BoxRec

Sharkey was knocked out by Dempsey -- and drew with the pedestrian Heeney who Tunney dominated and stopped... The Heavyweight landscape looked rather flat -- so rather than go idle for 3 years like Dempsey he decided to retire... Tunney suffered his only defeat 6 and a half years earlier and was completely dominant at that time.. Heavyweight challengers were few and far in between during that period.. Nobody was lighting it up.

In Contrast Patterson was obviously the next big thing... His speed and power really stood out in the Heavyweight Division of the 1950s.

What's you thoughts to Lennox Lewis decision to retire?

The Vitali fight showed him he was getting near the end.
I've always given him slack for retiring, he did so because, unlike many who have fought on too long, he realised he had gone on as long as he could and was on the slide. A defeat was probably only just round the corner.

Of course different people see this differently, either;
Lennox realised the time was right to walk away
or
Lennox realised there was a dangerous young challenger had emerged and the time was right to get away from him.

I suspect the truth was somewhere in between but even if it was the latter, do we need to brand the guy a ducker because he didn't think he could keep putting himself through the mill with dangerous opponents like the Klitschkos?

Should he fight on to a heavy defeat just because there is a solid challenger on the horizon? Do we want fighter to keep going until the get hurt?
The risk is always there but if someone gets hurt because they are on the slide, was it a stupid decision to keep going.

Lennox knew himself how he felt in the ring and made the correct decision (the same could probably be argued for Marciano) I don't think fighters should be knocked for that.

Kalan wrote:Sharkey was knocked out by Dempsey -- and drew with the pedestrian Heeney who Tunney dominated and stopped... The Heavyweight landscape looked rather flat -- so rather than go idle for 3 years like Dempsey he decided to retire... Tunney suffered his only defeat 6 and a half years earlier and was completely dominant at that time.. Heavyweight challengers were few and far in between during that period.. Nobody was lighting it up.

In Contrast Patterson was obviously the next big thing... His speed and power really stood out in the Heavyweight Division of the 1950s.

Absolutely - I agree 100% with everything you said - and I really mean that - but none of what you said makes it wrong for any champion to quit when he no longer thinks he has it - 'ducking' in my opinion denotes when a fighter looks for an easier fight - Marciano did not 'duck' Patterson, he 'hung up his gloves.'

On another note, a Patterson-Marciano fight hypothetically plays out different today then it would have at the time. At the time, Patterson looked too young, strong, and quick for Marciano and I suspect everyone (including Marciano) thought it looked like Patterson would take Marciano - of course today we know (what we didn't know then) that Patterson had a 'dimple in his chin' - we now have to ask, would Patterson have been able to avoid Marciano's right for 15 rounds? When we look back at Patterson-Johansson and Patterson-Liston we have to wonder if Patterson could have handled Marciano's right. - You get the feeling it wouldn't have taken too many right hands to unravel Patterson.

But I agree at the time Marciano may very well have been walking away from a fight he felt he couldn't win; but he did not go looking for an easier fight, therefore no 'ducking.' A man has a right to retire when he knows he's done, he doesn't owe us the beating. To truly retire (no comebacks) should not be called ducking.

Nothing about Marciano makes me think he retired because of Floyd Patterson. It's actually absurd. Rocky would have knocked him out, early or late, it wouldn't matter what Floyd did.

davie wrote:What's you thoughts to Lennox Lewis decision to retire? The Vitali fight showed him he was getting near the end.

I think Lewis was a coward for retiring -- because he bragged to interviewers for months that "I'll fk up the other side of his face" and often promised Vitali a rematch. Vitali just quietly stated that he would knock Lewis out, and the only reason he didn't in the 1st fight was blood was streaming directly into his eye and he had trouble picking up some of Lewis's rights. His left eyelid was very badly slashed by a thumb strike and a holding and hitting palm slash within 20 seconds of the start of the 3rd round. Cutman Joe Souza clumsily swiped the eyelid with a rag and actually removed part of the lid -- but VK had it patched up nicely by great plastic surgeons and it never bothered him again.

