BoxRec

How do you rate this great rock handed middleweight and former champion Rocky Graziano?

How good was he?
Where do you rate him with the middleweight greats?

very low

It's funny, he used to be considered to be much better than most people rate him now. He was pretty aggressive and was a hard puncher. However, he had very little defense.
Take away the win over Zale and he really doesn't seem that good.

It would be if most of those guys werent naturally smaller guys, WWs fighting a MW, and if the better names on that resume (even the smaller guys) hadnt given Graziano hell (Like Green who beat Graziano two out of three and likely threw the third fight). Or if Zale hadnt been way past his prime and totally protected at that point. Etc etc.

You make some good points, klompton.

I think Graziano used to be rated pretty highly for a long time mostly because of the Zale fights. They were exciting fights.
I do think Zale was past his best but not completely shot when he fought Graziano. It would have taken a good fighter but not a great fighter to beat Zale at this time.

Overall he had a pretty good winning % and some of the opponents were decent names. However, as klompton mentioned , these guys were a weight division lower than Graziano.

I thought I would look at this a little closer. I looked at the top 10 contenders that Graziano beat in his career. The number of middleweights: Zero. He did not beat one single fighter who was a Top 10 middleweight contender in his entire career.

I used to consider Graziano a borderline Hall of Famer category . Not I am beginning to think he is in the category of "having no business being of being in the Hall of Fame."

Ambling Alp wrote:You make some good points, klompton.

I think Graziano used to be rated pretty highly for a long time mostly because of the Zale fights. They were exciting fights.
I do think Zale was past his best but not completely shot when he fought Graziano. It would have taken a good fighter but not a great fighter to beat Zale at this time.

Overall he had a pretty good winning % and some of the opponents were decent names. However, as klompton mentioned , these guys were a weight division lower than Graziano.

I thought I would look at this a little closer. I looked at the top 10 contenders that Graziano beat in his career. The number of middleweights: Zero. He did not beat one single fighter who was a Top 10 middleweight contender in his entire career.

I used to consider Graziano a borderline Hall of Famer category . Not I am beginning to think he is in the category of "having no business being of being in the Hall of Fame."

A guy that had over 80 bouts and had 3 wars with the great Tony Zale should be in the hall. Fifty-two of his sixty-seven victories were by KO, especially, eleven of them in the very first round. His record showed that he can hit. He was one of those guys that lived and died by the punch. A classic hard-punching middleweight brawler that was most of his time in great bouts. If Barry McGuigan is in the hall, The Rock should be in there, too.

Graziano at the beginning, was also a welterweight contender. That is why he had lots of wins vs welterweight contenders at the time. He and the great Jake LaMotta were friends. That is probably why they did not square up for an entertaining scrap. Who would have won between the two? I pick LaMotta. But it would have been a great scrap while it last.

speaking of Rocky Graziano.
I was just watching the dvd of the Mamma Cass TV show from 1969.
Isnt that Rocky Graziano in one of the commercials for athletes foot np27?

Graziano has a TON of wins over WWs when he was a MW. In fact, all of his "important wins" as a MW prior to Zale were against WWs.

Graziano and LaMotta did not fight because Graziano was scared shitless of him. Friendship didnt even factor into it. They were scheduled to fight for the MW title and somehow Graziano was under the impression that the fight wasnt going to come off. At his training camp he was notified that the fight was on and he walked over to a tree, punched it and broke his hand. The fight was then called off.

klompton wrote:At his training camp he was notified that the fight was on and he walked over to a tree, punched it and broke his hand. The fight was then called off.

If true, that is one of the most bizarre cases of duckery in boxing history.

I guess I should be more specific about Graziano and the contenders that he beat.

The only Top 10 contenders Graziano beat were beat Billy Arnold, Charlie Fusari, Harold Gereen and Freddie Cochrane. All were rated in Ring Magazines Top 10 as welterweights when Graziano beat them. Graziano himself was a middleweight contneder at the time he fought them.

Arnold, Fusari, and Green did weigh over the welterweight limit when they fought Graziano, so I guess you could argue that they were technically middleweights. (There was no Jr Middleweight division at the time.) However, they were not middleweight contenders and Graziano himself was a middleweight contender.
Cochrane was still under the welterweight limit when Graziano (as a middleweight) beat him.

So you can't give Graziano credit for beating weters as a welter becasuse he was not a welterweight at the tme. He was middleweight.
Graziano has zero wins over fighters over Ring Magazine top 10 contenders in his own weight class.

That's why he had the dubious nickname a lot of sportswriters at the time gave him " The Best Middleweight in the Welterweight division ". Overall I would say the way you would rank Ingemar Johansson as a Heavyweight is about the same way you should rank Graziano. Graziano of course had more fights, but as has been noted several of his best wins were over smaller men. Like Ingemar though it was all about the right hand for Graziano, he was either gonna beat you with the right hand or not at all.

Robinson vapoursing Graziano with that right hand is one of my favourite KOs - Graziano goes one way, his mouthpiece goes the other, outstanding!

Ambling Alp wrote:I guess I should be more specific about Graziano and the contenders that he beat.

The only Top 10 contenders Graziano beat were beat Billy Arnold, Charlie Fusari, Harold Gereen and Freddie Cochrane. All were rated in Ring Magazines Top 10 as welterweights when Graziano beat them. Graziano himself was a middleweight contneder at the time he fought them.

Arnold, Fusari, and Green did weigh over the welterweight limit when they fought Graziano, so I guess you could argue that they were technically middleweights. (There was no Jr Middleweight division at the time.) However, they were not middleweight contenders and Graziano himself was a middleweight contender.
Cochrane was still under the welterweight limit when Graziano (as a middleweight) beat him.

So you can't give Graziano credit for beating weters as a welter becasuse he was not a welterweight at the tme. He was middleweight.
Graziano has zero wins over fighters over Ring Magazine top 10 contenders in his own weight class.

Given he rarely weighed over 154 and was actually outweighed in some fights, why he'd fight at middle? A man that can make 148 can surely make 147?

He couldnt make 147. The last time he made 148 was two years before he tried for the MW title the first time and lost. He grew out of the division.

The fact remains that you dont legitimately get a title shot at the MW title simply because you beat a bunch of WWs... while weiging MW...

I guess you guys are right. He (Graziano) fought welterweights while he was a middleweight. He ducked the great Jake LaMotta? I could see that.