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Rocky Marciano - The Blockbuster from Brockton
By Ed Fitzgerald, from SPORT, January 1953
There wasn't much a bored soldier shipping out for England could do to kill time on the crowded decks of the Mauretania. Private Rocco Marchegiano of the 150th Combat Engineers didn't have any money in his wallet so he couldn't even get into one of the non-stop games of chance; all he could do was stand around restlessly and watch others shuffling the cards and shaking the dice. Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer. He borrowed a quarter from a pal and got into a penny-ante game of blackjack. He won eight dollars and moved on to a poker game where the stakes were considerably higher. He won $50 more and, feeling hot, bought into the "big game" on the ship, a wide-open crap game. Riding a phenomenal streak of luck, and riding it for all it was worth, he quickly ran his stake all the way up to a bulging bankroll of $1,200. It was the first time anything like that had happened to him in all his life, but it wasn't to be the last. Half a dozen years after he got his Army discharge, with his name shortened to the more colorful Rocky Marciano, the iron-muscled Italian kid from Brockton, Massachusetts, climaxed a brief career in the prize ring by slugging Jersey Joe Walcott unconscious before a half-million-dollar house in Philadelphia's Municipal Stadium to win the heavyweight championship of the world. The only man in the recorded history of the heavyweight class to win the title without suffering a single professional defeat, Rocky had hit the jackpot just as spectacularly as he had broken the troopship crap game. But this time the stakes were even bigger. By the most conservative estimate the pot held a cool million dollars, and if Rocky's luck stayed with him, he would make his million five times over. He intends to hang on to what he makes. As plain as an old shoe, Rocky Marciano has inevitably learned to like a number of the things money can buy–especially anything you can eat–but he isn't likely ever to become a playboy. He's a neighborhood kid who married a neighborhood girl and who thinks the old hometown is the greatest place in the world. He'll live well but he won't build any bonfires with the dollar bills he has earned by the toughest means known to man. "I think I learned a good lesson when I won that money on the ship," Rocky said in his noticeably New England accent. "I was the only guy in the company who had any money when we landed in England, and naturally the fellows all wanted to go places, so it didn't take long before I had it all loaned out. I never got it back." Rocky grinned reflectively. "I don't know what ever happened to that money," he said. "But it wasn't put to good use." You get the impression that he intends to take better care of his boxing money, which is a good idea because there is going to be an awful lot of it. It is no surprise to the fight mob, which has been saying it for at least three years, but there is scarcely an adult newspaper-reader in the United States who does not now know that Rocky Marciano is a human gold mine. The heavyweight championship is almost always an exceedingly profitable commodity. In the right hands, it coins money almost as fast as the U.S. Mint. Rocky's hands are obviously going to rank him right up there with Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis, the money-makingest heavyweight kings in history. The Rock has everything. No Fancy Dan boxer, he throws technique to the winds when he climbs between the ropes. He fights as though his very life were at stake; he pursues the enemy with an implacable fury that raises the hackles on the backs of the customers' necks. Rocky is not in there to outpoint anybody in an exhibition of boxing skill. He is in there to kill or be killed. He is a primitive fighter who stalks his prey until he can welt him with that frightening right-hand crusher. You can, as with an enraged grizzly bear, slow him down and make him shake his head if you hit him hard enough to wound him, but you can't make him back up. Slowly, relentlessly, ruthlessly, he moves in on you. Sooner or later, he reaches out and clubs you down. He isn't graceful, as Joe Louis was, and he isn't smart, as Jack Dempsey was, but he can hit at least as hard as either of those legendary punchers–and maybe harder. The crowd doesn't ask for anything more. In addition to the truckload of box office appeal he carries in his shy grin, his infectious good humor and his tigerish style of fighting, Rocky Marciano has another major asset in his campaign to haul a few million dollars in honest loot back to the town where he once worked eight hours a day, five days a week, with a pick and shovel. He is in virtually on the ground floor of the giant television boom. No man alive can tell how much money Rocky may be able to command for a title defense a few years from now. Theater television already is outstripping its wildest claims as a money-making medium for headline fights; subscription television, with every set-owner able to tune in the fight by paying a modest fee, could conceivably make a million dollars just a fair take for the champion's end of a purse. The imagination is staggered by the enormous riches plainly within the grasp of this powerfully built son of an immigrant shoemaker. Judging from the murderous impact his Sunday punch has on the men he faces in the ring–he has scored 38 knockouts in his 43 fights, all of which he has won–Rocky Marciano is going to remain champion long enough to do the first truly thorough job of exploiting TV's possibilities as a boxing income-producer. Despite the fact that he is one of the easiest fighters in the ring to hit, as old Jersey Joe proved when he knocked him to the mat in the first minute of their September title fight, Marciano carries the equalizer in his right hand and can put the fear of the Lord into anyone who has the temerity to slug it out with him. If anyone beats him in the next few years, it will be a lightning-fast boxer, a big Ray Robinson, someone who can take full advantage of the Rock's clumsiness and do to him what Gene Tunney did to Dempsey 26 years ago in Philadelphia. Charlie Goldman, the wise old trainer who harnessed Rocky Marciano's raw power, says the only thing that will beat Rocky is his unbelievably prodigious appetite. Charlie watches him like a hawk to keep him from eating too much but it's a thankless job. All kinds of stories are told about Rocky's feats at the table, and most of them are true. His father, Perrino, tells one of the best. "One time," Papa Marchegiano says, "Mama had some people coming to the house so she made a roast chicken and put it in the refrigerator to slice up later. Then she went out. When she come home she look for the chicken but no chicken. Nothing. Then Rocky comes home and she asked him. At least, he told the truth. He ate the whole thing. He was hungry." There is a wealthy Italian tomato grower named Jimmy Cereglia who commutes between Atlanta, Georgia, and wherever Marciano happens to be at the moment. He lavishes affection upon the fighter. "Jimmy Tomatoes," as Rocky calls him, once gave a party for Marciano at Greenwood Lake, New York. He kept after Rocky to eat, begged him to eat and enjoy himself, to have a good time. Rocky ate some lasagna, an Italian staple of noodles and meat and cheese, which has more calories per cubic inch than you could count. Then he ate a big bowl of minestrone, Italy's entrancing version of vegetable soup. Ready for some serious eating, he demolished a five-pound steak and, still not quite full, tapered off with two orders of filet mignon. He economized on calories by turning down all dessert offers except a bowl of ice cream. Goldman says disgustedly that he was probably looking for a snack in the refrigerator an