Rocky Marciano is one of the greatest boxers of all time, retiring unbeaten at 49-0, with an 87% knockout rate. He was the inspiration for Stallone’s Rocky Balboa. I remember my dad speaking with admiration of Marciano’s tremendous power. In the video above, the knockouts start at about 2:00. What is stunning is the number of boxers knocked out cold, and blown through the ropes.
At 3:50 you can study the left hook similar to the Mike Tyson punch I noted earlier. Marciano hops and lunges, throwing his entire weight behind the lead hook, and doubles up on it.
At 4:10 Marciano confronts Jersey Joe Walcott for the championship. Walcott knocked down Marciano in the first round, then steadily built up a lead on points. In the last round Rocky’s corner has told him that he’s losing the bout. So what does Rocky do? He recognizes he needs to knock Walcott out, which is exactly what he does.
Marciano Style
As I learned about Marciano, I saw an interview where they discussed his short arms, which gave him the shortest reach of any heavyweight boxer. In one bout, Marciano’s opponent had an 11-inch reach advantage! Marciano said that he knew he needed to get in close: he couldn’t stand out at a distance and trade jabs. Neither was Marciano the quickest, most agile, or athletically gifted as boxers. What he excelled at was crafting Marciano Style, developing incredible stamina so that he could power his way through round after round. Even if you were quicker or more skilled than Rocky he would come back and keep bombing until the last bell if need be. His arms were short, so he moved in close in a crouch and stayed close. He was a "swarmer," a pressure fighter who never let up on his opponents, not giving them the chance to set up their techniques.
Filipino martial artists will be interested in the following: "He was also noted for hitting his opposition on their arms while they were blocking. Although this did not score points, over the rounds, it made their arms numb and essentially useless." Marciano was defanging the snake even though he wore boxing gloves. I remember my dad telling me of how Rocky bruised his opponents’ arms through his punching power.
The key here is that Marciano developed a style that suited his unique
attributes, his strengths as well as his weaknesses. He was doing Italian Jeet Kune Do. Something JKD practitioners should keep in mind is that JKD was Bruce Lee expressing himself, and Bruce’s Jeet Kune Do might be a mismatch for other martial artists.
Imagine that a young Rocky enrolls in the Mohammad Ali School of Boxing. He is told to "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee," to stay light on his feet, throw the jab, stick and move. He would suck. People would ask why Marciano was no good as a boxer, or why the Ali style was so useless in the ring. It’s easy to see that the problem is neither the boxer nor his style, but a mismatch between the two.
