Was Marciano superior defensively to Tyson, and Frazier?

Yeah because they calculated compubox on fights they couldn’t watch....common sense man. They ONLY calculated the numbers for the filmed fights. Are you smoking something? Marciano had no bums on FILMED fights. Is this to hard to understand?
This conversation is officially over . You make up numbers, can’t get years right, you don’t understand the premise of the conversation and refuse to accept facts. There is nothing that can be said that will make you see truth. So I say good luck to you and the 38.

 

I'm so glad somebody else is saying this. It's just painful that somebody could think otherwise.

 

He cries if people bring up Rocky vs Louis where he suffered a black eye despite fighting a 37 year old man and he was 28 with plenty of experience. He'll insist Rocky wasn't in his prime and says that fight isn't evidence of Rocky's poor defense and inability to slip a jab, but he's sitting here accepting that the compubox stats factored in Tyson vs Lewis and Frazier's fights toward the end of the 70's.

He says I'm "making up numbers" even though I literally demonstrated my math taking the best opponents for all 3 men, adding their ages, and showing the average. A 7th grader could do it. He simply refuses to accept many of Rocky's opponents were past their prime and shopworn. Even CHOKLAB accepted this when I pointed it out to him.

He calls boxers like Biggs, Ruddock, Tucker, etc bums despite the fact they were literally in the top 10/had belts and were skilled athletic boxers in their prime. But then he'll write essays on why Walcott and Moore weren't shopworn and how they would have have beaten all of Frazier's opponents.

You can't make this **** up. 9 pages of these kinds of arguments. If it wasn't funny I would have shot myself reading through it all.

 

then I guess he got a black eye in the dressing room slipping on a wet towel?

No one said Louis was dominating or beating up Rocky, just pointing out the fact he landed a hell of a lot of jabs for a gunshy 38 year old man. rocky himself said he had a hard time coping with the jabs. I guess we can throw out his own testimony about his own fight?

So the compubox numbers don't matter and we should trust our eyes to see who had better defense? So glad you agree! We are FINALLY making progress in this irrational thread!

 

a protected fighter is an untested fighter. I said Tucker was untested because until then he was a protected fighter. His best opponent was Jimmy Young and James Broad. Off the back of that he got a vacant title shot? Don Cockell beats all the guys Tucker met up to the Douglas win.

Literally all light heavyweights were also heavyweights then. Two titles within one division. Just the lighter ones among the heavyweights had an extra title to fight for. Until the 1960s they were practically all heavyweights. The light heavyweight championship was a springboard to fight the heavyweight champion. It’s tough finding a world class light heavyweight who wasn’t beating heavyweights before becoming light heavyweight champion. Charles was beating Heavyweights before Marciano even turned pro. If Marciano was a heavyweight that makes charles a heavyweight too.

No Walcott and Charles did not fight savage battles. You have not even watched them. Coming after the Louis reign, The Walcott Charles fights were very technical chess matches that bored the life out of the fans at the time.

no Charles was beating heavyweights longer than Marciano. That makes him a heavyweight since he fought more heavyweights than anything else. 1946 on. Mostly heavyweights.

It’s a mere quibble between average of 29 years and 31 years. Anthony Joshua would love that average.

But not severely enough for them not to be in condition to still win titles. Walcott, Moore and Charles fought well enough to beat other champions on the nights they lost to Rocky. I can’t think of one reigning alphabet champion that might of beat either of them the night Rocky beat them. Not one.

 

Strange that no-one told Ali.

 

Ali's actually a poor example. When he fought Frazier he would telegraph his uppercuts and Frazier was sitting on that all night hence the late KD.

 

If you're happy to rate a fighter who isn't at their best, to compare it to a fighter who is at their and say conclusively that the fighter who you're clearly bias toward is better, go for it. I can't stop you. I can laugh and say that's ridiculous.

Depends on how you define good. Good compared to nobody's? Sure. Good compared to Frazier of Ellis I, Ali I or Foster? No.

'far from physical prime'? Are you actually serious? The difference in Marciano from Charles II to Moore is negligible at best.

And I thought he wasn't prime for Louis? When did that change?

Is this supposed to mean anything?

A few extra points for competition, much much better competition, as well as all those fights after he went to prison where he was absolutely past his best. There's another 'few points'.

I don't think you're actually understanding what you're writing. For every 100 punches thrown at Marciano on average, only one in four land? And you believe that? Do you not think that the difference a fighter can land on Tyson from Pinklon Thomas to Kevin McBride is more than five punches per hundred?

How can you not see that the stats for Marciano are literally just for him at (in your words) his physical best, or after he improved his style, whereas Tyson's and Frazier's show them after their clear declines. If you took Tyson and Frazier's average from their prime, and compared those stats with Marciano's, that would be fair. As it is, it isn't. Tyson and Frazier got more hittable throughout their careers, so a full career comparison of them compared to a part career comparison of Marciano is ridiculous.

