Rocky could dehydrate to super middleweight~

So the range you predict, while "some sort of functional" for a fighter who weighs in at 181lbs with a heavyweight 1940s camp, who instead undertakes a sensible diet (no steaks, no potatoes, no orange juice, more steamed vegetables and lean turkey meat/liver/etc.) and who cuts water is 175-181lbs.

That's your answer?

OK. I've never seen you be deliberately obtuse like this before.

Here's the actual fact.

Most fighters can lose 10% of their body by cutting water (without ill affects). For Marciano that would be 18lbs. That means by modern care alone he could turn up in the ring in tremendous form weighing around 166lbs. But let's pretend that despite all appearances to the contrary by eye, he can only do 5%. That seems very unrealistic to me but let's be extreme in your favour. 9lbs. That's before he diets. So he's 172lbs before he goes on his diet.

So very, very, very bleakly, Marciano has to diet 4lbs off. Being frank, i'd bet he'd lose a LOT of weight just changing out the steaks for lean meats, but say it goes very badly. Say he loses, over the 9 week camp, as little as 5lbs - which seem impossible to me - but let's say.

That means before he gets extreme, worst case scenario by modern methods (barring illness or genetic deficiency) I have him at 167lbs before it gets really difficult for him.

Anyway.

 

I agree, but the amount of information that has been volunteered in this thread for you to absorb if you know nothing about it at the beginning is significant.

Your failure to accept it is disparaging of me as a source or you as a poster, one or the other.

But, you'll always be one of my favourite posters on the site and while I think you're wildly - wildly - wrong here, that certainly won't affect my interest in posts you throw up tomorrow.

 

Not remotely.

There is nothing extreme in my Marcaino plan as it's been laid out.

I've deliberately avoided it. There has been no starvation, no steamroom to unconsciousness, no hot baths for 12 hours. All that has been left off the table.

 

The thing that strikes me about all this is the people who are most ready to mention Rocky's "iron will" and "indomitable spirit" who praise his determination and heart as something genuinely elite having him failing in the weight-making arena.

Well guess what, those attributes are specifically what make for great weight-making.

Bernard Hopkins is the best example. Iron will kept him a middleweight for decades when in Marciano's era he would have been a heavyweight. Marciano would have been right there with him. His iron will would have enabled him to do extreme things at the weight-making table. And inflict extreme punishment because of that.

But the people who most admire him just can't see it.

I do understand. People want to compare their favourites to the best and if you conceive, in the darker corners, of him boxing as a middleweight it makes it that much more difficult to pick him over Sonny Liston.

But Sonny Liston isn't the mythical heavyweight destroyer if he turns pro in 2020. He's the cruiserweight prospect. He might even see some action at 175lbs.

Still, strange. Or maybe not. Maybe it's natural that the people who love him the most would be most blinded to a change.

 

An 8-division 1940s attitude.

Were you a manager that got that absolutely right with a Manny Pacquiao you'd be a legend.

If you got it wrong (much more likely) you'd be a pariah.

Note that Manny Pacquiao turned professional at 112lbs and didn't get to a "resting" weight until he hit 140lbs.

Your position is that he was mismanaged.