Rocky Marciano versus Modern Heavyweights via Punch Count

[Kalan]

and who said if Marciano hadn't retired that he wouldn't have given Sonny Liston much of a fight ?
Did you see his fight with Eddie Machen ?
Do you think The Rock would have been too intimated by Liston's size and reach to
just stand and get pounded and not to do nothing ?
The Rock would have just kept on coming...and coming...and coming.
Sonny Liston would have probably just get discombobblulated mentally at some point from it alone.

That's a fantasy... Rocky was too short, small, and slow... Rocky could barely bludgeon out old Light Heavyweight Archie Moore in 9 rounds while Patterson ran over Archie like he wasn't even there.. But what happened when Patterson fought Liston??? ... When a great big man meets a great little man the great big man wins.. Eddie Machen was 6'1" X 196. He was only 15 pounds lighter than Liston.. Machen was considerably bigger, taller, and longer Than the 5'10" X 184 Rocky...not to mention more skilled, faster, and much more mobile, meaning Machen could jab, box, move, and skip away from Liston.

DESPITE all that Liston easily out-boxed and beat Machen over the distance... Marciano couldn't get away from Liston's jab or straight right hands... It would be much like Foreman versus Frazier... Frazier was a walk-in puncher like Marciano.. It would be Tyson versus Spinks.. Some folks you are just born to beat.

[HomicideHenry]

Muhammad Ali praised Marciano rather highly saying he felt Marciano was superior to Joe Frazier. Hell, Frazier thought Marciano and Louis was ahead of himself. It seems with the passage of time Marciano gets written off, whereas guys who were written off (Patterson) are suddenly elevated. It's a head scratcher. There's a reason why Joe Louis himself said he felt even at his best he couldn't have beaten Marciano.

[Caractacus]

sort of like the author of A FLAME OF PURE FIRE,wrote in his book,
that Georg Carpentier's achievements has been forgotten over time and that Harry Wills has been elevated over the same time.

[Kalan]

Muhammad Ali praised Marciano rather highly saying he felt Marciano was superior to Joe Frazier. Hell, Frazier thought Marciano and Louis was ahead of himself. It seems with the passage of time Marciano gets written off, whereas guys who were written off (Patterson) are suddenly elevated. It's a head scratcher. There's a reason why Joe Louis himself said he felt even at his best he couldn't have beaten Marciano.

Joe Louis, like George Foreman, said the things he thought would make him popular with the public.. Same thing with Anthony Joshua. As much as it might hurt you say the humble thing if you want great popularity. Frazier said he would beat Dempsey, Louis, or Marciano in an interview with Ring Magazine I read back in the day. I don't think Frazier even liked Foreman or gave him a great deal of credit.

The Joe Louis who hammered Max Baer with precision jabs, left hooks, and right hands was as different from the doddering Joe Louis who lost to Charles and Marciano and day is from night... There is no way on God's green earth Marciano would have matched up with the youthful Brown Bomber who gave the bigger Baer a boxing and punching lesson with his youthful speed and finesse.. It's my opinion that Louis did too much night life, drinking, and carousing.. He was a bit of a sexual predator and he peaked early much like Mike Tyson---who did the same things Louis did.. Louis blew out WAY too early.. The Louis who fought Charles and Marciano was UNRECOGNIZABLE as the same fighter who quickly gave Max Baer his FIRST KO LOSS and ran through Carnera like a mean machine.

In fact...Max Baer would have given Marciano a great deal of trouble in a distance fight.. Baer could load a lot of power into those brutal swinging bombs of his -- if you were a hittable target like Rocky.. Marciano was in no way as elusive as the young Brown Bomber.. Louis never got decked before he started carousing and playing around all night.. Louis was so much better than everyone else in his era that he got away with murder as far as training and discipline goes.. In his first year as pro Louis was extremely disciplined.. But when the money started rolling in, whoa baby!!! After Schmeling knocked Louis out he got back on track for a while.. But Blackburn said that didn't last very long because there were no Heavyweights who could threaten him.

[HomicideHenry]

Why do you assume Marciano was that hittable? If he was remotely as hittable as you are assuming he'd of never gotten to 49-0. Even as he approached 46 years old Ali remarked how surprised he was at how hard it was to land a jab, let alone anything else, cleanly on Marciano.

[HomicideHenry]

Bump, because in the near future I am going to do some punches per round numbers for Cassius Clay aka Muhammad Ali in the 1960s to gauge just how much of a work rate he had.

I'll compare it to someone like Oleksandr Usyk, since there is a possibility that current heavyweight champion Tyson Fury will fight Usyk in the not so distant future, and Usyk (220) is slightly heavier than Ali (210-215) but both the same size and Usyk is rated among the top five P4P boxers today.

[HomicideHenry]

What I'll do is use a handful of Ali fights from the 1970s and compare them to the 1960s, to show any decline in averages per round, etc and the fights be against similar level competition.