In the first 2 rounds VK nearly had Lewis out - so it was a matter of time before he leveled Lewis in the rematch... Even with the badly slashed eyelid and blood gushing into his eye, Vitali was winning the fight on all scorecards when the fight was halted... So he was simply a better Heavyweight.

And Patterson as a better heavyweight than the crude, slow, easily punched, and severely limited Marciano... Patterson's sharp, speedy, and powerful combos would have ripped holes in Rocky's defense the way he pounded the much bigger Chuvalo and beat the crude Bonavena at the age of 37... Patterson also out-boxed Machen and Ellis, who were far more skilled than Rocky... Marciano simply never met close to the caliber of prime Heavyweights who Patterson fought -- end of story.

Kalan wrote:

davie wrote:What's you thoughts to Lennox Lewis decision to retire? The Vitali fight showed him he was getting near the end.

I think Lewis was a coward for retiring.

I disagree

No kidding

golden oldie wrote:Along with being the worlds greatest trainer, not to mention the ultimate boxing encyclopedia, Kalan also has X ray vision. Where millions of other see a perfectly legal right hand punch which cuts Vitali's eyelid, boxrec's very own Steve Austin sees a " thumb strike " closely followed by the " palm slash "

I wonder how many other trainers advise their fighters to " strike a 250b guy with your thumb, trust me it will work every time."

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. 500 lbs of body mass coming together at speed, and the only point of contact is a thumb.

Film of the thumb strike in slow motion exists... It clearly shows the thumb strike and Vitali's left eyelid cut opening immediately afterwards... but they took that footage off Youtube for political reasons... Also Vitali's face was clean after 2 rounds---which he won both big---but after 20 seconds of the 3rd round you see his face pouring blood... That was after the thumb strike and the holding and hitting palm slash... The first right Lewis throws to open the 3rd is the thumb strike less than 10 seconds in.. The 2nd right he throws in the 3rd is the holding and hitting palm slash which slashed open 3 deep cuts -- 2 on Vitali's left eyelid and 1 on his cheek.. immediately after that you see VK's face pouring blood.

Yeah yeah Lewis is a coward, Marciano was a totally incompetent boxer who was scared of Patterson, Ali was overrated and his merit can be judged on his fights with spinks, Holmes and Berbick and Anthony Joshua is the best heavy of all time. Blah blah blah.

Reality - Lewis fought almost everyone and has one of the best resumes in heavy history.
Rocky went 49 and 0 43 kos and wasn't afraid of anyone. Also he wasn't easy to hit.
Ali is the greatest heavy of all time who at his prime was almost unbeatable. His fights in his later career just show the physical decline of an ill man.
Joshua is yet to beat anyone in the top ten.

Who said Berbick was any good??? I didn't... Who said Marciano was totally incompetent??? He was a tough slugger who was the most brilliantly managed and matched boxer of all time... For a short, slow, clumsy, unskilled guy he accomplished a lot...

Ali being the greatest can certainly be debated... He certainly lacked in-fighting skills and lacked a body attack... He certainly grabbed, pushed, and wrestled excessively in some fights... He certainly pulled straight back from punches and got nailed, got decked, got his jaw broken ... and had his problems on defense... Lewis was a much better Heavyweight than Ali -- but he was losing to Vitali on all scorecards following their fight and reneged on a rematch

"Joshua is yet to beat anyone in the top ten."

Martin was an Undefeated World Heavyweight Champion... He was Top-10 when he got his title shot at Vyacheslav Glazkov.. Glazkov was undefeated and ranked as well... The lost to Martin being his first in 23 professional fights...

Kalan wrote:"Joshua is yet to beat anyone in the top ten."

Martin was an Undefeated World Heavyweight Champion... He was Top-10 when he got his title shot at Vyacheslav Glazkov.. Glazkov was undefeated and ranked as well... The lost to Martin being his first in 23 professional fights...

