Perhaps it is selfishness, but members of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only NFL team ever to win every game in a season, get together every year to toast themselves whenever the last remaining undefeated team in the league loses.
Peter Marciano, younger brother of the late, great Rocky Marciano, can empathize with Larry Csonka, Jake Scott and the rest of the ’72 Dolphins. Perfection is a tough act to follow, as it should be, and those charged with protecting a legacy, be it their own or a loved one’s, are inclined to do so zealously.
Any premier athlete who has done something no one else ever has, or the surviving relative of such a standard bearer, is lying when he says it’s no big deal for someone to come along and possibly put an eraser to the record book. It’s human nature to want to hold on to that little piece of history as long as possible.
Rocky Marciano, who was a day shy of his 46th birthday when he died in the crash of a small private airplane on Aug. 31, 1969, doesn’t have the distinction of putting together the longest winning streak at the outset of a career. But his 49-0 is unique in that he was and is the only heavyweight champion to have retired without so much as a single blemish on his resume. In boxing, there is a phrase that is commonly employed whenever two unbeaten fighters swap punches in the ring: “Somebody’s oh has got to go.” No one ever was able to get the “Brockton Blockbuster’s” oh to go.
“Any fighter you might mention – and I like to believe I’m not being prejudiced – could not have beaten Rocky,” Peter Marciano said from his home in Plymouth, Mass. “I honestly believe that. The only way I can ever imagine him losing is on an accidental head-butt, a bad cut or something like that.
“Quite honestly, I never want to see Rocky’s record broken. As a sports fan, as a boxing fan, if someone is good enough to ever do it, I would tip my cap to him. But I think the chances of that happening is almost non-existent given the current landscape. The best fighters don’t fight more than two or three times a year once they achieve pay-per-view status. That makes it difficult for the elite guys to even have 50 fights, much less to win them all.
“And frankly, the heavyweight division is not too good right now. You don’t have to be real knowledgable to see it. When a great heavyweight comes along, it’s like a whole new world. When (Mike) Tyson was at his peak, boxing came alive again. It’s always going to be that way. There are up cycles and lulls. Right now we’re in a tremendous lull. It’s sad to see.”
Thirty-seven years after his death and nearly 51 years after his final bout, memories of Rocky Marciano are kept alive by cable television entities such as ESPN Classic, which regularly feature retrospectives of boxing’s greatest champions, and the occasional appearance of someone who edges within hailing distance of The Rock’s 49 and zip.
Peter Marciano appreciates that new generations of fans are created for his brother whenever one of his old bouts is televised. It’s like a young movie buff seeing “Citizen Kane” or “Gone With The Wind” for the first time.
“Hardly anybody these days knows as much about the past as they ought to,” Peter lamented. “If it didn’t happen, like, last week, it’s almost like it never happened at all.
“But the fact that Rocky’s fights are always being replayed has helped younger generations to know him and what he meant to boxing. It just goes on and on and on. It never ends. His legend keeps getting bigger.”
It might be said that Rocky Marciano still is kayoing the opposition from that big ring in the sky. A splendid heavyweight champion, Larry Holmes, got to 48-0 before he dropped a unanimous decision to former light heavyweight titlist Michael Spinks on Sept. 21, 1985 – ironically, the 30th anniversary of Rocky’s final bout, a ninth-round knockout of light heavyweight champion Archie Moore in Yankee Stadium.
The circumstances were so eerie when Holmes’ oh went, someone should have cued up the theme music from “The Twilight Zone” and hired a Rod Serling soundalike as ring announcer.
Holmes being Holmes, he reacted badly to his first taste of professional failure. The “Easton Assassin” figured a long-standing champion such as himself should have been cut more of a break in the scoring in a reasonably close fight, and the fact that he wasn’t must have been because the boxing establishment didn’t want a black man equaling or perhaps surpassing the most cherished record of one of its white icons.
“Rocky Marciano couldn’t carry my jockstrap,” Holmes said, a remark which angered Peter Marciano, who was in attendance at the Riviera in Las Vegas to reluctantly offer the congratulatory handshake that he really preferred not to give and, as it turned out, didn’t have to.
