What made Marciano punch so hard?

I should imagine it was due to a combination of:

• Good technique allowing him to put a higher proportion of his body weight into shots than most other fighters.
• Perfect/excellent wrist position, allied with very strong arm muscle and tendons, meaning a greater proportion of the object, relative to Marciano himself, absorbed the impact than is the case with most boxers.
• Strong legs and core relative to his size, maximising his leverage and again the striking object-to-him ratio, in terms of where the impact was absorbed.
• Tremendous fitness and workrate meant that he kept a greater degree of his power as the fight wore on, relative to most fighters, vs opponents who were struggling to a greater degree than Rocky was to keep up with the frantic pace he was setting.

Something like that.

 

Hi Gregg.
As always a good sound informative post, and excellent prognosis as to why the Rock hit as hard as he did, but there is a slight anonlamy, that being a fighter like say, Wilde is not strong in the leg, and had pipe thin arms, with what appeared to be a slightly sunken chest, but carried KO power way above his physique, and of course there were others of that stature and elk, so thinking the old adage that punchers are born with power, regardless their size or muscle definition, might also ring true, also we all know big fighters that look, and are strong, with huge definition, do not punch as hard as you would think, Harold Johnson for example, with under half of his winning fights coming by the KO route, interested in your thoughts matey.
Mike.

 

He had really short arms and strong legs that allowed for him to generate more power up close with his hooks and uppercuts. Technique wise he also put everything into his power shots.

 

Leverage, rotational force and leg drive.

His awkward angles and high pace helped also. He would create KOs after dealing a lot of cumulative punishment.

 

Fragile opponents.

 

His mammas meatballs

 

Haha

 

Hi Mike,

Thank you. I agree, there are different types of power, with different underlying contributing factors to those types of power.

There isn't much footage of Wilde, but my guess he was kind of like a Flyweight (incidentally he typically weighed within the modern minimumweight limit) Wilder, in the sense he had a good degree of high twitch muscle fibre, making him explosive, allied with using his long levers (relative to his weight) to get good leverage onto his punches. I also suspect his timing contributed to his immense power.

All guesses of course, there's not enough footage, and no higher quality footage, to be certain.

 

Wrist position and punching technique aren't binary. They're not either "correct" or incorrect.

I don't "know" that Rocky had very strong arm muscles. I posted that I "should imagine" he's strong relative to his size. Do you disagree?

 

Charley Goldman. Good technique goes along with good teachers and trainers. Obvious I know but I thought it should be said.

 

Some men are just born with bonk.