You keep defending the indefensible

Keep defending Martin and you only serve to prove you actually know less than people on here give you credit for (which isn't a fvcking great deal)

davie wrote:

Kalan wrote:"Joshua is yet to beat anyone in the top ten."

Martin was an Undefeated World Heavyweight Champion... He was Top-10 when he got his title shot at Vyacheslav Glazkov.. Glazkov was undefeated and ranked as well... The lost to Martin being his first in 23 professional fights...

You keep defending the indefensible

Keep defending Martin and you only serve to prove you actually know less than people on here give you credit for (which isn't a fvcking great deal)

WTF are you talking about? The poster said Joshua never fought a Top 10 Heavyweight. He did when he won his World Title. Martin was ranked in more than one in Top 10 rankings when he was matched with Glazkov. Martin is also ranked 7th by Boxrec.. Joshua defended against a Top-10er and Molina who was ranked a little out of the Top-10.. Other highly ranked top 10 guys like Parker refused a shot at Joshua because they know they'll get the crap beaten out of them.. Nothing indefensible about calling people out on their Bullcrap buddy.

golden oldie wrote:Oh come on now, you MUST be able to do better than that. There is the shooting of J.F.K. The Twin Towers.

No conspiracy.. I'm sure there are others here who saw the slow motion footage of Lewis hitting Vitali with a thumb jab from the closeup vantage point from the right hand side and the blood immediately spurting out of his left eyelid... The footage certainly exists... I've seen it played a number of times during Internet arguments like this.

The clip is redundant... because it shows the same footage of Lewis handing out the same punishment at different times in the clip...

The right thumb jab is at 1:16 followed by the palm slash seconds later after Lewis pulls Vitali into a headlock clinch.. At 2:01 of the the clip they show the exact same sequence of foul blows. The right hand landing thumb first with the classic thumb-strike counterclockwise twist...as it moves past the side of the head... At 2:05 of the clip they show the palm slash and blood spurting out.. Blows are out of sequence throughout the clip.

golden oldie wrote:

"cfang"

Reality - Lewis fought almost everyone and has one of the best resumes in heavy history.
Rocky went 49 and 0 43 kos and wasn't afraid of anyone. Also he wasn't easy to hit.
Ali is the greatest heavy of all time who at his prime was almost unbeatable. His fights in his later career just show the physical decline of an ill man.
Joshua is yet to beat anyone in the top ten.

Plenty might say you are acting as strangely as Kalan with that statement. Marciano would get offended if someone in the crowd threw a punch at him and it missed, never mind his opponent.

No idea where you get that from. Even Ali said Marciano was hard to hit when they did that computer thing. You have this idea that Rocky just walked forward chin up firing away but he's more subtle than that. He was very well schooled by Charley Goldman to make the best out of his abilities. He'd get in close, he crouched, he head was not stationary often and he had a great understanding of distance. He was tagged by Charles, Walcott and Moore but these guys were super fast and all time greats. A guy who went 49-0 and won the undisputed heavy title could not have been an easy target.

Thank God for Kalan; what we all do with our time if we didn't have kalan to disagree with?

cfang wrote: A guy who went 49-0 and won the undisputed heavy title could not have been an easy target.

Yes he could be if he were brilliantly managed and matched...against worn out and washed up light hitters, light heavyweights, and unskilled swingers who weren't dangerous...Joe Frazier was very easy for George Foreman to hit -- but he was the only big, tall, rock solid, powerhouse puncher he ever fought. If Rocky ever fought anyone like that he would have been out in the 1st heat.

If a Heavyweight like Sonny Liston tagged Marciano with that Moore knockdown shot he would have been knocked cold... It's the difference between Michael Spinks fighting Seffen Tangstad and fighting Mike Tyson.

golden oldie wrote:

Kalan wrote:The clip is redundant... because it shows the same footage of Lewis handing out the same punishment at different times in the clip...

The right thumb jab is at 1:16 followed by the palm slash seconds later after Lewis pulls Vitali into a headlock clinch.. At 2:01 of the the clip they show the exact same sequence of foul blows. The right hand landing thumb first with the classic thumb-strike counterclockwise twist...as it moves past the side of the head... At 2:05 of the clip they show the palm slash and blood spurting out.. Blows are out of sequence throughout the clip.

