Wladimir Klitschko vs. Rocky Marciano

Sorry, I was just reading through the older pages of classic and this one kind of jumped out at me.

 

:rofl To this thread

 

This thread's like Jess Willard. Just keeps getting up no matter how many times it's beat into the ground.

 

what if wlad splits rocky's nose like charles did. Good luck gettin a ref to let the fight go on after an injury of that magnatude in this day and age.

 

I am not going to read all this thread, but this joke might just miss the point.

I looked up some info, and the average American male in the year 2000 was four inches taller than the average American male in 1900.

We are just living in a bigger world due to nutrition, medical care (innoculations against childhood diseases, antibiotics, etc) and on and on.

Any modern athlete or team would have a probably decisive size advantage over most old-timers. Any modern NFL team could probably beat the five-time champion Packers of the Lombardi era.

But that doesn't make them great or actually even good.

So the answer to this thread:

Wlad is better than Marciano in the sense that Ingemar Johansson was better than Sugar Ray Robinson.

Marciano is better than Wlad in the sense that Sugar Ray Robinson was better than Ingemar Johansson.

Beyond that, I don't know what there is to debate.

 

I dont think anyone really has a clue about how much average heights changed. This one has it at about an inch and a half or so.

http://ahundredyearsago.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/height-male1.jpg

actually it seems to be the consensus. Where did the 4 inches concept come from?

 

The US Army which track conscripts claims about one inch in height gain since 1950.

 

good point and that is why it is so hard to match fighter from different era's. My point always has been Marciano was a great heavyweight in his era and fought the best men in his ERA, the BIG heavy's of his ERA were not the best in his ERA and Today Vlad Klitschko and his Brother stand out as the best of the big men and Lennox was another very good big man

My point is that if Vlad,Vitali and Lennox were born in the 30's they would be a smaller lighter version of themselves and if Marciano were born today he would be a larger version of himself...too much emphasis is given to the variable weights and heights as if we can remove the gap the 2 Era's

My point is we have to judge a fighter by how great he was in his era because we can not recreate the 50's environment today or extrapolate the variable weight and height differences. The only thing we can do with accuracy is look at styles,strengths and weaknesses and come to a conclusion, a guess.....We have not invented a time machine as of yet so I think when we fantasize about these match ups, without being able to add or subtract weight and height from era to era as I have stated above, in all fairness we must judge strictly on greatness and style not height or weight which is a variable from era to era

 

That was a freak occurrence caused by an elbow, something which would likely not occur against Wlad. I have a hard time seeing Wlad win this fight. He doesn't like pressure and would have a hard time hitting Marciano cleanly, especially without putting himself in danger.

 

Again, at least in the US, males have not grown that much since 1950. The US Army keeps stats on those conscripted and volunteering. The increase of height is a little over one inch. Marciano also did not come from extreme privation. How many anecdotes do we read about his mother's cooking... and her stature alone attests to the availability of quality calories in that household. Marciano would be today what he was then... a cruiserweight.

 

are you smaller than your father,grandfather, do you weigh less, if so was your mother,grandmother short....my kids are all taller than me and I my siblings all taller and bigger than our parents,grandparents on the aggregate....a lot has to do with genetics just growing from era to era but I have 2 grandfathers that was over 6' ft and the matching Grandmother just about 5"ft. all the sons were over 6" by an inch or 2 but the daughters about 5'6 ...people just get bigger unless genetics on one sides has a big minus

 

Do I have to explain to you the difference between anecdotal and statistical evidence... and which of the two is used in scientific study? The US Army has been keeping statistical evidence on this for the last 65 years. I only repeated their conclusion.

A species as developed as the human race does not significantly evolve over 3 or 4 generations. So, the broad spectrum genetic picture is not the factor here. Nutrition and health care play the prominent roles in any changes.

 

Eugh this is up there with that birds butterbean thread that wouldn't go away for months.

 

Bump.

 

I can the stats for the most part from a study by Johann Komlos of the University of Munich.

The thing is there is a lot more volatility in height than I would have guessed. Komlos believes the average European male shrank from 3 inches in height from the 12th century to the 18th due to the Little Ice Age and the subsequent fall in nutrition. Crops weren't as good, and cold and long winters take a toll.

According to the Center of Disease Control the height of the average American male has gone up from 5' 8" in 1960 to 5' 9.5" in 2006.

However, the actual increase might be higher for the 1960 base American ethnic groups with the modern average being pulled down by heavy immigration from Mexico and Asia where folks are shorter. Genetics probably plays a role here.

Canadian males average 5' 11", and so are three inches taller than American males in 1960, but Americans were the tallest on the average in the 19th century. On the other hand, Lakotas and Cheyennes were taller than white Americans in the late 19th century.

Some Euro countries are taller than the Canadians. Dutch males average more than 6'.

As for the US Army, is this all the men who came in for their physical, or just those accepted. The Army did not accept very short men, or very tall ones, or very thin ones.

**All one has to do is check the height and weights of NFL teams over the years (available on the internet) to see the vast increase in size over the decades.

***as for Marciano, he almost died as a child of pneumonia. How did this affect his growth? How much taller might he have been if antibiotics were available in the 1920's. And if his mother was large, his father was small.