Marciano on Ali

Nice one.

 

Dempsey said prety much the same thing.

 

Nice

 

Rocky was pretty good when it came to talking about boxing. I have heard him comment on his own fights.

 

He had a show on which he had boxers come on and talk about his big fights. He had Jersey Joe on with him one time and they discussed their epic 13 round battle.

I also saw a great old show that discussed the then recent Patterson-Chuvalo fight as the Rock, Floyd and some announcer watched a film of the fight and discussed it. The Rock was very complimentary to Floyd, who seemed pretty flattered.

 

Ali was ringside @ MSG for Patterson/Chuvalo doing the color with Don Dumphy. Floyd and Rocky were in a TV studio commentating on the replay of the fight with, I believe, Milton Gross and another boxing/sports guy.

I love my hero Patterson but it is so difficult to watch him in an interview; he is so soft-spoken, shy, modest, unassuming, etc...hard to believe he is a man who made his living beating people up...

 

Ali also said "All the great heavyweight champs are black, Johnson, Louis, Marciano."

 

Perhaps, Ali always did have a soft spot for Marciano though.

 

Ali was Don Dunphy's broadcast partner for that fight and said something nice about the Rock during the fight.

 

Thanks for the clip, great that.

 

In a way he was right.

Marciano was in all aspects of his career one of the genaration of black champions that followed on from Joe Louis except his skin colour.

 

Very fair acount , Marciano was always respectful and he was detatched in his opinions. Louis gave Ali less props

 

Marciano idolized Louis and cried after beating him. Heck, my dad said he cried too after that fight and you'd think he'd have wanted the Italian guy to win. Louis was very popular among Americans in general.

 

About 10 years ago ESPN Classic, which was pretty new replayed those shows. I really enjoyed them.

In this clip you see the difference between a man of Marciano's era and a man of the era that Ali helped to create. I think a very large part of why Louis didn't like Ali is because of the vast difference in their sportsmanship ethic.