So when the commentator shows a replay and points out " this is the shot that caused the cut " he is also in on this world wide conspiracy to deny Vitali his rightful place in boxing folklore is he?



Grow up man ffs. Either your man love for Vitali, or your hatred of Lennox does NOT alter reality. It simply shows you up as being prejudiced.

You're full of BS.. I was always a big fan of Lewis who is a justified ATG top 3 Heavyweight... However Vitali was never afforded a rematch to clear the air about the controversial ending -- after which he was winning on all scorecards when the fight DIDN'T go to the cards as the British Broadcasters said it would.. The commentator can twist footage to try to push his bias onto the viewers, but I don't have to buy it... The cuts all happened when I said they happened... The foul blows that caused them happened with the FIRST 2 right hands Lewis thew in the 3rd round---very early in the round... That is extremely obvious when you watch slo-mo of the footage of the cut slashing right-handed thumb strike, followed by the head grab and palm slash over VK's face.

golden oldie wrote:Though I would love to hear your theory as to why the HBO commentators, both colour and ringside, and the officials, or the doctor made no references to illegal blows, thumbing, slashing with the palm of the glove, in a fight between a Brit, and a Ukraine when they couldn't actually care who won.

In this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alzu9t1CmRM at 15:33 and 15:34 you clearly see Lewis palming Klitschko's face, targeting the eyes, and then swiping -- you see referee Lou Moret not stopping the action and giving Lewis a very quick and cursory hand warning for palming -- meaning he was in Lewis's hip pocket and wasn't going to call time out or do a damn thing to enforce the rules.

So again, you have no idea what you're talking about because you don't listen to the commentators... A lot of people had allegiance to Lewis at that time because he was the top Heavyweight, BUT in both the Michael Grant fight and Vitali Klitschko fights the commentators commented on Lewis’s deliberate fouling.

Versus Grant the KO blow was an illegal hold-n-hit job which Lewis employed throughout the fight... The commentators talked about it and asked Lewis about it in the post fight interview. Lewis arrogantly stated that he didn’t want Grant’s head to move while he took him out. Versus Vitali George Foreman stated “The referee has to stop this holding and hitting by Lewis" ... Shortly after Lewis committed the palm slash to open the cut to open the 3rd round Lampley talks about Lewis's "Roughhouse tactics we might have expected him to use" meaning Louis was well noted for them.

Lou Moret also refereed the Guerrero-Berto fight and allowed Guerrero to foul Berto unchecked, dozens of times throughout the fight.. As Guerrero was deliberately holding and hitting Berto -- with impunity from Moret -- Max Kellerman shouted "SHADES OF LENNOX LEWIS" to laughter from the HBO crew.

You're full of BS. The video clearly shows the palming at 15:33 at 15:34. All those things were said by the commentators during those telecasts. Lewis was an extremely dirty fighter. And you clearly ignore any comments about his repeated fouling.

I'm one of those who think Marciano's magic "0" has genuinely over influenced most fans and experts.
Funny just how much weight the "0" carry's from that era......we seemed to get over it when Sven Ottke, and the Joe Calzaghe managed the feat. And that's a good thing.


I think Joe Frazier would mug him. As would Ali and Dempsey.
And honestly, if it's "pre death making" version of Baer I think Marciano vs Baer has all the makings of a Foreman/Frazier affair.
The more reading I do the more I realize Baer was an entertainer first, a truly fun loving guy, even his harsh stuff around Braddock has been misunderstood/overplayed.
As a human, he had a serious case of "good conscience" and meant little if any harm. Playful clown comes to mind as an accurate description. So deaths in the ring had a profound affect on him, whether he was the direct cause or not.

So unencumbered by that, he was pretty impressive, and a good match against Marciano's better work rate, but smaller frame.

But...and this is a big BERTHA sized Butt.....AT TIMES..(not always) he was as open as a 24 hour Wal Mart, and could compete with Western Union in the "telegraphing" dept.

