Was Marciano superior defensively to Tyson, and Frazier?

Wow, I never investigated it with this detail. But I am glad my observations are confirmed.


Rocky fought a great deal of the BEST fighters of all time. Walcott, Charles, Moore, Louis -these are some of the greatest and most accurate combination punchers around, and if THEY could not connect then Rocky has a better defense than many posters can come to terms with. Anyone that says Rocky had a bad defense can be considered un- knowledgeable about the sport.

 

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It’s compubox and of course it’s to be taken with a grain of salt. But even when you factor in strength of competition (Tysons competition was older on average then Marcianos FYI) age (Marciano and Frazier have similar enough career arcs) its all pretty close. And let’s face it it’s not really close. Not like it’s off by a percentage point or two.
You’re ignorant problem is you can’t accept that any pro argument is anything but a fan boy argument. Grow up and listen. You may learn something. I don’t think Marciano is indestructible or the best defensive fighter ever. Just that he was better then given credit for and better then the names you mentioned. And he was. If you actually analyze the fights you would see he’s extremely hard to hit. Now do you actually have any proof of your claims? Because stats, all time great trainers and fighters disagree with your poorly based opinion. Or are you going to revert to your fall back of posting a laughing face and falsely calling someone a fan boy because you can’t articulate nor prove your “opinion”

 

Punch stats will never be a viable argument. Watch the fighter's fight. If one is easier to hit, and getting hit more the others, then there's a pretty damn good chance that he's the one with the worst defence.

That's obviously Marciano.

 

You would be wrong to assert that punch stats arent a viable argument they are the only thing you have when asserting defense. This isn’t even a debate. You CANT debate this...literally. It’s like saying 2 + 2 isn’t 4. The object of defense in boxing is to not get hit. Not only was Marciano statistically far and away the winner if you actually watch the fights closely you would see how hard he was to hit cleanly. Most of you keep bringing up an out of prime fight against Louis. Most of the rest of his career he was more polished. Let me add no one thinks Tyson or Frazier were bad defensively because they weren’t. They were excellent fighters.
You literally state in your argument above if one fighter is getting hit more...well the stats are right there for you and he was hit less.

 

This is a very good post. There is nothing more to add other than Marciano did not look as smooth or as fluid doing it compared to Tyson and Frazier who had better rhythm.

The important thing is effectiveness. All three were more effective than given credit for.

 

I don't believe the 'stats'. Never have, never will. Watching them, with my own eyes which I trust a lot, I can see that he was much easier to hit clean than Tyson or Frazier.

 

I don’t think we can be so sure that Marciano was getting hit the most in title fights. Tyson took an almighty amount of blows against Buster Douglas. Without counting the blows, In that one fight, it appeared Tyson had to have taken more punches than Marciano did in his first three defences.

And getting hit like that from Douglas, over and over, whilst he was stranded in no mans land, buying feints ...was strictly a technical defensive default wasn’t it? Defensively it was clueless.

Guys get hit more in the fights they lose. We saw Frazier and Tyson lose fights. So although it might be unfair to say that, the superior defensive technique didn’t quite translate to being hit less did it?

perhaps if we saw Marciano deteriorate and age to the point he was losing fights, then we could say he got hit more times. But sticking to historical accuracy, we can’t say that he did.

I was going to vote “better than Frazier worse than Tyson” option based purely on aesthetics but since the discussion has drifted to who got hit more, it seems being the more aesthetically defensive didn’t really prevent Tyson being hit less in competitive fights. As soon as a fight became competitive, Tyson started shipping an awful lot of punishment.

I mean really it’s a bit of a bum question because neither of them were defensive fighters. It’s like asking who was the more effective offensive fighter between Johnny Nelson of the Carlos Deleon fight and Bob Pastor of the first Joe Louis fight.

 

Hmm? I'm trying to imagine how much leather Marciano would eat fighting Muhammed Ali. A herd of cattle's worth I'd imagine. On the bright side I don't think Rock would get hit very often by Foreman,, about 2 minutes and 38 seconds worth .

 

Nobody will ever know. We can however see the punches Tyson and Frazier actually took in real Competitive title fights. And, historically, that’s just the way it is. As it happened.

 

Tyson and Frazier had great head movement by comparison, both were far more skilled than Marciano.

 

Count how many of Ali`s jabs that Frazier slipped in their first clash no way could Marciano have done that and Tyson simply moved his head more than Marciano as part of the peek a boo, his whole style was a Duran counter/pressure style, there`s no reason he wouldn`t try and slip shots in more competetive fights under Rooney`s guidance, he was the greatest fighter in history at slipping and countering the jab and would have destroyed Douglas with Rooney in his corner.

 

"But but but he looks so hittable"- some guy watching the fight on film.

 

Don’t disagree with that but one fight won’t mess up the averages over a career. Nice try though