More Impressive - Rocky Marciano's 49 -0 or Floyd Mayweather's 50-0?

About even for me.
There wasn't any particular great heavyweights during Marciano's run , with the best he faced were old or natural Lt.heavy's.
In comparison to Mayweather Jr' s best opponents being well past their primes or tailor made for his skillset. Unlike Marciano's era, there were fighters available that may havre been more of a challenge for May Jr that he conviently avoided.

 

Not close for me. Floyd beat many more ranked fighters over many more years and rarely struggled. Marciano cleaned out an era where the top guys were on the way out.

 

My thinking as well. This should be a shut out by Floyd.

 

Floyd for me. In both cases, their undefeated records are overrated (as arguably all such records are), but Rocky's is more so.

Fact of the matter is, Rocky fought a lot of lower-level opposition early in his career, which isn’t surprising given his limited amateur background. Floyd stepped it up sooner, consistently fought more "good" fighters and maintained that level of competition for far longer.

Marciano's "49-0" might appeal to casual fans, but his true legacy lies in his victories over Hall of Fame opponents like Jersey Joe Walcott, Ezzard Charles, and Archie Moore, as well as solid contenders such as Rex Layne and Roland LaStarza. (Fun fact: Layne was actually the betting favorite in their first fight!)

As for Floyd, "21 years" is far more impressive to me than "50-0." Several fighters have compiled streaks of 50+ wins, but very few have remained at the pinnacle of the sport for over two decades. Floyd's consistency and unwavering discipline is more impressive to me than any single win (and he does have some very good wins).

 

Marcianos is superior. The reason Floyd fought many champions is because of the 4 belt era combined with him being in a lower weight division. Marciano essentially fought above his weight class for his entire career. Imagine if Floyd started at 147? And there was only 1 belt? Would you penalize him for not fighting smaller fighters, just because he has less belts? Odd standards. Anyway Marcianos top end names are better on top of all of that imo, and he did it at heavyweight which is infamously hard to retire undefeated it. I'm sure Marciano would've gone 50-0 if they let his last fight be a 0-0 wrestler or martial arts practitioner

 

I feel like that's really unfair to Floyd and the talent seen during the time that he was at his peak. If we took Marciano's career and made it to take place in a four belt era, do you think that his record would be seen as magically "better"? You're basically discounting Floyd for not just staying in a weight class and defending a championship.

 

May didn't wait till the last 1/4 of his career to fight elite opponents and then didn't have to pick over the corpses of the previous generation.

 

Not at all what I'm doing. Imagine Floyd skipped straight to 147. That's what Marciano essentially did. It's more impressive. People just get caught up in belt count. If marciano went from 168 to 175 to 200 to heavyweight and got a billion belts, that's still less impressive than just fighting at heavyweight. Because it's heavyweight. Fighting the bigger dudes right off the bat.

 

Mayweather and its not even close. Marcianos was at the title level for just under 1/3 of that run and Mayweather was for 2/3. Marcianos top tier opponents were largely borderline while Mayweathers were great. Marciano was fighting guys with losing records as late as fight 35 with Willis Applegate who was his 4th opponent at or below .500 in a row.

Here are Marcianos 16 wins on a title level a quarter of which is LaStarza/Buonvino. Since half of that is rematches its 12 fighters.
Charlesx2,Walcottx2, LaStarzax2,Buonvinox2, Louis, Moore, Rex Layne, Cockell, Savold, Beshore, Harry Matthews, Bernie Reynolds.

This is not to get into the size thing. Louis was his only big opponent, didn't have power at that point and still put up a hell of a fight. Skhor was his 2nd best big opponent and Skhor was 33-19 as a 6 ft 4 guy in the smallest era of HW.

Wilders average SOS before winning the belt was better than Marcianos.

 

I guess I just can't follow this line of reasoning. Less achievements = more achievements cause he stayed at a higher weight exclusively.

 

I follow the line of reasoning, at a conceptual level.

Where that reasoning is found hugely wanting, is the sheer scale of the discrepancy in world class/rated fighters each fought.

The period in which Mayweather was beating virtually exclusively world class opponents was more than double the length or Marciano's entire career.

 

Rockys.

He fought everyone he could when he could.

Floyd manufactured his career and a lot of his marquee victories were at the wrong time.

Judah, Hoya, Mosley, Pacquaio, Cotto, none of those were at the right time.

Margo, Winky and Williams weren't even faced.

 

I think that's a much more reasonable train of thought if you wanna put Marciano's record ahead. It's reasonable and doesn't just discount the amount of high-class fighters that Floyd fought.

 

It is as simple as this. For bonus one could also add that he generally had much less problems doing it.

I don't really understand the argument for Marciano. Again, this should be shutout.