So...he'd have to be pretty rugged to take the incoming.....Foreman did take a few from Frazier and managed fine.....he even says Frazier rang his bell pretty well.


I wouldn't be as certain on that fight. I think Kalan says he'd bet on Baer.....we may agree.


Marciano really seemed to live a charmed existence, (more than balanced by his untimely ending) But I think he has a very undeserved titanium reputation.
I think Jersey Joe, Ezzard, and especially Joe Louis in their primes would have been likely to rob him of that status. He notched them and garnered status similar to how Holmes Notched Ali.
But he had the honor of delivering the "you just aged out" message to 3 former champs.

I think Patterson would give him a good go, but Patterson is a study in KO potential in both directions. So that's a crapshoot. Liston, Foreman, Lewis, KBros and the "Big Mac" HW's. I think would be all too much for the guy.

On the other hand I think he would have a good shot at defeating any pro basketballer who had eyes on the HW championship prize. That includes Way2Tall Jones, and that other tall fella that was mouthin' off in the 70's.

Had Too Tall Jones been allowed to have a 6 month career instead of a 21 day (3 fights) career I believe he would have crushed Marciano with his growing skills... His work ethic was unbelievable and he demanded fights... After his 1st 3 fights in 21 days---which showed a progression of sorts---they gave him 3 no fight crap fights -- and took a long time doing it... It was obvious he was being back balled...

Easy to hit Ali would be iced by the fast, agile, and brutally powerful Chamberlain -- and he had NO intention of ever fighting Wilt. As this video proves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF57P1uUG0s

BoxBuzz wrote:I'm one of those who think Marciano's magic "0" has genuinely over influenced most fans and experts.
Funny just how much weight the "0" carry's from that era......we seemed to get over it when Sven Ottke, and the Joe Calzaghe managed the feat. And that's a good thing.


I think Joe Frazier would mug him. As would Ali and Dempsey.
And honestly, if it's "pre death making" version of Baer I think Marciano vs Baer has all the makings of a Foreman/Frazier affair.
The more reading I do the more I realize Baer was an entertainer first, a truly fun loving guy, even his harsh stuff around Braddock has been misunderstood/overplayed.
As a human, he had a serious case of "good conscience" and meant little if any harm. Playful clown comes to mind as an accurate description. So deaths in the ring had a profound affect on him, whether he was the direct cause or not.

So unencumbered by that, he was pretty impressive, and a good match against Marciano's better work rate, but smaller frame.



So...he'd have to be pretty rugged to take the incoming.....Foreman did take a few from Frazier and managed fine.....he even says Frazier rang his bell pretty well.


I wouldn't be as certain on that fight. I think Kalan says he'd bet on Baer.....we may agree.


Marciano really seemed to live a charmed existence, (more than balanced by his untimely ending) But I think he has a very undeserved titanium reputation.
I think Jersey Joe, Ezzard, and especially Joe Louis in their primes would have been likely to rob him of that status. He notched them and garnered status similar to how Holmes Notched Ali.
But he had the honor of delivering the "you just aged out" message to 3 former champs.

I think Patterson would give him a good go, but Patterson is a study in KO potential in both directions. So that's a crapshoot. Liston, Foreman, Lewis, KBros and the "Big Mac" HW's. I think would be all too much for the guy.

On the other hand I think he would have a good shot at defeating any pro basketballer who had eyes on the HW championship prize. That includes Way2Tall Jones, and that other tall fella that was mouthin' off in the 70's.

Good post, good assessment - but you just couldn't hold back on Wilt; you just had to chum the water!

BoxBuzz wrote: Foreman did take a few from Frazier and managed fine.....he even says Frazier rang his bell pretty well

How about VERY FEW??? ... and I don't think George got his bell rung very well... He never had a visible reaction to a Frazier punch.

In contrast Frazier reacted to a couple of Bob Foster's best punches... I often wonder if Foreman would have flattened Bob Foster as fast as Frazier did.