hour later. Rocky laughs sheepishly as Charlie gives him the needle about his astonishing appetite. He defends himself mildly. "Sure," he says, "I like the eats, but Charlie's always laying it on. I ain't that bad." Maybe not, but he comes close. One night during his long training grind before the Walcott fight, Rocky got up from in front of the camp television set and stretched his weary arms. "Guess I'll hit the sack," he said, and started across the hall to his bedroom. Goldman looked after him suspiciously. "What'd you stash up there tonight?" he demanded. "You been out buyin' some salami or somethin'?" Rocky looked pained. "What's the matter, Charlie?" he said wistfully, "ain't you ever gonna start in trustin' me?" He was still a little pained, one of his buddies said, when he sat down on the edge of his bed, reached under the pillow, hauled out a two-pound roll of salami and bit into it, shaking his head in a puzzled way. Like many another great fighters before him–Joe Louis, for a recent example–Marciano is a split personality. An out-and-out killer in the ring, instinctively swinging for blood on every punch, he is the mildest, friendliest and most loyal of men outside it. The pal whose faith in his ability got him started on the road to the heavyweight championship is still at his side, sharing in every new stroke of good fortune. Al Colombo, who lived next door to Rocky and talked him into setting out on the glory road, will be on the champ's payroll as long as he wants to be. The same goes for Nick Sylvester, another old friend from Brockton. Rocky says he keeps Nick around because he can murder him at table tennis but they both know better than that. Rocky is a man who sets great store by family and friends. He thinks his two biggest victories in 1952 were knocking out Walcott and getting his 58-year-old father to quit the shoe factory after more than three decades of unremitting labor–and Rocky isn't so sure they ought to be listed in that order. Even his opponents become Rocky's friends. He has never been known to utter a disparaging remark about any man he has fought in the ring. The good, the bad and the indifferent, the brave and the cowardly, they all get kind words from Rocky. One man, Carmine Vingo, who almost died from the numbing effects of a Marciano knockout blow, has become a bosom buddy of the champion. Rocky blasted young Vingo into unconsciousness in the sixth round of a Madison Square Garden fight on December 30, 1949. Partially paralyzed and intermittently out cold, Vingo was carried into St. Clare's Hospital in New York and barely escaped with his life. He has recovered completely, although he can never fight again, and is working in a defense plant. Rocky sends him ringside tickets to all his big fights and Carmine is a familiar figure in Marciano's dressing room. Nobody ever told Rocky he ought to do it; it's just his way. There is no telling how seriously Marciano's career might have been affected if anything had happened to Vingo. Only the people who live with Rocky know how shocked he was by the nearly fatal accident. A Catholic, he prayed constantly that Carmine's life might be spared. He didn't draw an easy breath until a week or 10 days after the fight, it was clear that the boy would live. Rocky has no lurid notions about the striking force of his gloved fists but he never approaches a new fight without a silent prayer that no action of his may cause permanent harm to another man. Temporary harm is another matter. Rocky knows he is no master boxer and he knows the only safe course for him to follow in any fight is to go for a knockout. As Charlie Goldman says, "They all look better than he does as far as the moves are concerned, but they don't look so good on the canvas." For a long time, Marciano's succession of knockout victories was taken with a large grain of salt by ring fanciers. They made jokes about his smashing wins over such as Johnny Pretzie, Harry Haft, Phil Muscata, Eldridge Eatman, Gino Buonvino and Johnny Shkor. "Roundheels," they termed them sneeringly. Whenever Rocky was evaded for the full 10 rounds by a Don Mogard, a Ted Lowry or a Red Applegate, the raspberries were even fruitier. There can be little doubt that Rocky's swift and smooth rise to the top of the boxing world disproved the old ring axiom that you can't learn the trade by knocking over stiffs. Almost everyone agrees there was little danger of his being upended by any of the solemn clowns he fought in his first few years. "Sixty percent of them guys Marciano licked," one old-time fight manager said, "didn't know from nothing. They got a call to go up and fight. They went. They got knocked out. Nobody got locked up and a lot of guys got paid off." That's a cynical but honest appraisal of the way Marciano's reputation was nurtured. But Rocky was no Primo Carnera. Even though he was tossed in with a parade of ineffectives, he managed to find out what it was all about. Little Charlie Goldman kept whispering the word into his ear, and just by being in the ring and swinging his meat-axe at the selected victims dug up by Al Weill, he picked up a little here and a little there. He learned what his punch could do and what he had to do to exploit it. He learned how to move around, not like Sugar Ray or even like Ezzard Charles, but purposefully enough to line up his heavy artillery and get it on target. He didn't need to do anything more. The jeers of the fight mob were inspired by something more than a professional scorn for the quality of Marciano's opposition. Rocky was (and is) managed by Al Weill, one of the shrewdest, most successful, and most hated men in the game. When they mouthed their cruel witticisms about Rocky's lack of style, the Jacobs Beachcombers were simply giving vent to their dislike for Weill. After Alphonse ascended the throne of matchmaker for the International Boxing Club, and, in order to comply with the regulations of the New York State Athletic Commission, turned over the managership of Marciano to his stepson, Marty Weill, the catcalls grew even louder. The Weill-haters had what they needed, an issue they could get their teeth into. It was against the rules for Al to hold down his $20,000-a-year job as IBC matchmaker and manage a fighter at the same time, but everyone knew he was doing it. The managers, trainers, boxers, writers and hangers-on who did not belong to the Weill inner circle did their level best to beat his brains in. Scarcely a week went by that some columnist did not angrily demand an investigation. Young Rocky Marciano, running his roadwork faithfully, belting out the fighters they put in the ring with him, and being his naturally amiable self to everyone he met in the course of the job, found himself squarely in the middle. Entrenched in the seat of boxing power, Weill was safe from the slings and the arrows. It was easier to put the slug on Marciano–with tongue or typewriter, that is–and it soon became fashionable to speak of the Brockton boxer as a clumsy amateur whose heavyweight pretensions were just flights of the Weill fancy. Five times Rocky had to meet this persistent calumny head-on. Five times he destroyed it. So deeply ingrained was the Weillphobia that provoked the smearing of Marciano's reputation that the dragon was resurrected after each new slaying and Rocky had to do the job all over again. But he never faltered. His fighting heart and his fearsome punch more than made up for his technical deficiencies. One by one he answered the big questions. He outpointed Roland LaStarza on March 24, 1950. He knocked out Rex Layne in six rounds on July 12, 1951. He knocked out the great Joe Louis in eight rounds on October 26, 1951. He knocked out Harry Matthews in two rounds on July 28, 1952. He knocked out Jersey Joe Walcott, in 13 savage and melodramatic rounds on September 23, 1952. Weill was, incidentally, openly