At least Holmes, whom many believe would have ridden his state-of-the-art jab to a victory over Marciano had their eras intersected, would have been a worthy successor. That can’t be said of Brian Nielsen, a fleshy native of Denmark whose derogatory and unofficial nickname was the “Danish Pastry.” Nielsen actually won his first 49 fights before he was stopped in the 10th round by journeyman Dicky Ryan, but 61 of his 66 pro bouts were in his home country against mostly soft competition, and scored by judges who apparently gave him a five-point lead just for showing up.
The boxing Nielsen rating, at least when measured against the greatness of Marciano, registers as low as “My Mother the Car” would have in a same-time-slot duel with, say, “ER.” That’s an apt analogy since the emergency room is surely where Nielsen would have been taken had he the misfortune of facing Rocky in his prime. For purposes of this discussion, Nielsen isn’t worthy even of an asterik from boxing historians who can tell the difference between a diamond and a rhinestone.
Now along comes 7-2, 330-pound Russian Nicolay Valuev, who has gone 44-0 in winning the WBA slice of the heavyweight championship pie. Valuev defends his devalued strap against fringe contender Monte Barrett on Oct. 7 in the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill. It will be only Valuev’s third ring appearance in the United States, and first since 2001, but it is by far the most important trip since HBO is televising.
It is up to Valuev to establish among discerning viewers that he is something more than a freak show, a pituitary case run amok whose curiosity factor outweighs his questionable boxing skills.
Don King, who owns a promotional piece of Valuev, took his latest and largest find on a recent yuk-it-up blitz of the network talk shows, where His Hairness smiled for the cameras and said, “He’s got surprising rhythm. He thinks he’s James Brown.”
Well, we shall see how long Valuev continues to feel good as HBO executives surely will demand that he test himself against increasingly viable opponents. And that, in Peter Marciano’s estimation, is yet another litmus test that serves to separate the pretenders from the contenders, no matter how XXXL their packaging.
“Once the big Russian goes up against someone who’s formidable, I expect that he’ll lose,” he said. “I follow the game pretty closely and, let’s be honest, he doesn’t have much going for him other than size.
“Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better. That has to be made very clear to the public. I’m good friends with Stoney (Norman Stone, former trainer of two-time former WBA heavyweight champ John Ruiz) and he told me that Valuev is not a very good fighter. He’s extremely slow and ponderous. If he ever gets in the ring with any kind of a quality fighter, you’ll see just how limited he is.”
But how would Rocky Marciano, who stood only 5-11 and never weighed more than 192½ pounds for any fight, have coped with such huge height, weight and reach disadvantages? Would he have even been able to get close to Valuev? And would Valuev wrap The Rock in strength-sapping clinches even if he did move within punching range?
“Rocky fought a number of guys who were 30 or 40 pounds heavier than he was, and those were his easiest fights,” Peter Marciano said. “It was the guys who were a little bit smaller, a little bit quicker, who threw punches in combinations, that gave Rocky a more difficult time.
“Forget size. Rocky was tremendously strong. His strength was, and I hate to use the word, but it was almost superhuman. Big guys were made for him. The bigger they were, the easier it was for Rocky to tire them out and then to knock them out.
“Rocky knew he could throw punches for 15 rounds. He knew he could knock anybody out, with either hand, with one punch at any time. He related boxing to playing hockey. He said, `The team that throws the puck at the net the most time is probably going to win because some of the pucks have to get past the goaltender.’ Rocky’s mentality was to throw so many punches that a big one had to land sooner or later.”
I mentioned to Peter Marciano that actor Sylvester Stallone – that other Rocky – was inspired to make “Rocky Balboa” by the choreographed 1969 bout between his brother and Muhammad Ali that presaged today’s computer graphics. Three endings were filmed, and in the one that went out for theatrical release Marciano knocks out Ali.
Would it really have happened that way?
“Muhammad Ali was terrific, but it wasn’t just his speed and mobility that made him a great champion,” Peter Marciano said. “It was his mental strength. He believed, as did Rocky, that he could not be beaten.
“The difference between them is that Ali told everyone how good he was and Rocky, who was a very humble man, did not feel he had to come out and say it. It was enough that he knew it.
“The other difference, of course, is that Rocky never was beaten.”