One thing Marciano was great at

[billeau2]

How much does it matter?
Well Haye beat Valuev whilst conceding 99lbs to him .
1.He beat him because imo .he was a much better fighter.
2.At 217 lbs he was big enough to beat anyone. IF he was good enough .
Tony Bellew was a light heavyweight with the height to add lbs on his frame and tackle the cruisers and he did ,adding 22lbs to his body to do so.But ,when he went after David Haye, he added a further 16lbs to his frame.If it felt it wasn't necessary he surely would not have done so.
Added weight can help you absorb punches better,CAN not WILL,it can also sometimes increase punching power SOMETIMES.

Back to Valuev he would imo, beat men far more talented than himself but smaller, just because of the size differential.

So for anyone to say or imply weight is not a significant factor in prizefighting is imo ridiculous.

Yes. Just important to be specific about what the weight has to do with the advantage. For example, reach and how it is/is not connected to weight. Or Fat versus muscle. Fat actually is lighter than muscle and helps, along with muscle in taking the steam out of body blows. What a lot of people do is consider weight as not only important, but overriding. To me that is the biggest error. So for example, Haye. The very fight you cite, or for that matter Holyfield, who many feel also beat Valuev. Valuev had size, but it hardly allowed him to dominate either man. it was alas, a characteristic that helped Valuev tremendously, but relatively...

The best proof of this is perhaps to take a decent "bigman" from the relative short past, someone like Leroy Jones, or... "Big Bad Leroy Jones" lol. Guy had many skills, heck of a lot more than Valuev, and also happened to be big. With Jones at least, his size was an advantage, but hardly an advantage that overshadowed his other decent skills. At the end of the day he beat some decent guys (Weaver Amongst) and lost to some decent guys and one can say one of his advantages was his size. To me that best illustrates how weight figures in as an advantage.

[billeau2]

Lol interesting aside. The benitez Andrade fight last night. Definitely a situation where size was a very very big factor. As a matter of fact the super middleweight division IMO is a place where big middleweights and average size cruiserweights go to succeed lol.

[QueensburyRules]

And this had to do with the thread exactly what?

- - Open ended leading question leading nowhere is U.

[N/A]

If I have to narrow it to one thing, because Rocky is by far not one-dimensional, it will be his ability to go over 15 rounds constantly pressing and relentlessly throwing punches. In that sense, I don't think there is a "P4P" better-conditioned fighter to this day.

[them_apples]

I think anyone who is judging Marciano, they should make sure they have watched enough of him first.

I see a lot of people say Marciano just ate punches face first and tough guyed his way through fights.

the first part isn’t true, the second part is, he was tough.

Marciano had a clever style. He hid it with an apparent clumseyness, but thats how he got you. Marciano never really eats punches at all. He has a degree of slickness and crude cunning in his style. Yeah he took a few good shots in his career, but thats because every single round of his career was spent charging forward trying to get to his opponent. By this standard Marciano has the greatest defense of all time.

forget records, watch his fights. Even the rounds he loses he wins. Because hes not getting hurt or discouraged and they are. He spent every round trying to get them, and they all spent every round trying to stay away.

Marciano retired those he fought. He beat guys so bad with a mixture of psychological warfare and physical brutality. Psychological warfare not in the sense of an Ali, but in the stone cold, genuine honesty of a ruthless barbarian. Marciano was void of emotion and fear. A sociopath on some level perhaps. Most likely as well considering those he hung out with.

his defense was good because he worked in a crouch and employed shifty head movement. When you are tall and your opponent is very low to the ground but strong, it is actually a disadvantage to be big and tall, especially in boxing which uses only the fists.

when Joe Louis fought him, he attempted to counter this by lowering himself to Meet Marciano at his level. It worked for a short while at keeping Marciano at bay, it was however exhausting and compromising of balance, meaning Louis was only throwing jabs and arm punches.

when a fighter with no defense fights a fighter with great ability, one guy takes a beating - win or lose. That would be Toney vs Barkley. What should have been Charles vs Marciano, wasn’t because unlike Barkley, Marciano has great defense.

but The thing is, the crouch style is forgotten.

[them_apples]

Nah. After watching Marciano/LaStarza II again, I have to still say it was not an attrition fight, unless any fight is an attrition fight, which in a sense they are, since some wear is expected in every fight and is the only reasonable expectation. Every fighter's durability is tested in any fight that lasts a while. That doesn't make it an attrition fight, except in the sense that every fight is.

