I agree - it's not a robbery unless you have a strong majority of observers seeing it as a clear win for the other guy.
The better men always win the rematch. They say Rock took his time with LaStarza and battered him slowly because he boasted about winning the first fight
Well Marciano was behind after 6 rds,a change of tactics,targetting the body,changed the course of the fight. "Trying to knock the challenger out with one punch, the 29-year-old Marciano was over-eager and awkward. He lunged, butted, hit below the belt, on the break and after the bell. Once, he swung so wildly that he missed and slipped clumsily to the canvas. Outboxing the champion and avoiding his blows, LaStarza managed to win four of the first six rounds. In the seventh, Marciano changed his tactics, started aiming at LaStarza's body as well as his head in an attempt to wear the challenger down. He succeeded." Marciano hit low a few times ,but I don't think the referee ,Ruby Goldstein took any points off him.
The better man should always win regardless, right? I mean if he’s actually better. Of course it doesn’t always go that way. I also don’t agree that the ‘better man’ (which is of course subjective) always wins the rematch. Plenty of times it didn’t go that way — but the rematch usually only happens if (a) it’s a really good scrap, or (b) a really close fight, or (c) the guy who was ‘perceived’ to be the better man actually loses the first fight, so he gets a rematch ‘to set the record straight.’ Yet when the underdog loses, he doesn’t often get the second chance to prove the first result was an anomaly. If he did, we’d have probably a lot more cases of ‘which is the better man’ since the second fight would sometimes end in an upset.
I am going to be very blunt here. If you want to argue that a fighter was robbed, then either I need to see your personal score card, or there has to be an overwhelming consensus among the ringside reporters.
That is clearly the proposition that we are debating. If it falls short of that definition, then it becomes less interesting very quickly.
I'm curious. The fight was scored a split decision draw and the bout was scored on the round system. Boxrec says Marciano was awarded the fight due to New York's supplemental scoring system. Referee Jack Watson had it a draw but gave Rock the win with his 9-6 supplemental score. Does anyone know how the supplemental system worked regarding having a 9-6 score in a 10 round bout?
In that era, to get big fights and a glimpse of a Title, you had to be. I'm sure my old sparring partner @mcvey will tell you, at one time in the the UK, you fought for Jack Solomons or you could forget it. Solomons had a positive working relationship with Norris et al.
I think this is a pretty pointless conversation, due to the fact that no one has seen it. Who can determine whether an unfilmed fight was rightly decided upon or not?