in Marciano's corner for the first time in three years the night the Rock won the title. He had resigned his IBC position in midsummer and had put a stop to the fragile fiction that Marty Weill, who saw the fighter a few times a year, was Rocky's manager. The contract Marty had filed with the New York State Athletic Commission was withdrawn and torn up. Rocky signed a new two-year agreement with Al and the old firm was officially back in business. "Marty," Rocky grinned when he was asked about the contract switch, "was bought out." But overnight, in fact, in the single shattering second it took for that destructive right hand to explode flush against the black stubble of beard on Joe Walcott's jaw, nobody seemed to care much who was managing Rocky. What difference did it make? Brother, did you see the way Walcott went down when the Rock let him have it? The Brockton Blockbuster was the heavyweight champion of the world, a slugging successor to John L. Sullivan, Jim Corbett, Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis. There were no jeers now, only cheers, cheer upon volleyed cheer flung into the night sky over Philadelphia and finding an echo in every city and town in America where the most ancient and lustiest of sports had a single follower. Rocky did it the hard way. Fate selected an extraordinary roundabout way for him to make his boyhood dream come true. As a sports-crazy kid, in his private dreams of glory he was always the heavyweight champ, taking on all comers and knocking them out with a single roundhouse right, but it was only a boy's fantasy. It wasn't a serious ambition, even though he used to tell his father jokingly that he'd take care of all his troubles when he grew up and won the title. Years later, when he was a man grown, working for a living with his strong arms and back, or soldiering in the Combat Engineers, or a veteran on the City of Brockton payroll as a pick-and-shovel man, he wouldn't have given a dime for his chances of following through on the old vision. Life was very real and very earnest to Rocco Marchegiano. Things had never been easy for Rocky. He was the first of five children born to Perrino Marchegiano and his wife, Pasqualena. His father had served with the AEF in World War I and had been gassed during the Argonne fighting. He was able to go back to the shoe factory when he returned home to Brockton but he never was the same man physically and his earning power was sharply limited by his disability. As a result, the Marchegianos were just about able to make ends meet; there never was any money left over for "foolishness." Rocky Marciano's father, who can hardly restrain his immense pride when he stands quietly in the background and talks about his famous son, likes to tease Rocky in a heavy-handed way about his thriftiness as a boy. "Mama," he says, "used to give him a quarter sometimes to go to the movies. Like on Saturday afternoon. He would put it in his pocket and go out. That night after he got in bed she would be hanging up his clothes and the quarter would fall out. He didn't spend it." The old man shook his head affectionately. "He always hated to spend money, that boy. He was always working for a dollar. His pleasure was giving money to Mama." When he wasn't running errands or sweeping out stores for nickels, Rocky was playing ball. Baseball, if it was warm; football, if it was cold. The gang from the neighborhood used to hang out in Edgar Playground when the weather was decent and it never took long to get a game going. Everybody always wanted Rocco on their side; he was the best athlete in the gang. He generally was a catcher in baseball and a center in football, although he also played some first base for a couple of town teams in later years. Except for the usual number of kid fights, he did his first boxing on a punching bag his Uncle John Piccento installed for him in the cellar. "Uncle John gave me my first gloves, too," Rocky said, "and he took me to my first fight, down at the Brockton Arena." Uncle John had a great deal to do with the shaping of Marciano's career. He not only provided the first boxing equipment Rocky ever had but he was the one who talked the boy into quitting high school during his second year and making a serious start in the world. "Uncle John knew I wasn't much of a student," Rocky says candidly. "He grabbed me one day and told me it wouldn't hurt for me to get out and get a job. The folks could use a little help, he said. So I did. I worked in a shoe factory for a while, then I got a job in a candy factory. I had all kinds of jobs. I worked for a landscape gardener and I worked clearing land for the city and the state both. I liked the pick-and-shovel work a lot better than being in a factory. I couldn't stand being cooped up all day. I had to be out in the air." In his spare time he kept on playing ball. "Sometimes," he said, "in one week in the summer I'd play as many as eight games. I played for the Sons of Italy, the Ward Two Social Club, the Italian-Americans, for all the teams that asked me. After all, I was still only 17, 18. I was out for a good time when I was off the job." But the job, whatever it happened to be at the time, was the big thing. The money he was making helped Mama Marchegiano set a better table for her hungry brood and still lay away a few dollars for a rainy day. There was, in those days, no thought in Rocky's mind that things ever would be any different. He had a brief surge of hope once when his Uncle John, thinking the boy might have the makings of a prize-fighter, took him down to the Knights of Columbus for a workout. "I got in with the local pro for a couple of rounds," Rocky said, "but I didn't get any encouragement." He grimaced. "The guy didn't even let me throw a punch. He was all over me. I guess he told Uncle John to forget about it." Fortunately, Uncle John kept up a sporadic interest in Rocky's boxing. "He had a bad left arm himself," Rocky said. "He couldn't straighten it out. So he was always after me to learn how to do everything with both arms, in case anything ever happened to one. He wanted me to bat lefty as well as righty. He wanted me to throw with both hands. He kept after me all the time to punch the bag with both hands and get used to punching with either one. That couldn't have done me any harm." Al Colombo, who lived in the house next door, was Rocky's best pal. Nick Sylvester, who is still with him, and his brother Gene were his friends, too. Their life in the years just before the war was typical of the existence led by hard-working young men in factory cities all over the country. Their interests all lay outside the job. Baseball was their first love. Boxing was their second favorite. Rocky and Allie, as he has always called Colombo, were Joe Louis fans. Their hangout was the Ward Two Social Club. They didn't have steady girls but they liked to go to a dance once in a while. The weeks went along and became months and the months merged into years and there was no reason to suspect things ever would be any different. Then the war came. Rocky, who was born on September 1, 1924, was 18 years old when he pulled his induction notice out of the mailbox in March, 1943. He felt no particular pain at the prospect of becoming a buck private. It was another job, and from what he had heard, he wouldn't have to work half as hard as he had been doing. "But they must have taken one look at my thick neck," Rocky said, laughing, "and said to themselves, ‘Here's a guy we can work.' Because right away I was in a brand new Combat Engineers outfit, the 150th. And, boy, they made us sweat. We were just ditch-diggers in uniform." It didn't take Rocky long to find out that when the outfit was in a garrison status he could make life a lot easier for himself by playing ball and boxing. That way he got off a lot of work details, and Rocky would rather