Rocky Marciano seems to be...

Wait until someone breaks his record. More discussions....

 

Many people feel Rocky had too many shortcomings to become a heavyweight champion and that he was exceptionally fortunate to have been fighting in a less than spectacular era. If he won all of his professional fights it must mean he fought too many nobodies and had too many hometown decisions.

Rocky was too small and too light, but he was about the same height as Mike Tyson, and probably could have carried close to the same amount of weight as the prime Tyson without being overweight, but in his day Rocky felt that fighting at a bit under 190 pounds was his best bet.

Some of the bigger name fighters he beat must have lost to Rocky because they were too old and too far past their prime when he defeated them. But a lot of these things are said about many other heavyweight champions. New heavyweight champions often come along by way of marching over top contenders and reigning champions in decline. If a heavyweight champion retires without ever losing a title defense his choice of top flight challengers is frequently questioned. atsch

 

I don't think it will matter much, because Rocky will have always been the champion to to retire with an unblemished record first, and stay retired.

If Larry Holmes had managed to get awarded the decision over Mike Spinks, he would have been extremely close to busting Joe Louis's record of 25 successful title defenses. My suspicion is that the temptation of going 55-0 would have been too great to pass up. If he'd somehow succeeded though, we might have been deprived of his stellar masterpiece against Mercer.

Holmes did realize some unprecedented achievements however. He was the first undefeated boxer to win 20 consecutive championship matches, and he was the first champion to successfully defend his title in eight consecutive calendar years. (From Evangelista in 1978 to Williams in 1985.)

The thing is, somebody could win 49 matches against tomato cans, win the championship in their 50th match, and then retire. I think it's more impressive to be the first at something, because that status can never be displaced.

 

I think the fact of his blue collar background and image, the fact he always remained close to his roots in Brockton, his stoic dedicated work ethic and "never say die" attitude, combined with the stature of a more average human being, reasonates very strongly with rank and file fight fans. He was not a Superman, he was one of "us," a representation of what we could dream of being if only we applied ourselves sufficiently enough. Before becoming a boxer, he worked as a ditch digger, and was drafted into the military where he served during WW II.

He wasn't blessed with freakish height or reach, he wasn't a pretty boy who was likely to enjoy a career in entertainment after retiring, he seemed to be a regular bloke who somebody could enjoy a pint with at the local pub, or make small talk with while sitting on the front steps of a neighborhood tenement. He was no kind of flashy show-off in the ring, but a stoic who seemed to be just himself. Yet it was this seemingly regular fellow who did what nobody else had ever done in one of the most elemental of blue collar sports. Yeah, I suspect that might provoke a strong reaction with rank and file boxing fans.

 

It's partly his size, partly the fact that he had an extremely short career at eight years... Partly that he fought smaller guys moving up who were "past their prime...".

Lot of things, I guess.

 

It's a lot of things

 

Basically i think it is because he was undefeated and people are always trying to say who or why someone would have beat him but we will never know ....

 

Marciano can never be denied by todays haters and historical revisionists, because when it's all said and done, there it is living in eternity....that big 49-0. That one of a kind, as yet unequaled, undisputed UNDEFEATED PERFECT RECORD!!! What more can you ask of a man than have him take what he's got and make the most out of it. Rocky Marciano was only 5'-10 1/2" tall with a reach of only 67", yet, he maximized all that he had, turned these disadvantages into advantages by being a fanatical addict to training and conditioning, hard, hard work, a spartan routine when training, throwing hard short punches constantly, hitting any target that was available, not just waiting for an opening. Pounding forearms, biceps, every thing above the waist without ever becoming discouraged. Never letting up for an instant, with a superhuman disregard for pain and fatigue. Today's revisionists can rank him as low as they want to and twist everything around to change the facts as much as they want to. They probably rate him today as no better than say, Brian London, or something, but they miss the point. Marciano was a classic case of mind over matter. He triumphed over all those guys with superior physical gifts and skills and simply imposed himself on them and made them bruise, bleed and hurt real bad before he ko'd them.

 

He could have, But his back problem, Al, Family begging him retire ete. He retire.

 

He was doubted then because of his stature, and then his opponents are doubted because of his record. When Rocky Marciano won a fight his legacy seemed to be put under the microscope more and more. Why is this little man winning? So when faced with a question the boxing world can't answer they attack his legacy in an attempt to make sense of their false accusations.

Soon the boxing world will universally know Rocky as simply the great, undefeated Heavyweight Champion. Ted Spoon can do that.

 

Perhaps people are upset that none of the heavyweights of their times had the consistancy of Marciano and this upsets them because it suggests the fighters of their time cannot match up to Marciano.

 

If someone could come up with the youtube bit from "Coming To America," you know, the barber shop scene, you'd have a pretty decent answer to this question.


I read a lot here about his accomplishments, his disadvantages in size, etc, and his ability to overcome them, but that isn't the reason he's discussed so much. At least I don't think so. He'd be overwhelmingly lauded for his accomplishments in that case, and he's just as routinely denegrated here.

Skin color and ethnicity play hugely into it. At the risk of lighting a match to tinder, he's Whitey's ace in the hole. And Italian to boot! It enfuriates his critics that his fans continually play this card with the smugness they do, and it angers his fans that the critics can't get over the 49-0 and accept that he was a great fighter. It's often a case, then, where there is simply no middle ground. In a wide discussion of him the likes of which we see here (too often an occurence in itself), you're branded a hater if you take the torch to his memory and a nuthugger and possibly a racist if you support him.

Marciano will forever be a lightning rod for heated debate based on that alone.

 

Same reason people rip on Manny Pac. His nuthuggers are god awful.

 

49-0 leads many to say he was "unbeatable" and the "greatest of all time" which enrages many boxing fans who know this to be very untrue. The best names on his resume were old as hell when he Kayo'd them, and he damn near lost to one of them.

49 fights. 6 title defenses. Not a greatest of all time stat.