the all-time greats in the middleweight division.

- Chuck Johnston

 

Was Cerdan better than Dauthille,or Villemain, or an older French middleweight Marcel Thil?
He certainly has an aura of glamour attached to him vis a vis his liaison with Piaf, and the song Mon Legionnaire is dedicated to him ,but his resume doesn't appear any deeper than theirs imo.

 

the guy was virtually unbeaten in over 100 fights with his losses being dsq, and injury. Today it is very easy for any fighter to build an unbeaten ring record, by viewing video of his opponents before agreeing to the fight. In the 1940s there was no viewing of videos. Marcel Cerdan was an incredible fighter.

 

LaMotta was closer to his prime than Cerdan was when they met. Cerdan was 5 years older than LaMotta.
LaMotta was 27 years old and had turned professional in 1941.
Cerdan was 32 years old.

Cerdan turned professional back in 1934. Cerdan was only a year younger than Holman Williams, and only two years younger than Tony Zale.
Williams had been professional since 1932, Zale since 1934.

 

A fighter is far more likely to sustain wear-and-tear on his body if he constantly faces tough competition rather facing less formidable opponents. As a result, to say that Jake LaMotta was closer to his prime than Cerdan when they fought each other isn't completely valid even if Cerdan was older than LaMotta. The same goes with the assertion that Holman Williams was only a year older than Cerdan.

Tony Zale had a stint in the service during World War II and really wasn't as good a fighter afterwards. Many other athletes in various sports also failed to regain their previous form after being in the service during the war.

- Chuck Johnston

 

You don't know how tough the fights were Cerdan had coming up.
Just because most the men he fought weren't top names and never developed into top fighters doesn't mean they weren't tough fights at the time.

Marcel Cerdan was aware of World War II.
Cerdan's entire prime was spent in less-than-ideal circumstances. He suffered enforced layoffs. He was in the French army fighting against the invading Germans, missing the second half of 1939 and the whole of 1940.
He missed another year 1942 to 1943 when he managed to get across to N.Africa again which was now 'liberated' and under the new Allied-friendly Free French Forces, and he was in uniform again.
Obviously the choice of opponents in the fights he did have during these tumultuous years was limited, since France, N.Africa, Italy and the entire mediterranean were not exactly conducive to normal travel arrangements.
His fights were mostly for the purposes of entertaining troops.
His career was stalled, and stagnated by the events of WW2.

 

It is possible that Marcel Cerdan was a victim of circumstances because he couldn't fight a high caliber of opposition due to World War II and where he lived, but the fact remains that his caliber of opposition was less than stellar before he went to the United States to fight.

- Chuck Johnston

 

i'm not big on cerdan but this is true.