get in the ring for a couple of rounds than do KP any day in the week. The accepted story is that his buddies first discovered his punching prowess when he flattened a big Australian soldier who tried to bulldoze some of them in a British pub. Actually, Rocky had started his army boxing at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, before he went overseas, and he kept it up on the other side whenever the opportunity presented itself. When he got back to the States, he fought in an Army tournament and went all the way to the finals at Portland, Oregon, before he was outpointed by a Boston sergeant named Judge DeAngelis. His success in Army boxing gave new life to Rocky's old longing to be a professional fighter. It still wasn't an all-consuming ambition, but it was there. "Actually," he says, "I was more interested in baseball, but I got cured of that in a hurry. Ralph Wheeler, a sportswriter for the Boston Herald, arranged for five of us from the Ward Two club to get a tryout with the Fayetteville, North Carolina club. That was a Chicago Cub farm. I went down there with big ideas, I guess, and I was pretty disappointed when I didn't make it. My arm was dead. I couldn't throw. But I hated to go back home. Everybody in town knew I'd gone down for the tryout and, well, I don't know, I was just ashamed. Allie's cousin, Vince Colombo, had got himself situated with an independent club called the Goldsboro Bugs in Wilson, North Carolina, so I went over to visit him for a while. I told him how I didn't want to go home and he said his club was short of catchers so he got me a job with them. I played for a couple of weeks, maybe three altogether, and I got my hits, but I still couldn't throw. The manager finally told me I'd better go home." Back in Brockton, with no money in his jeans, Rocky got a job working for the city, clearing land for a new housing project. He worked at that for a couple of months and then, at Al Colombo's urging, began boxing again. "I had about seven amateur fights for the AAU in the Mechanics' Building in Boston," he said, "and I did real good. Then they started the Golden Gloves over in Lowell and I had four fights there and won them all. That qualified me for the All-Eastern and I went all the way to the final. Coley Wallace beat me." "It was a bad decision," Colombo, who was listening, interrupted. "Eddie Eagan, who used to be the Commissioner in New York, came to see Rocky when he was training for Walcott, and he said he had seen the fight and he thought Rocky had beaten Wallace." Rocky nodded. "I thought I beat him," he said. "But I didn't get the decision and that's what counts." Just the same, Rocky had done well enough to agree with Colombo that he might have a future in boxing. He had even made a few dollars out of it. Not much, of course, $15 here and $25 there. Then Al got him a "bootleg" fight in Holyoke for $50. He fought under the name of Rocky Mack and his opponent in the four-round preliminary was another amateur named Lee Epperson. Rocky knocked him out in the third round and had no objections to offer when Al said he was going to write a letter to the famous New York manager, Al Weill, and ask him to take Rocky in hand and make a professional out of him. Weill still has that letter. It said, in part, "there are quite a few handlers around Boston who are interested but we are dissatisfied with a Boston setup for Rocky. We are interested mainly in a manager in New York who has the contacts to take care of a very promising young heavyweight properly. Believe me, he has tremendous possibilities. You will see he's good enough to go to the top." With that letter began the gradual transition of Rocco Marchegiano, part-time pick-and-shovel man and part-time amateur boxer, into Rocky Marciano, heavyweight champion of the world. The in-between phase is mostly Charlie Goldman's story. "Weill turned the letter over to me," Charlie said, "and I wrote Colombo the usual thing. I invited him to bring the boy down for a tryout and I said at least with us he'd get an opportunity to learn the trade. Colombo wrote back and made a date with me. But when the day came they didn't show up. Then the next day they were there. What happened was they didn't have any money and they found out they could bum a ride down on a truck that was headed for New York; but they'd have to wait a day. So they waited. When they finally got there, they met me at my office and I took them down to the CYO gym. There wasn't anybody around for Rocky to box with so I had him punch the big bag. One of the CYO coaches was around, and I'm the kind of a guy that always likes to get somebody else's opinion when I can, so I asked him what he thought of the boy. He told me, ‘You'll never make a fighter out of that guy.' But it looked to me like he had a big, strong body and a good, strong punch. You have those things; it's a short cut. I figured I had nothing to lose taking a chance, and Al agreed with me." Charlie pointed out that one of the main handicaps he had to consider was Rocky's age. "He was 23, going on 24, when I first saw him," the wizened trainer said. "That's old for a fighter starting out. Most good fighters get started as early as 15 or 16. By the time they're in their twenties, they're well on their way. With Rocky it was different. You see, there's nothing much on a young boy's mind except fighting, but the older fellows have to worry all the time about making a living right away, and that makes it tough." It made it tough for Marciano, all right. Weill advanced him nothing. He had to struggle along as best he could until Goldman thought he was ready to begin fighting–and even then he couldn't hope for more than minimum purses. Fortunately, he had a little money put away, and so did Colombo. They pooled what they had. Then, when things were beginning to get rough, the Mayor of Brockton came to the rescue by putting him on the city payroll for six weeks. That gave Rocky a chance to hold out until Goldman and Weill felt he could give it a whirl. On July 12, 1948, in Providence, Rhode Island, Rocky had his first professional fight of record. He stiffened one Harry Bilazarian in the first round. One week later he was fed a gentle opponent named John Edwards. He, too, succumbed in the first round. "He was very awkward," Charlie Goldman says. "He was crude. Right-hand crazy. He had that good right hand, but the way he looped it, it was always telegraphed. Anybody could've seen what was coming when he got ready to throw it." But Weill was too smart to let Rocky get in with anybody who was likely to take advantage of his inexperience. His opponents were not picked haphazardly. Weill wasn't out to make a quick dollar with his new boy; in fact, Rocky testifies, "he didn't even cut me that first year." What the shrewd New Yorker had in mind was nothing less than the biggest prize of them all. Right from the beginning, he was shooting for the heavyweight title. The knockouts continued, one after another. The names of the upended "opponents," the trade designation for non-entities who serve as chopping blocks for more favored fighters, meant nothing then and mean nothing now. Bobby Quinn, Eddie Ross, Gil Cardione, Bob Jefferson, Gilley Ferron, James Walls . . . there were 15 of them, all in a row, all twisted and quivering masses of human flesh stretched out on the unfriendly canvas, human sacrifices to Al Weill's Machiavellian design and Rocky Marciano's inevitable destiny. The name Rocky Marciano, incidentally, was Al Weill's idea, too. He told his white hope that Rocco Marchegiano would never do for a ring name. Too long, too hard to say and too hard to spell. Al Colombo suggested the old pseudonym, Rocky Mack, but Rocky didn't like the idea. He didn't think it sounded like him. But when Marciano was suggested, he went along right away. "At least," he said, "it sounds