Ali vs Dunn (1976) in what would be the last knockout win for Ali. I will compare punch stats to Ali's fight with Brian London (1966) since both opponents were of similar worth and went similar durations.

A margin of error is to be expected either for or against Ali because of bad camera angles, etc.

Round One: 34 or 35 punches

Round Two: 34 or 35 punches

Round Three: 31 or 32 punches

Round Four: 17 punches (knock down) 54 punches (another knock down) 55 (yet another knock down)

Round Five: 33-34 punches (knock down) 36-37 punches (knockdown) referee stops the fight



Ali vs London (1966)

Round One: 55 punches

Round Two: 48 punches

Round Three: 15-16 punches (knock out)

For good measure I'll do the Cleveland Williams bout, for comparison, because Williams was not really at his best and had a fairly weak chin.



Ali vs Williams (1966)

Round One: 49 punches

Round Two: 42 punches (knockdown) 55 punches (knock down) 59-60 punches (knock down)

Round Three: 15-16 punches (knockdown) 38-39 punches (referee stops the match)

Based on this short analysis the 1960s version certainly threw more punches than the 1970s version, as the best round against Dunn is comparable to the average round Ali had against London and Williams.

Jesus Christ Almighty God bless you all

[HomicideHenry]

Furthermore, before I get too much criticism, I'm only going to do analysis on fights that went X amount of time because doing round by round punch statistics for 15 rounders is a pretty lengthy enterprise.

So the next few bouts to analyze will be the following: Coopman, Foster, Blin, and Quarry for the 1970s statistics and Cooper (1st & 2nd), Moore and Liston (1st) for the 1960s statistics.

Then those numbers will be compared to Usyk's last four or five performances, and then there will be averages from Tyson Fury as well from his last 10 fights.



It must be noted that even though Coopman was rated number one in Europe he was rated outside the top 15 by Ring Magazine. 1976.

Round One: 63 punches

Round Two: 44 punches

Round Three: 57 punches

Round Four: 79 punches

Round Five: 47-48 punches (knockdown)

Most of the punches that Ali was throwing were jabs, that has to be emphasized for those following the punch statistics. I'm also counting punches that did not score but caught nothing but air. Every punch thrown, landed or not, for all of these matches.



Ali vs Quarry (1970)

Round One: 63 punches

Round Two: 48 punches

Round Three: 43 punches

Fight stopped in between rounds due to cuts.



Ali vs Foster (1972)

I might have at the commentary team is quite annoying. Ridiculous remark made: "Ali has only lost once and that was to Joe Frazier and there was some dispute about that."

Round One: 50 punches

Round Two: 52 punches

Round Three: 28 punches; difficult to determine because Ali was doing a lot of patting and joking around and pushing.

Round Four: 48-49 punches

Round Five: 24 punches (knockdown) 60 punches (knockdown) 62 punches (knockdown) 69 punches (knockdown)

Round Six: 38-39 punches

Round Seven: 26 punches (knockdown) 38 punches (knockdown)

Round Eight: 5 punches (knockdown and fight stopped)



Ali vs Blin (1971)

Jurgen Blin, another man top rated in Europe but not so highly rated in the world rankings. The ring was roughly 17.5' square.

Round One: 59 punches

Round Two: 42-43 punches

Round Three: 46-47 punches

Round Four: 29-30 punches

Round Five: 58 punches

Round Six: 30 punches

Round Seven: 48 punches (knockdown and fight stopped)

[HomicideHenry]

Okay the 1970s average for Ali against either subpar or decent opposition comes out to the following data:

58.2 punches for Coopman
51.3 punches for Quarry
46.4 punches for Foster
44.6 punches for Blin

https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculat ... verage.php

Quite an interesting set of data since I am using a mix of early and late seventies matches. I reckon the only way to really make a conclusive number would be to look at the punch rate in a 15 round battle with Frazier, Norton and Shavers.

Of course the lower the quality of opponent the higher the punch rate is obviously, with the exception of Jerry Quarry as he was a top-rated challenger but he got cut early on. Maybe later I will do the rematch to compare punch rates.

As it stands though I would say "50" punches per round seems to be the average for Ali typically, which to my surprise is not really all that higher than the typical heavyweight (45) but what I found to be more interesting was the sheer amount of times Ali feinted punches, so he definitely had people confused.

Anyways, onwards to the Cooper matches and the first Sonny Liston fight to wrap up the 1960s:



Ali vs Cooper (1964)

Cooper, the British champion, never could quite get over the hump to be successful beyond the European level but gives Ali quite a scare in their first encounter.

