Marciano: in the top10 p4p on stopping ability?

Young also was a mere 7-3 when Shavers fought him. In the rematch a more experienced young outboxed shavers but shavers was lucky to get a draw. Also, didnt shavers fight Bugner in the 1980s when Bugner had to be close to 40 years of age?

 

I forgot to add that Rusty Payne, weighing 176, knocked out Lowry with a single left hook six months before Marciano faced Lowry the first time. Not only did the Lowry-Marciano fight go the distance, but Marciano appears to have lost the fight. Marciano had a second go at Lowry and again couldn't take care of business. Less than two years later Matthews, weigning 178, knocked out Lowry in 5. Lowry weighed 178 lbs and 181 lbs in these two fights. He rarely fought heavyweights north of 190lbs. He was much closer to a light heavyweight, and sometimes boxed under the light heavyweight limit. Yes, Lowry was a tough hombre in an era of small heavyweights. But he could be knocked out. Marciano couldn't get it done in two fights with the man.

 

good list mate especially Jermiane Taylor that tough guy with the heap of stamina and KO punch. they dont call him bad intentions for nothing

what about Dick Tiger

 

aussie joe fought on for a long, long time. i was amazed by his come back in the 1990's into the new millenium as he beat guys like Bob Mirovic for the Australian HW title.

 

The same can be said of many fighters. Take George Foreman for instance. Should we hold it against him that he wasnt able to knock out Peralta in their first match when Willie Pastrano was able to? How is it possible that the hardest hitting HW champion of all time wasnt able to knock out a man who lost to the feather fisted Pastrano by kayo?

 

Shavers was not a good finisher..He had Lyle, Mercado,Holmes down and got KO'd by them all he had Cobb and others hurt but could not pull the trigger...

 

He also had Young down early in their second fight and failed to put him away, and had Ali shaken to his heels, but failed to even get him down.

 

If you focus hard enough on one bad outing, particularly very early in a man's career like this one, you can defame any fighter. Obviously this particular match is unflattering to Marciano, but your emphasis on one Providence, Rhode Island club fight in the second year of the guy's active professional run (he had one chump-change pro match in early '47, but didn't start a real active professional career until the summer of '48 ) suggests an agenda. To counter your specific arguments:

1. What you fail to mention is that the Lowry stoppage losses you take such pains to highlight are two out of a grand total of three he suffered in his entire 140+ known professional fights, during which he fought about half the top 10 in both the light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions. Whether you like it or not, Lowry was clearly extremely difficult to stop, and an inexperienced Marciano's failure to get the job done is hardly any surprise or shame.

2. You think Marciano "appears to have lost the fight" based on the Providence Journal account, I imagine? Well, let it be pointed out in return that all three judges scored the fight for Marciano, a fair number of witnesses seem to believe Marciano won the fight cleanly (as, for example, those quoted in Everett M. Skehan's account), other newspaper accounts I've seen appear more to the effect that the "former Golden Glover was extended the full 10 rounds" and the like without apparent suggestion that there was something wrong with the decision, and even the Providence Journal writer concedes that Marciano outlanded Lowry at a rate of three to one from the fifth round on, which causes me to question his judgment; how many fights have you ever seen, with no knockdowns or point deductions, in which one guy manages to win multiple rounds in which he's outlanded three to one, as, per the Providence writer's account, Lowry would have had to have done?

3. Your constant emphasis on the relative smallness of Marciano-era heavyweights is misplaced, since this is a pound-for-pound discussion.