The Last Round
In 1969, Murry Woroner, a Miami promoter, approached Rocky and Muhammad Ali with a proposition. He wanted to film a fight between them, using a computer to decide the final outcome.
Ali had been stripped of his title and banned from boxing when he refused to be drafted into the army in 1967. Marciano was 46 years old and sixty pounds over his fighting weight. Each man had his motivations for agreeing to the deal. Ali needed the money. Rocky had money, but he deeply missed his glory days in the ring.
Before he could climb into a ring again, even for a simulated fight, Rocky had to get into some semblance of what he had been. He began running again, working out in the gym, eating right; in truth, he trained as hard or harder than any fighter preparing for a real fight. The result was a loss of almost fifty pounds. To cover his balding head, he was fitted with a wig.
In "Marciano, Biography of a First Son", Everett Skehan said, "When Rocky went to the dingy gym on the North Side of Miami Beach he was thinking tough, expecting things to go smoothly but prepared for anything. He had been briefed, knew that the punches were to be pulled, and that it would not be a real fight. But Rocky wouldn't go into the ring that way. Even at forty-six, he had to feel that if something went wrong, if suddenly the punches became real, he would be ready to win."
Ali didn't train seriously for the filming, and actually looked less in shape than the much older Marciano.
The filming took place in a small gym on the North Side of Miami Beach. Only about 20 people were allowed inside the gym during the filming, which was kept as secret as possible. Behind the fighters was a black backdrop and no crowd of cheering spectators.
Though punches to the head were to be pulled, both men agreed body shots were not a problem. They filmed one minute rounds. Angelo Dundee was on hand as Ali's trainer, but Rocky had to use Mel Ziegler to play the role of Charlie Goldman, his real trainer. Charlie had passed away the year before. Ferdie Pacheco was the ring doctor.
Seventy one-minute segments were filmed, then spliced into three minute rounds, including seven possible endings. All the information about the two men, their fights and results, was fed into the computer. Supposedly, the computer would decide the winner completely on the basis of the data concerning the two men and their boxing careers. Ali would tell different versions of how the outcome was decided; he would say he choose the ending, he would say it was a biased decision made by a computer in Mississippi, etc.
During the filming, Rocky and Ali became friends, spending hours in conversation. Ali would later write that he became closer to Rocky than any other white fighter he ever knew.
Said Dundee of the affair: "Muhammad acquired a lot of respect for Rocky. He said Rocky was a lot harder to hit with a jab than he looked."
Stories came out of the sessions. Several claimed Rocky really hurt Ali with body shots, so that Muhammad climbed out of the ring and demanded extra money to continue. He was payed additional money. (Woroner himself said Ali took such a battering that he refused to continue until he was guaranteed an additional two thousand dollars.) I've talked to the son of one observer who says Rocky doubled Ali up with a body shot after Ali kept jabbing the wig off Rocky's head. Dundee admitted to the wig episode, but never told of the hard body shot that it led to. Ferdie Pacheco, however, the ring doctor in the film, claims Ali was dropped by a real body shot. The undeniable fact is, Rocky entered the ring ready to make a real fight of it if need be. Even Dundee said he had to be calmed down after the wig incident.
Here's the wig story as I've heard it from two sources:
Ali was dancing around jabbing and threw a high jab which just clipped Rocky's wig and knocked it off his head. The filming was stopped while the wig was refitted, amid bemused smiles from several of the observers. Marciano was embarrassed and angry.
He said, "He did that on purpose to make me look stupid. He doesn't have any respect for me at all."
Rocky was assured it was an accident and the filming resumed. However, Ali again jabbed high and sent the wig flying. Rocky was really mad this time, and snarled, "You better not do that again!"
They began once more and immediatly Ali flicked the wig off Rocky's head. Without hesitation, Marciano dug a vicious body shot into Ali's mid-section, doubling him over. Pacheco said Muhammad actually dropped to the floor and was completely helpless. Quickly Rocky was seperated from Ali and Dundee related how they had to take a break until Rocky's temper cooled off. Marciano offered to turn it into a real fight then and there if Ali was game. Only when Ali appologized did the Rock get over his anger. Observers at the filming have said Ali's attitude was different from that point on, as it was obvious Marciano had come to fight if need be rather than be disrespected.
The result was kept secret from everyone, even Ali and Rocky. The promoter had to keep it secret to make his money when it would be shown in theatres. Five weeks after the filming, Rocky would die in the plane crash, but the result was not unlike what he would have expected. Dundee said he thought the result was the accurate result as chosen by the computer, "It was done strictly by the computer. Nobody set the thing up."
On January 20th, 1970, the fight for the "All-time Heavyweight Championship" played in over six hundred locations around the country.
So how did it end?
In the 13th round, Rocky catches up with Ali and knocks him out, just as he had Walcott all those years before.
Much of the information about the computer fight I took from the excellent book, "Rocky Marciano..Biography of a First Son" by Everett M. Skehan, published in 1977.
