| Rocky's Amazing Stamina |
| The "experts" disagree on many things about Rocky Marciano, but the one thing upon which all seem to agree is this; he was the best conditioned heavyweight champion of all time. Boxing is a grueling sport and in order to make it to the late rounds, a fighter must be in shape. A fighter is in his peak condition for the night when the first bell rings. Three minutes later he gets his first rest. Then it’s an alternating cycle of three minutes of exertion followed by that precious sixty seconds to try to recover. With every round more energy is spent and less is recovered until a fighter is pushed to the very limit. Many lack the stamina to make the long fight, especially heavyweights. |
| Marciano learned early that he had shortcomings to overcome. His short reach, his height, his lack of natural boxing ability put him at a disadvantage. But he had strength and courage. And with enough hard training, he added stamina. Rocky was disqualified in his first amateur fight, with Henry Lester, when he became totally exhausted and used a knee to keep Lester off him. He was smoking heavily at the time, eating all the wrong foods, and hadn’t trained at all. The crowd booed him and even his younger brother Sonny was disappointed in him. He told Sonny, "I learned something from this fight…..if I ever get into the ring again, you can bet I won’t be out of condition." It was a promise he kept through 49 pro fights. |
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| "He does it (runs) every morning even if he doesn’t have a fight…five or six miles. Been doing it for six years, every day. Even does six or seven miles on Christmas morning." Charlie Piccento, Rocky's uncle, to a reporter for Fight Magazine 1953, just before Walcott II. |
| "You throw a lot of punches, kid. Maybe you’ll have to pace yourself. You could get plenty tired in a ten rounder." Charlie Goldman to Rocky when he was training for his fight with Johnny Pretzie. "Don’t worry about that," Rocky told him. "I’m in better condition than any of them. I can go as many rounds as I have to." |
| Rocky spent hours punching the special heavy bag he'd had made for him. It weighed 300 pounds, much heavier than a normal heavy bag, and he had to hit it even harder to move it around. He wanted to be able to move 200+ pound heavyweights around with his body punches. |
| Ben Bentley, Rocky's press agent and friend, told me Rocky would normally run at least 5-6 miles a day year round, but when a fight was signed he'd increase the distance to 9-10 miles, and usually the last week up it to 12-15 miles. On top of this, he liked to walk another 5-10 miles in the late afternoon or evening. And he did all this in the hilly country around Grossinger's, where he trained. |
| It was Rocky's obsession with conditioning that kept him training 365 days a year and this dedication gave him stamina never seen before or since in a fighter. It allowed him to set a blistering pace that no fighter could match. A good heavyweight throws on average 40-45 punches a round during active rounds, and about half that when tired. Marciano averaged in the 80-85 punch range, and it wasn't unusual for him to throw over 100 punches a round. It's an axiom in boxing that a slugger tires quicker than a boxer. Marciano is the glaring exception to that rule. He could outlast the best conditioned pure boxers. The big sluggers who might have been able to hurt him lost their power after a few rounds. The better conditioned boxers didn't have the power to hurt him. Witness his wins over such excellent boxers as Roland LaStarza and Ezzard Charles. Though both stayed with Marciano for the duration their first fights with him, LaStarza 10 rounds and Charles 15, they lost because Rocky's attack never faltered. You might outbox him...you could never out punch him. |
| "He could hurt you, sure, but it was the quantity of his punches. He just had more stamina than anyone else in those days. He was like a bull with gloves." Archie Moore |
| "I would throw a hard punch, then he would throw a hard punch. The difference was that Rocky would throw 10 more. He just never stopped throwing punches." Roland LaStarza |
| "He was a great puncher, one of the best of all-time. He just threw one punch after another, and all of them were hard." Harry "Kid" Matthews |
| Marciano liked to run up a hill near his home while training. He’d charge up it at full speed, then run backwards back to the bottom. Then he’d charge up again. Rocky did this over and over to build up his leg muscles and his stamina. Football great Walter Payton did the same thing on a hill near his home. It allowed Payton to drive with his legs and hit as hard as men who outweighed him by 60 pounds. Marciano derived the power to hurt much bigger men the same way. |
| Something else Marciano did to build up his stamina and punching power was to get in a swimming pool to shoulder depth and throw hundreds of punches underwater. |
| "Despite the critics who claimed he was too slow, clumsy, a brawler unskilled in the finer points of his craft, Marciano’s sheer stamina and overwhelming desire to win more than compensated for any shortcomings in his boxing style." Everett M. Skehan, author of "Rocky Marciano: Biography of a First Son" |
| "Marciano’s preoccupation with physical conditioning cannot be overstressed. He was eager to train every day before a fight, and, unlike most heavyweights, he sometimes went to camp months before there was even a fight scheduled for him. Even Joe Frazier, the former champion who also prided himself on being fit…did not train with anywhere near the same dedication that Marciano devoted to it. " ‘I’ve been to camp eight weeks,’ Frazier said before the Thriller in Manila, ‘The longest in my life, and I feel I’m ready.’ "It is safe to speculate that eight weeks of training would not have satisfied Marciano had he been scheduled to fight Ali. He had often trained for four or five months to go against far less skilled opponents….and, although one can never be certain, there is reason to doubt whether Ali or any other fighter could have worn Marciano down and destroyed his defenses the way Muhammad did to Foreman and Frazier." Everett Skehan |
| "Of all boxers it seems to have been Rocky Marciano who trained with the most monastic devotion; his training methods have become legendary. Marciano was willing to seclude himself from the world, including his wife and family, for as long as three months before a fight. Apart from the grueling physical ordeal of this period and the obsessive preoccupation with diet and weight and muscle tone, Marciano concentrated on one thing; the upcoming fight. Every minute of his life was defined in terms of the opening second of the fight. In his training camp the opponent’s name was never mentioned in Marciano’s hearing, nor was boxing as a subject discussed. In the final month Marciano would not write a letter since a letter related to the outside world. During the last ten days before a fight he would see no mail, take no telephone calls, meet no new acquaintances. During the week before the fight he would not shake hands. Or go for a rid in a car, however brief. No new foods! No dreaming of the morning after the fight! For all that was not the fight had to be excluded from consciousness. When Marciano worked out with a punching bag he saw his opponent before him, when he jogged he saw his opponent close beside him, no doubt when he slept he 'saw' his opponent constantly—as the cloistered monk or nun chooses by an act of fanatical will to 'see' only God. "Madness?-or merely discipline?- this absolute subordination of the self. In any case, for Marciano, it worked." Joyce Carol Oates "On Boxing" |