On Saturday, July 26, 2003 at 11:46:12 PM UTC-4, D. Flynn wrote:
In 1969, a 46 year old Marciano, who hadn't had a pro fight in 14 years, spent a day sparring w/Ali and beat the shit out of him. Even Ali
loyalist Ferdie Pacheco couldn't believe how one-sided it was. A few
days later Lou Duva asked Ali if the Rock could still punch. "Are you kidding?" he replied and lifted his shirt to reveal deep bruises on both
his sides.
Can't just make stuff up. Ali was flabby and out of training during the 42 month ban over being a conscientious objector; Rocky had been retired for some time, bought a bad toupee, and had to lose appr 40 pounds so it would look legit. No real punches
were thrown as they acted out scenarios for the "computer fight". It was light-contact "sparring" with some bruising and facial scrapes, since, yes, there was some contact - that happens in friendly sparring at any boxing gym, but in this case, there was
LESS contact than in the rounds I did today to warm up one of our guys for an upcoming ESPN fight. Neither guy was trying to hurt the other. Ali could attest to Marciano's strength, and Rocky to Ali's speed. But they were producing sequences to be
stitched together into the film simulation, determined by the computer (a 20K system that wouldn't power a calculator today. There were some instructions followed - such as when to be "knocked down", when Marciano should stop to have the ketchup applied
to simulate blood; different endings were shown in different regions (Ali won in the version showed in Europe).
There were a few nice anecdotes. For example, when Ali appeared to be aiming for the much older Rocky's toupee, jabbing and landing repeatedly, and lightly and it finally fell off - Rocky got crabby and hit him a bit harder than expected in the gut. Out-
of-shape Ali went "oooff" and sat down. They laughed it off. They remained friendly, and both commented that there was a bond between them, mutual liking and respect. Latly, Pacheco didn't think Marciano beat the shit out of him. It...didn't....happen.
A good source out of several: The Guardian, Nov 13, 2012:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2012/nov/13/forgotten-story-rocky-marciano-muhammad-ali
"...they laboured around the ring, avoiding head punches and mostly tapping at each other's stomachs. A duvet of flab embraced Ali's mid-section, and his jabs contained the spite of a well-fed labrador. Marciano, who had lost 45lbs in case his opponent
took liberties, was more serious. But a new toupee, which he believed made him look well-groomed and youthful, further turned this curiosity towards cartoon: he looks like an undersized hoodlum from Dick Tracy.
At one point the pair were exchanging blows when Ali's jab flicked the back of Marciano's head and scooped up his toupee.
"Cut! Cut! Cut the camera," shouted Marciano, "Watch the piece!"
Later he asked his friends: "You don't think he's doing it on purpose?"
"No Rock," his friends assured him. "It's just an accident."
"Well, he'd better start aiming those punches better," Rocky said.
"Rock was really upright about the toupee," Ali's trainer, Angelo Dundee, said. "He had this guy in New York that made his toupees. I remember when he got the first one. Mingia! It was terrible. It looked like a dead cat. I said, 'Rocky, watch out. The
thing might get up and run away."
Sadly the scene didn't make the final edit.
The theatre is further enhanced by knowing that the 'blood' from Marciano's cuts to his nose and forehead, which he develops in the fight, is ketchup. Wrote Ali: "My glove never hit his face, his glove never hit mine … the promoter asks me if I can
think of some ending, and I plan the one that is actually used: I show Rocky how to hit me and I fall as though it's real. We have seven different endings – some with me winning, some with Rocky winning. Some segments we fake so good they are left
untouched by the editors."
Ali has a point with the knockout sequences, which are realistic enough. And there are moments where a fight hints at breaking out, especially in the 12th where Ali connects with a series of playful flicks that get a snorting Marciano swinging widely.
Mostly, though, the action was sloppy and forgettable.
"I think it was Marciano who threw the first real punch," Woroner said later. "They had been fooling around when Marciano suddenly let one go to the midsection. Ali followed with a shot to the head. But the fighters respected each other and apologized
for these slips. And afterwards, Ali commented that Marciano had surprised him."
A friendship was forged outside the ring. Marciano, the bashful white man who served his country in the second world war, and Ali, the brash Afro-American draft dodger, found themselves getting on famously.
"Through all the fakery, something is happening between us," Ali wrote in his autobiography. "I feel closer to him than any white fighter in the trade. We talk fighter's talk in the way only friends can, blood talk, nitty-gritty talk. Our work is phoney
but out friendship has become real."
Throughout filming Ali referred to Marciano as 'champ'. And in his autobiography he wrote: "Rocky was quiet, peaceful, humble, not cocky or boastful" adding that he "deserves his place as one of the greatest of the great heavyweights. Marciano, meanwhile,
called Ali "the fastest man on wheels".
"But as the fraud came near an end, it was plain that neither of us, both heavyweight champions, liked the idea of being dramatized as defeated by the other – especially in a fake fight – and we were both on edge," admitted Ali. "One afternoon I
unleashed a string of lightning-fast jabs that kept coming almost the entire round. Rocky was amazed and said: "I never seen a fighter with hands that fast.""
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