It was a normal fight in every way, not a big war. It was even slow paced for the first 6 heats. Marciano changed one gear in the seventh and finally got into high gear in the 9th. Everything normal. Marciano's durability and stamina not even tested. He had no reason to be tired or stretched.

Of course Marciano was an attrition fighter. That is beyond question. So then, is every fight of his an attrition fight? Not to me.

Something called an attrition fight is just that, not a fight with normal wear and tear. Outside of winning, just being able to last becomes a major factor in the fight for both contestants and their fans, because there is no question about what is easily visible. The durability and survival abilities of both men are fully tested, at least in my definition of attrition fight. The parameters of durability are stretched to their limits. It tests the degree of wastage both men can endure, not just one of them.

its always a war of attrition because of the pace. Ammy fights have this problem still because of their pace. Thats why amateurs don’t think and fight like Robots. Only 3-4 rounds.

attrition sets in the moment the bell rings.

[Bundana]

"Marciano had a clever style. He hid it with an apparent clumseyness, but thats how he got you. Marciano never really eats punches at all. He has a degree of slickness and crude cunning in his style. Yeah he took a few good shots in his career, but thats because every single round of his career was spent charging forward trying to get to his opponent. By this standard Marciano has the greatest defense of all time."

Thanks for this, really made my day... hilarious stuff!

[them_apples]

Another thing to, its not just size. Human beings scale differently. Tyson Fury for example is large but not strong. A big target but not powerful. We can’t possibly think a fine tuned killing machine like Joe Louis wouldn’t make absolute custard out of that. Watch him beat on big target buddy baer for a good example.

when we go from say, Erik Morales to Roberto Duran, sure the weight gap isn’t massive, but proportionately Duran is larger and stronger in every single area, giving him a clear physical advantage.

sometimes being a heavyweight is just a tall man with a big midsection, but rather weak limbed and frail jawed. Sure, 240 lbs might make up the composition - but it doesn’t have to be well built. On the other hand sometimes its a shorter fat man like James Toney at 255.

there seems to be a lack of observation when someone goes and makes the claim that Marciano couldn’t hurt these larger men. The reality is, he would destroy some of them. Especially the ones that didn’t back up or have any gameplan or experience going in like Joe Louis did. If they walked in having never fought a short crouching pressure fighter like Marciano it would spell doom for them.

no mans midsection could take the beating Marciano would dish out on heavybags. Even Ali would attest to this saying that he could barely lift his arms after 5 rounds and had welts on his body. (In the computer fight)

[them_apples]

"Marciano had a clever style. He hid it with an apparent clumseyness, but thats how he got you. Marciano never really eats punches at all. He has a degree of slickness and crude cunning in his style. Yeah he took a few good shots in his career, but thats because every single round of his career was spent charging forward trying to get to his opponent. By this standard Marciano has the greatest defense of all time."

Thanks for this, really made my day... hilarious stuff!

I helped you out a bit with the bold. I knew thats all you would read. The news channels must have loved you, all buzzwords no substance.

[The Defecator]

Another thing to, its not just size. Human beings scale differently. Tyson Fury for example is large but not strong. A big target but not powerful. We canâÂÂt possibly think a fine tuned killing machine like Joe Louis wouldnâÂÂt make absolute custard out of that. Watch him beat on big target buddy baer for a good example.

when we go from say, Erik Morales to Roberto Duran, sure the weight gap isnâÂÂt massive, but proportionately Duran is larger and stronger in every single area, giving him a clear physical advantage.

sometimes being a heavyweight is just a tall man with a big midsection, but rather weak limbed and frail jawed. Sure, 240 lbs might make up the composition - but it doesnâÂÂt have to be well built. On the other hand sometimes its a shorter fat man like James Toney at 255.

there seems to be a lack of observation when someone goes and makes the claim that Marciano couldnâÂÂt hurt these larger men. The reality is, he would destroy some of them. Especially the ones that didnâÂÂt back up or have any gameplan or experience going in like Joe Louis did. If they walked in having never fought a short crouching pressure fighter like Marciano it would spell doom for them.

no mans midsection could take the beating Marciano would dish out on heavybags. Even Ali would attest to this saying that he could barely lift his arms after 5 rounds and had welts on his body. (In the computer fight)

Also, the larger the two fighters are, the less meaningful each pound of weight difference is; in other words, a ten pound difference in weight is relatively meaningless to two fighters over 200 pounds, but is a huge difference for two fighters under 130 pounds. Diminishing returns the higher up the scale you go. And, too, I think at the upper end you eventually reach a point where the added weight starts working against you.