Black Sports : Was Rocky Maciano Really All That?

KPITRL

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May 7, 2013
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Was Rocky Marciano really all that? Most blacks who don't remember him while he was fighting will say he wasn't. Meanwhile white folks will say he was the best ever, and that him being the longest undefeated heavyweight champion proves it...although that record really went to Larry Holmes when he was robbed of his two victories over light-heavyweight Michael Spinks, who put up a better fight than most expected.

After learning that Rocky defeated most of the best black fighters after they were old, I agreed that it was more hype. But I never asked anybody who was there during that time if he was really all that, not even my father. However I did asked an older brother a few years ago (not my sibling) if Rocky was all that great. This brother was about 12 or 13 years older than me, so I was prepared to take his answer into consideration. And he totally shocked me with his answer. Now him being a devoted Christian taking theology classes, I thought he would probably say Rocky wasn't no slouch, and that many blacks today, who weren't there, underrate him...I would have agreed with that. But this brother went on to say that Rocky really was indeed all that? I asked him if he would have beat Ali. Then I asked him if he would have beat Foreman. He answered yes both times. However, I made him think twice on Foreman, because you don't fight a Foreman with your head as your defense, like Frazier, and especially like a Rocky from what I've seen on films. I don't know if I ever got to ask him if he would have beat Tyson. By the answers he already gave me, he would have probably said yes.

I met this brother, who saw all this in Rocky, at a black activist meeting a couple of years after I moved South. Although I never got to know this brothers real background, he claimed he was from the streets. Sometimes I'd think that he may have been to prison. I never asked him, but I think I should have. Then I'd wonder if he was trying to write a book on my experience that lead me in the Jet Magazine, and eventually out of my high paying IT job. Perhaps I gave him a little too much respect by not asking, probably because he looked a little and acted a little like my father. But that's the last time I'll ever let a brother at my age just walk in my life as a friend, the way a grown stranger offer a child candy, without knowing more about him. Then the brother kind of disappeared after a year or two. I guess he was my personnel Christian version of Master Fard Muhammad. I can't say I didn't learn something from the brother, especially about the people in the civil rights movement in Atlanta, who worked close with Dr. King. Anyway, I say all this to let you know he wasn't no lover of white people to that degree...at least I couldn't tell. So his favorable opinion of Rocky may have been perhaps based on something else.

I never asked anybody else in that generation how good Rocky really was, or how he would have matched up to the black elite heavyweights in their prime, especially a Liston, Ali, Foreman, or Fraizer. So, for anybody who was there, or at least had a better idea, again was Rocky really all that?
 

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