Italian." Rocky's uninterrupted string of knockouts was finally cut short in Providence on May 23, 1949, by Don Mogard, an undistinguished journeyman heavyweight who stood on his feet for the full 10 rounds even though he lost the decision. After three more knockouts, Rocky was held to a decision again by Ted Lowry, another club-fighting heavyweight of small skill but stout heart. But he was still unbeaten and he could boast of 21 knockouts in 23 fights as the year 1949 drew to a close. Weill decided to risk showing him in New York. Carmine Vingo was a vigorous young man the night of December 30, 1949, when he stepped into the ring at the Nicholas Arena to box Rocky Marciano in the 10-round main event. He was much older after the fight was over. He was almost at the end of his life. The doctors who worked tensely around the clock to keep the heart beating inside his big body had to contend with a fractured skull, a concussion of the brain and a damaging blood clot on the brain. It wasn't until a week had passed that they were willing to predict with confidence that he would live. It was a week of hellish torture for Rocky. Nobody outside of Carmine's immediate circle of loved ones was more relieved than Rocky when it was known that Vingo would live. Along with his prayers, Rocky sent his victim a check for $2,000 to help pay his hospital costs and later added $500 more to give the beaten boxer a boost as he set out to look for a new way to make a living. Their affection for each other today is a warming thing to see. Since Carmine can no longer fight in the ring, Rocky's career has to serve for both of them. Carmine was as wildly happy the night Marciano knocked out Walcott as if he had belted the old champion to the floor himself. Weill didn't send his tiger back to the wars for almost three months after the Vingo scare. He wanted to make sure Rocky had pushed the episode into the back of his mind. When he did make another match for him, it was a big one. As Rocky had been climbing the ladder in New England, edging ever closer to the charmed circle of legitimate heavyweight contenders, a young college boy named Roland LaStarza had been doing the same thing in New York. Not so savage a puncher as Marciano, but a more skillful boxer, LaStarza had attracted a considerable following among the experts as well as the fans. A meeting between the two was a natural. The Madison Square Garden battle between the two serious, gifted young heavyweights took place on March 24, 1950, almost three years ago. It is still hashed over, round by round, still the theme of a thousand vehement arguments. It was decided by the narrowest margin allowable in New York State. It was a fight to remember, a crucial fight of heavy implications. LaStarza, winner of 37 straight as against Marciano's 26 in a row, showed the crowd of 13,658 some fancy counter-punching in the first three rounds as Marciano wasted no time swinging to the attack. By far the largest percentage of Rocky's punches were wild, and the cleverer, more stylish LaStarza was making a good impression at Marciano's expense. But Rocky kept swinging. Even when the crowd laughed coarsely at some of his worst misses, he showed no outward signs of discouragement. As the fourth round got under way, a few of his long, looping rights to the head began to land. Then, just before the bell sounded to end the round, Rocky smashed a right-hand punch through LaStarza's guard and knocked the broad-shouldered CCNY student off his feet. Bewildered and hurt, but not out, Roland was getting to his feet at the count of eight when the bell broke it off. Rocky caught LaStarza with a few more good ones in the fifth and, for a while, it looked as though he might wrap up the fight. But Roland came back strong in the sixth and seventh and tightened it up again. In the eighth, Rocky, still swinging freely and showing no signs of tiring, made a costly mistake that almost lost him the fight. Throwing right hands as fast and as hard as he could, he let go a low blow that resulted in the referee awarding the round to LaStarza. The ninth and tenth were both close rounds. The crowd roared with pleasure as the two obviously classy rookies pounded each other with punches that hurt. Rocky fooled the cautious LaStarza several times with a powerful left hook, a punch he hadn't tried at all in the earlier rounds. They were slugging at close quarters, each desperately striving for a last-minute edge, when the fight ended. The Garden was in an uproar as the crowd waited for the decision. Everybody knew how much the fight meant to the two youngsters and the almost universal dislike of Weill lent spice to the suspense. The noise died out quickly as Johnny Addie, the Garden announcer, stepped to the microphone lowered over the ring. Addie gave the result piecemeal. Judge Arthur Schwartz had scored five rounds for Marciano, four for LaStarza and one even. Judge Arthur Aidala had it just the other way around, five rounds for LaStarza, four for Marciano and one even. You couldn't hear a sound except heavy, tense breathing as Addie said, "Referee Watson scores five rounds for Marciano, five rounds for LaStarza. Points: six for LaStarza, nine for Marciano! The winner, Marciano!" Wild cheers were mixed with angry boos as the big crowd began to file out of the hall. A quick poll of the working press section showed that most of the boxing writers thought LaStarza had won but that it had been a close fight and it didn't matter much, anyway, because now they could have a terrific return match. In the bowels of the Garden, under the emptying stands, Al Weill, now the matchmaker of the International Boxing Club and officially separated from the managership of Marciano, walked into LaStarza's dressing room to congratulate him on a strong showing. Wild with rage, Roland's manager, Jimmy (Fats) DeAngelo, threw him out and slammed the door in his face. Weill was to get even by slamming the door in LaStarza's face for the next three years. The much talked about return bout never happened. Weill had other plans. He was pointing the Brockton Blockbuster, as the papers were already beginning to call Rocky, onward and upward. As far as Weill was concerned, LaStarza was just another inevitable casualty. Al couldn't be bothered mourning his hard luck and, not being the sensitive type, he wasn't at all disturbed by the ceaseless needling of the fight writers who thought it something less than kosher for him to play such flagrant politics while supposedly looking out disinterestedly for the best interests of the IBC and the boxing public in his well-paid capacity of matchmaker. The Marciano saga moved into a new phase. Rocky was firmly established as a contender now. Not the top contender, but a real one nevertheless and a contender who could boast the rarest of all heavyweight commodities, gobs and gobs of color. There was something about Rocky that made even the Weill-haters tingle inside. Your pulse jumped and the sweat oozed out of your armpits when Rocky, black hair flying, muscle-ridged back glistening and magnificently carved arms driving, threw science out the window and crashed into an opponent with the undisciplined violence of a young bull. As did few other fighters of his time, Rocky satisfied the primitive blood lust that lured the customers through the doors. He went back on the stiff patrol while the master mind in the IBC office searched for the next opening. They flocked to see him in Providence, in Boston and in Hartford, and he seldom disappointed them. He had five fights between June and December, and he won four of them by knockouts. In the fifth, he out-pointed Ted Lowry, the second time Lowry had refused to bend before the Rock's withering fire. Rocky had a long way to go before he got into the really big money but he was doing well enough. The LaStarza fight, with a $53,723 gate, had