Round One: 54 punches

Round Two: 66-67 punches

Round Three: 48 punches

Round Four: 57 punches

Round Five: 37 punches (fight stopped)

Average: 52.6 punches



Ali vs Cooper (1967)

Round One: 20 punches

Round Two: 24 punches

Round Three: 32 punches

Round Four: 46 punches

Round Five: 35 punches

Round Six: 35 punches (fight stopped)

Upon reviewing this fight I can see why it seldom ever on Ali highlights as the action was pretty poor. Ali only averages 32 punches per round.



Ali vs Liston (1964)

Round One: 49 punches

Round Two: 40 punches

Round Three: 64 punches

Round Four: 33-34 punches

Round Five: 23 punches; must be noted that Ali had something in his eyes that prevented him from seeing clearly so he spent most of his time on his bicycle.

Round Six: 57 punches

44.5 average number of punches thrown throughout the fight. It seems like Ali's ceiling is the low 70s and his bottom is low 20s. However these are just a handful of matches out of the many he had, but it does seem to mean that when he was older his best rounds were on par with the average of rounds when he was in his prime.

[HomicideHenry]

Now for Oleksandr Usyk's last five performances:

Anthony Joshua- 529 total punches
Dereck Chisora- 647 total punches
Chazz Witherspoon- 347 total punches
Tony Bellew- 424 total punches
Murat Gassiev- 939 total punches

So... 44 punches per round against Joshua, 64.7 per round against Chisora, 43.3 against Witherspoon, 53 punches against Bellew, and 78.2 punches against Gassiev.

All in all, I'd say very comparable numbers to Ali if not slightly better. And now for Fury's last ten matches:

Wilder 3- 385 total punches (11 rounds)
Wilder 2- 267 total punches (7 rounds)
Wallin- 651 total punches
Schwarz- 150 total punches (2 rounds)
Wilder 1- 327 total punches
Pianeta- 620 total punches (10 rounds)
Seferi- (No data, will have to count manually)
Klitschko- 371 total punches
Hammer- Compubox says 63.3 per round
Chisora- Compubox says 70 per round

[HomicideHenry]

And for a little more in-depth analysis I will do three Ali fights that went the entire fifteen round distance: Shavers, Frazier (the first), and Terrell. Late seventies, early seventies, and sixties.

Not just to compare punch rates to Usyk or Fury, but to see how much of a drop-off in numbers Ali had as time went on, to counterpunch the argument that any version of Ali could have beaten Tyson Fury.



Ali vs Shavers (1977)

One: 51 punches
Two: 47 punches
Three: 43 punches
Four: 28-29 punches
Five: 65 punches

Six: 18 punches
Seven: 30 punches
Eight: 13 punches
Nine: 28 punches
Ten: 76 punches

Eleven: 70 punches
Twelve: 62 punches
Thirteen: 29 punches
Fourteen: 52 punches
Fifteen: 89-90 punches

Overall Average: 46.8 punches

https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculat ... verage.php



Ali vs Frazier (1971, Fight of the Century)

One: 51 punches
Two: 59 punches
Three: 57 punches
Four: 65 punches
Five: 67 punches

Six: 46 punches
Seven: 58 punches
Eight: 57 punches
Nine: 80-81 punches
Ten: 56 punches

Eleven: 49 punches
Twelve: 57 punches
Thirteen: 62 punches
Fourteen: 64 punches
Fifteen: c. 45 punches (phone glitched)

BTW, did Burt Lancaster ever do play-by-play again? He did really well as a commentator. Average punches per round was 58.2 overall.



Ali vs Terrell (1967)

One: 30 punches
Two: 33 punches
Three: 48 punches
Four: 28 punches
Five: 38 punches

Six: 43 punches
Seven: 53 punches
Eight: 38 punches
Nine: 43 punches
Ten: 51 punches

Eleven: 57 punches
Twelve: 73 punches
Thirteen: 56 punches
Fourteen: 69 punches
Fifteen: 70 punches

Average number of punches is 48.6 overall.

[HomicideHenry]

So, all in all, I think that all things considered if you are facing a much taller and heavier man who has a great ring IQ and is quite quick for his size (Fury) who is doing 70 punches a round (against Chisora) and 53 punches a round (against Wallin) etc--- I think whatever numbers Ali typically does (roughly 50 a round) is getting cut by 25% (-12.5) if not 50% (-25) because Fury has the ability to negate or nullify the work rate.

Ali could throw as high as 90, and as low as 20, but typically was throwing average heavyweight numbers--- so I'm thinking Ali is going to average somewhere between 25 and 50 punches per round, with a potential ceiling of 65 punches.

Fury's long reach, lateral movement, head and body movement, clinching and mauling, along with his own work rate and conditioning would have taken Ali off his game a bit--- enough to edge a decision over the 6'2.5" 215 pounder.*

*According to the British commentary for the Cooper rematch they say that Ali is under 6'3" which makes sense considering Foreman was 6'3"-6'4" and was clearly taller than he was.