Not only is your stat-based logic wrong, it would appear that even if it wasn't, you still wouldn't be right as you're not even following it correctly. Best for best, Tyson and Frazier clearly have a better and you can tell just by looking at them on film. And if you compared those at their best with Marciano at his, I'd wager that the stats would agree with me as well.

 

First off you’re making several false assumptions. One is that the compubox people only took “prime” fights. Where on earth are you people getting that from? I don’t know exactly what fights they picked for each fighter but I’d assume to be impartial they spread it out (they used 8 fights for Marciano and they don’t specify and literally almost half of Marcianos fights are pre or post prime on film). You stating they only took his best and Tysons worst is completely inaccurate. I also never stated Marciano was at his peak for all them. The opposite. Marciano had a strange career especially for a small man. He was working on his style till his last fight and you can see how much more refined he was in Moore but how much he also LOST physically. Compare the Moore fight to Louis or Layne and you see how much slower he got. Personally I think he was ag his best from Savold to Lastarza and how many of those fights were used? Idk I didn’t do the stats.
You seem to like to argue about stats...facts don’t really care if you agree with them George. Sure there are variables for all that could raise or lower the bar for both. But I don’t think there is enough here to swing it in Tyson or Frazier’s way. I believe the people at compubox who do this for a living are better at this then you or anyone else’s “eyes”. They get paid to do this and have precedent to make sure they’re correct. You don’t.
On a last note there is more data on Tyson and Frazier but I know for a fact they didn’t use every fight. Which fights exactly they took? Idk. Once again I’d assume to play it fair they were as fair as they could be. If you don’t like the outcome maybe you should question your eyes do look into it some more and maybe readjust your opinion. Because no matter how you spin it or “the majority 38” on this thread spin it you and they are wrong and the stats don’t really care.

 

Great post. All true.

 

Your bull**** stats say that he avoided one in four punches thrown. That's bull**** and will always be. He's not the best defensive heavyweight ever, and never will be.

Nobody who gets paid anything will ever convince me otherwise. Certainly not if their entire argument involves taking the average percentage of punches landed on Marciano over eight fights (unnamed, for some reason) then comparing them with however many from other fighters isn't a proof of having a better defence.

And that's even if the stats are accurate. Which I highly doubt.

 

I never stated he was the best defensive HW ever. Wlad had the best defense of the 12 or 13 ATG HWs used for the comparison. These also aren’t MY stats they are compubox stats. I’m also sure there were HWs better defensively then Wlad.

 

I don't get why this is so complicated.

"Results"...?

5'10 70' reach Tyson's fluid head movement allowed him to slip and dodge the jabs of 6'3 Pinklon Thomas, 6'3 Larry Holmes, 6'5 Carl Williams all who had 78+' reaches and some of the best jabs in the division history. He got inside, imposed his will, and beat the crap out of them. None of them lasted more than 7 rounds.

Those are "results". They were a master class display of the sweet science and the peak of the peak-a-boo style blending defense with offense and constantly shifting between the two to create a pendulum, building Tyson's own power and speed to devastating heights before he landed one of his own shots. He was a slugger/counter puncher hybrid and very hard to land flush blows on. Tyson feasted on tall rangey guys with good jabs in his prime. Tyson never went down, hardly had a mark on him in those fights, and was never down on the cards.



5'11 Frazer's smooth bobbing, weaving, and rhythm based approach allowed to slip past the jabs of 6'3 Muhammad Ali (in 3 fights no less), 6'3 Buster Mathis, 6'4 Jog Bugner. They all had reaches ranging from 76-82 inches and he had no trouble at all getting inside and imposing his will. Even when he did get hit, he often rolled with shots at the last second or they were glancing blows. Very few guys outside of Ali and Foreman actually landed a whole lot of flush power punches or combinations on Frazier in his prime.

Those are "results". All those opponents were in their prime and ranked and didn't have tons of mileage. Frazier finished these fights on his feet and was outworking and outboxing his opponents as the fight dragged on.



5'10 Rocky had to fight 5'11 75' reach Moore, 6'0 73' reach Charles, 6'0 74' reach Walcott 6'1 76' reach Joe Louis.

The result?

Rocky got countered, made to look like a fool swing for the fences, suffered a black eye, had his nose split open and gushing blood, and was put on his ass in these fights. He got outboxed for many rounds and had to pull off come from behind miraculous KO's in the later rounds to stop these opponents.

And this was in spite of the fact his opponents were between 32-38 years of age with slower reflexes and diminished speed and timing, had tons of shopworn mileage from long amateur+pro+exhibition experience (more than 70 fights a piece). He often had to take a blow to land one and his lean and crouch style wasn't very effective. His offense was his defense and his youth and stamina allowed him to simply overwhelm his older weaker opponents with sheer volume punching.


I was never talking about "aesthetics", the damn fights are there on youtube. Rocky's defense looks comparably worse against smaller, older, shopworn fighters and got hit a lot in spite of that while Frazier and especially Tyson were demolishing prime ranked guys who were often way bigger than them. The results speak for themselves.