been his first big strike. Rocky, who had been going steady for almost three years with Barbara Cousens, the big, blonde daughter of Patrolman Lester Cousens of the Brockton Police Department, wanted to get married. He put it up to Weill, who had so far discouraged the step. Weill agreed reluctantly that Rocky was solvent enough, and had progressed far enough in his trade, to marry. So, on December 31, 1950, Rocky and Barbara were married. Al Colombo was best man. A party at Cappy's Restaurant in Brockton saw Rocky go for his whole end of the LaStarza purse entertaining 550 friends and relatives in the gayest wedding party Brockton had seen in a long time. It was a celebration worthy of the great John L. Sullivan himself, and there wasn't a man, woman or child in the crowd who wasn't convinced that Rocky Marciano was the living image of John L., the new Boston Strong Boy. Rocky and Barbara had a short honeymoon in Miami–very short. Then it was right back to the training grind and, on the night of January 29, back to the wars. Keene Simmons was led out to the Providence chopping block and the hero of all New England demolished him in eight rounds. Rocky was back in business. Another big test was building up for Marciano. Rex Layne of Lewiston, Utah, touted by Jack Dempsey as the best young heavyweight around, had out-pointed Jersey Joe Walcott and knocked out Bob Satterfield in the course of winning 36 out of 37 fights. Only Dave Whitlock had been able to beat him and Rex had taken care of Whitlock in a return bout. Big and strong, he was the picture of a heavyweight fighter. But, before a crowd of 12,565 that paid $73,190 into the Garden box-office, Rocky exposed him as a willing but clumsy amateur. "It was a contest of long-ball hitters," Jesse Abramson wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, "and Marciano came up with the home run." Crouching, weaving and bobbing, crowding Layne so the big Mormon scarcely ever had elbow room in which to work, Rocky appeared to have parked his left hand in an Eighth Avenue garage. But his right was in Layne's ribs and face all night. Rex began bleeding from a gash over his left eye in the second round. His knees buckled and he almost went down in the third. He was dropped for no count in the fourth. He survived the fifth without any noticeable difficulty but the sixth was as far as he could go. Rocky was obviously determined to come up with the big one as he hurried out of his corner at the start of the sixth round. He threw a few punches, shifted his feet and exploded a short right just above Layne's blood-smeared left eye. Rex stiffened, rocked, then plunged face down to the floor. He lay motionless, his big body rigid. The seconds running to his aid looked frightened. A lot of the spectators stood transfixed, wondering if it was going to be the Vingo fight all over again. But after a minute or so, Rex came to. He had been knocked out for the first time in his life. "There I was, on my face," he told the reporters in his dressing room. "I heard the count from one to 10. I kept telling myself that I simply had to get up. But I couldn't move. I couldn't make myself move. It was the strangest feeling." It was a strange feeling that had become Rocky Marciano's trademark. They said it after the Layne fight, and they've been saying it ever since. When he hits them, they stay hit! Brockton turned itself upside down for the Marcianos, man and wife, as they drove home in triumph. A big motorcade met them at Providence and Rocky and Barbara were put in the back seat of an open car. Two drum majorettes strutted in front of the VFW band. The Cosmopolitan Club sent a band, and every member of the Ward Two Social Club who could get leave from his job was in the joyous line of march. Horns blew and sirens wailed. Confetti poured down, turning Rocky's thick black hair snow white. Mayor Melvin B. Clifford gave the fighter a huge cardboard key to the city. His mother spoke haltingly into the microphone after she kissed him and patted him affectionately on the shoulder. "I'm very proud of my son," Mrs. Marchegiano said nervously. "He is beautiful . . . I love him very much." All Brockton loved him, and always will. He put the city on the map; he gave its citizens a new interest in life. Just as Carmine Vingo had been able to do, all the boys from Brockton identified themselves with their champion, and his victories became their victories. They took as much pride and satisfaction in his rich purses as if they were spending the money themselves. Above all, they rejoiced that success hadn't taken Rocky away from them. He still lived among them, still walked among them as he had done when he was drawing his $35 or $40 a week from the city for swinging a pick. As a matter of fact, up to this point Rocky didn't even own a car. The Ward Two boys took up a collection and bought him one–a 1951 DeSoto–as a token of their esteem. He didn't even have a license, so they pulled a few strings and got one for him the day they gave him the car. Fortunately for the public safety, he doesn't drive much; he lets Barbara take care of that detail. "I don't guess I've put more than 500 miles on the car," Rocky says. Walking has always appealed to him more than riding. His idea of a little walk is five miles out and five miles back after a meal. It keeps his legs in shape and, besides, it perks up his appetite. Charlie Goldman swears he isn't kidding when he says the only time he has any trouble with Rocky about roadwork is when the Rock is doing too much of it. "You turn your back on him for five minutes," Charlie says, "and he's gone for a five-mile trot." Rocky, in turn, argues that "all the old-time fighters, they'll all tell you the most important thing is roadwork. I think it's the big thing." Rocky will run alone if he has to but he likes to have somebody along to talk to. "I start out with Colombo," he said, laughing boyishly, "then when he's worn out, Sylvester comes in to relieve him." The platoon system works well. It isn't only his persistent running that keeps Marciano in top shape. He doesn't drink or smoke or stay up late. After one of his big wins, Al Weill threw a party for him in a New York hotel and made him drink a glass of champagne. Rocky almost choked on the bubbly stuff. He's perfectly willing to stick to milk; for him, Coke is plenty strong enough when he wants something different. Rocky likes to read, and, spending as much time as he does in training camps, he gets plenty of opportunity. He goes for sports stories and adventure yarns and whodunits. One of his favorite magazines is True Detective. He's not much of a movie man but he regards a Broadway musical comedy as a real big night on the town. "I like 'em all," he said, "but I guess you'd have to say, for me, Guys and Dolls was it!" He doesn't rule out straight plays, though, and, in fact, thinks Stalag 17, the drama about a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, was one of the best plays he ever saw. He's an ardent television fan and will sit watching the screen hour after hour. His favorite show is Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town, on which he already has made two well-paid guest appearances. In Brockton, Rocky's social activities are confined largely to entertaining friends and relatives at home, or making the rounds of their houses, and to the Ward Two Club and the Seville Council, Knights of Columbus. The priests and nuns of St. Colman's parish, where he worships, call on him again and again to serve as a model for their lectures to the neighborhood kids. They've given him two good-luck charms, a St. Anthony medal and a St. Rocco medal, both of which he wears in his bathrobe every time he steps into the ring. (You aren't allowed to wear anything except regulation equipment on your body.) Rocky doesn't have an especially large wardrobe but neither is he sloppy about his appearance. He realizes that people are watching him closely and he takes pride in making a good impression. He isn't ashamed to ask for advice from the men around him, whether to help in selecting new clothes or to find out exactly how he should act in strange surroundings. He finds it hard to believe he is a celebrity in his own right and he gets as big a kick out of meeting other celebrities as any ordinary person would. One night when he was training for Walcott, his retinue got a telephone call asking if it would be all right for the Prince of Siam, who was a guest at the Grossinger Hotel, to drop over to the airport a few miles away, where Rocky was training, and have a chat with the challenger. Rocky leaped into action. "Gee," he said, "I figured I'd better work fast. There the Prince was comin' over and I was just layin' around in a T-shirt, watching television. I hadn't even shaved all day. I hustled up to the bathroom and took a quick shave, and I changed my clothes, and listened to everybody tellin' me how I ought to talk to the Prince. Charlie even put on his bow-tie. We were all set. Then he never showed up. They told us after he had to catch a plane for somewhere." He laughed. "Back to Siam, I guess." One of Rocky's press agents distributed a story to the effect that an aide to the Prince had called back and said protocol demanded that Rocky go to the hotel, where the Prince would receive him. This version carried the punchline that Rocky's camp sent back a polite but firm refusal, to wit: "Tell the Prince he already has his title, but Rocky's still got to win his and he's too busy to go anywhere." It made a funny story but nobody who knows Rocky would believe it. It would be more in character for him to lose half a night's sleep in order to avoid the slightest possibility of appearing rude or "upstage." Rocky is so good-natured, and so fearful of hurting or embarrassing anyone, that, in all the hundreds of rounds he has boxed preparing for his bouts, he has never once knocked out a sparring partner. That may seem to be a small matter but most big-name fighters take great delight in belting out the working stiffs who go up against them in the camp ring. It makes them feel good; it builds up their confidence. Rocky's confidence is of a more durable and more substantial nature. He knows what he can do with a well-aimed punch and he doesn't demand constant reassurance. Virtually the last skeptic disappeared from view after Rocky whammed Joe Louis out of the ropes and turned out the lights for keeps on the marvelous old champion's active career. Louis was in the middle of a big comeback in the fall of 1951. Walcott, whom Louis had beaten twice, was the champion, having stunned the boxing world with a midsummer knockout of Ezzard Charles. Louis hungered for the chance to prove he was still as good as either Walcott or Charles and therefore a logical contender for the title. Most insiders suspect he never was especially eager to tangle with the young, powerful Marciano, but he was conned into it by Al Weill, who was willing to risk everything he and Rocky had built up together on his judgment that the aging Brown Bomber couldn't survive the younger man's ruthless punching. Weill was dead right. His gamble proved to be no gamble at all. Rocky became the first man to knock out Louis since Max Schmeling had done it way back in 1936. Showing absolutely no fear of Louis' vaunted right hand, he harassed the former champion repeatedly with a wicked left hook and got in a steady stream of winners with his own right. It was the left that did the real damage in the climactic eighth round. There was about a minute and a half of fighting time left in the round when Marciano drove a left hook to the point of Louis' chin. Joe lurched backward and sank slowly to the floor. He wasn't out but he was in trouble. Up at eight, the ex-champ appeared to have control of himself. He began to back away from the onrushing Marciano. But as soon as Louis started to move, it was obvious that he was hurt. He tried to stand off Rocky with a few cautious punches but they had no steam or direction. He was dazed. Rocky bulled him against the ropes and the crowd set up a chilling roar. They knew what was coming. Rocky hit Louis with another wicked left hook and Joe began to sink. The Blockbuster from Brockton took no chances. Fighting with the wild intensity that always characterizes his finishing rushes, he fired a killing right that knocked Louis through the ropes and onto the ring apron. It was there, sprawled in a pitifully undignified heap outside the ring with his legs sticking through the ropes, that the great Brown Bomber was counted out. As is even more clear now than at the time, one boxing era had ended and another had begun. Future historians of the sport are likely to disregard the Charles-Walcott period as a mere hiatus, a recess time in which mediocrity reigned. But the handwriting was on the wall for all to read; the Rock was coming and he would not be denied. Rocky had one more test to pass before they would let him take the final examination. He didn't look at all impressive beating veteran Lee Savold in Philadelphia in mid-February, 1952. He cut Savold's face to pieces, leaving it a bloody mask when the referee put a stop to the fight in the sixth round, but he couldn't knock him off his feet, and the fans jeered his awkwardness. The papers took him apart. The Weill-haters had their first chance in a long while to say "We told you so." Something had to be done to restore the Rock's slightly tarnished prestige. Weill decided to take another calculated risk. He sent Marciano against the stridently ballyhooed boxing master from Seattle, Harry (Kid) Matthews, in an outdoor match at Yankee Stadium. Matthews' manager, the shrewd and loquacious Jack Hurley, had been screaming that the monopolistic IBC had blacklisted his fighter and arbitrarily refused to give him title consideration. It was a deft maneuver by Weill. In what figured to be a good money match, anyway, Marciano could kill a couple of his manager's birds with one stone. If he could put Matthews away, he would not only reestablish himself in the eyes of the fans but at the same time get the troublesome Hurley off Weill's back and make the IBC look good in the process. Rocky came through on all counts. He clouted Matthews with a left jab in the middle of the second round and followed through tigerishly with a pair of rapid-fire, cruel left hooks. Matthews collapsed like a house of cards, sinking, ironically, in a helpless heap in his own corner, right at Jack Burley's feet. At last, Rocky had a clear track to the title shot. There was no one left to dispute his claim. Barbara Marciano was waiting for her husband when he walked out of the Stadium a few minutes after midnight and pushed his way, grinning happy, through the little crowd of autograph hunters that had waited patiently for him to appear. Rocky hurried up to the blonde girl who spends so much of her time waiting for him. He kissed her while the people on the sidewalk clapped. "This one," he told her, "was for you and the baby." Then they got into a taxicab and rode to a victory party at the plush Hampshire House. Two small-town kids, the shoemaker's son and the policeman's daughter, they were sitting on top of the biggest city in the world. The next day, Rocky stopped in at the IBC office and picked up a check for $51,512, which is nice pay for approximately five minutes' work. Al Weill, of course, gets one-third of Marciano's purses as his manager's end, and the U. S. Government gets approximately the same. But there is still an attractive bundle left for Rocky, and he and Barbara aren't scattering it to the winds. The habits of thrift which Rocky developed in his boyhood are still with him. He lives far more plainly than most fans would believe. The baby that arrived two months after he won the title probably will change that somewhat, but not too much. Rocky wants his kids to have it easier than he did but he doesn't want to overdo it. It is unlikely that Rocky's children ever will carry the name their father made famous in the prize ring. He never has legally changed his name. He is still Rocco Marchegiano, and he expects to remain so. "It's a touchy thing," he said earnestly when asked about the question. He motioned toward his grey-haired father, pouring a cup of coffee in the kitchen across the hall. "I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt Pop's feelings. He's liable to figure, it's my name, what, am I ashamed of it? And there's my two brothers, it's their name, too. Why should they change? I don't know, I don't think so." Rocky took very little time off after the Matthews fight. It was a foregone conclusion that he would be going for the brass ring in September, and Al Weill wanted him to think about nothing but the fight, to do nothing that wasn't part of the business of getting ready for the fight. The Rock was already training at Grossinger's Hotel in the heart of New York State's mountain resort area when the match was officially made. He rode down to Philadelphia to sign the papers and pose for the photographers, then went right back to work. He meant to be ready for this one. He was ready, all right. He collected the last full measure of interest on the long, hard days of training he had put in. Hit hurtful blows throughout the fight by the bigger, heavier champion, he had the staying power and the resilience to bounce back from each new wound and lay into his rival with renewed strength and determination. He took punishment that would have broken down almost any heavyweight active today, but he still could summon up the reserve power to get in the last word. What a lusty, gory, savage brawl it was that they put on under the floodlights of Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia last September! The thick-necked, deep-chested, black-skinned champion and the trim, narrow-waisted, short-armed challenger with the gleaming white skin and the deceptively muscular arms and back. There was no pity in either man, not for his enemy or himself. It was a mid-century throwback to the memorable finish fights of an earlier time. They punched each other's faces shapeless, they slugged each other's bodies into aching, purpling masses of bruises. They fought ceaselessly; they even fought after the bell at least four or five times. The crowd of 40,379, which had paid $504,645 at the gate, had sat quietly through the inevitable parade of introductions before the fight. They had given a big hand to Joe Louis and a big grin to sleek Sugar Ray Robinson, who showed up in a shrieking evening jacket of red, green and blue plaid with dark blue satin collar and lapels. They had tossed their nickels to the newspaper boys roaming the spacious stands and shouting, "Get your late Inquirer here! Don't ruin your good suit on the wet seats! Get your paper here!" If they were out-of-towners, they had stormed angrily at the helpless refreshment-stand employees because there was no beer on sale in the stadium, and had finally settled for cream soda or coffee. They had stared appreciatively at all the handsome showgirl types switching in alongside their invariably shorter, bald-headed protectors. They had grumbled bitterly at the news that the IBC had belatedly shoved back the starting time of the main event from 10 o'clock to 10:30 in order to accommodate the West Coast theaters showing the bout on theater television. They were, by the time the referee sent both men to their corners with their instructions, and the bell clanged and the lights went out everywhere except over the ring, panting for action. They got it, fast. The usually super-cautious Walcott walked right out to meet Marciano and began pounding him inside. He traded a few rights with Rocky, then knocked the younger man off his feet with a whistling left hook. Rocky sat on the canvas, rolling over on his knees, listening intently to referee Charlie Daggert's count. He was up at four, ignoring Charlie Goldman's piercing demand that he take eight. "I got up fast," he explained later, "because I was more mad at myself than hurt." Walcott waded right in again and, as the champion's fists beat a tattoo on Rocky's head and midsection, a rising murmur of apprehension swept the arena. Al Weill was tight-lipped and pale in Marciano's corner. It looked as though the old miracle man might have the makings of another stupendous upset in his gnarled and experienced fists. But Marciano held on and weathered the storm. He kept on weathering them, too, but as the fight wore on in all its primitive, shocking grandeur, it began to seem that Jersey Joe had huffed and puffed up enough storms to ride out the battle in style and carry off the booty on points. Rocky did well enough in the middle rounds but Walcott came on again with a vengeance and, as they left their stools for the 13th round, the bettors who had backed the champion were beginning to count their spoils. It was a bloody scene, blood sticking to the fighters' gloves and huge stains of blood disfiguring their satin trunks. Most of the blood was Marciano's, leaking from a dangerous slash high on his forehead. Some of it was Jersey Joe's, coming from a cut over his left eye. Rocky was the more desperate figure of the two. He was losing and he knew it. He had to knock his man out if he wanted to be the champion–and he did want to be, badly. Rocky charged. Jersey Joe retreated against the ropes. Both men drew back their right hands. Everything they had done to each other in the 12 brutal rounds of fighting had come down to this tense moment. Each was swinging to hurt, and Rocky got his shot in first. It splintered the old man's careful defense and shattered his consciousness. It exploded off his jaw with the force of a blockbuster detonating a squarely-hit target. Jersey Joe was done. He went down slowly, reluctantly, painfully. He fell to his knee and for a second some thought he might hold himself there by the ropes. But there was no strength in his limbs; he sagged and crumpled like an abandoned puppet. His battered features, turned ashen gray by the terrible impact of Marciano's blow, buried themselves in the canvas. One of the most amazing champions in the history of the heavyweight division, the oldest man ever to hold the title, had come to the end of the line. Rocky, standing like a lion at bay in a neutral corner, jumped for joy as he heard the referee count "Ten!" He grinned a bloody grin and embraced Al Colombo as his old friend came running toward him. Bedlam broke loose. The men of Brockton, 3,000 strong, who had made the long trip to Philadelphia to cheer for their hero, bore down upon him in irresistible waves. The police couldn't stop them. They flooded the press section and danced in the aisles. They jumped up on the ring apron and screamed the word of their adoration to the jubilant fighter. They made it all but impossible for the house announcer to clutch his microphone in the center of the ring and close the frantic occasion on the proper traditional note. But the man in the black tie finally made it. After the timekeeper had banged the bell a dozen times in a futile bid for the attention of the delirious crowd, the announcer bellowed his formal declaration over all the competing racket. His electric words formed the only logical conclusion to the fantastic saga of the iron-fisted Blockbuster from Brockton. There could be no other way to end it; Rocky saw to that. "The time," the man said, "Forty-three seconds of the 13th round. The winner, and new heavyweight champion of the world, Rocky Marciano!" You can't top that.
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