Move over Balboa, The Real ROCKY is Coming to Town

World Boxing Council chairman Jose Sulaiman has announced that a $250,000 20ft statue of the great Rocky Marciano is to be unveiled in his home town of Brockton Massachusetts September 1^st 2012 on what would be his 89^th birthday. The statue will stand proud outside the city’s sports stadium. Plans for the design did not take much thinking over and will be sculpted around Rocky’s famous knockout punch of ’Jersey’ Joe Walcott from their World title fight in Philly 1952.

Philadelphia of course acts as home of the statue of fictional former Heavyweight champion Rocky Balboa. The Boxing movie icon on which the basis of was squarely based around ‘The Brockton Blockbuster’ and possibly gave us the closest thing we’d ever get to finding out who would win ALI or MARCIANO when Creed and Balboa’s collision set the Movie world alight.

To this day Rocky Marciano is the only Heavyweight to retire undefeated posing a 49-0 record. Jose Sulaiman told The Enterprise of Brockton that the honour is overdue, That must be the understatement of the century. How I’ve never thought about it before but Rocky Balboa gets a statue before Marciano? Surely something went a rye there. Maybe they just built the statue in Philly for the movie then afterwards thought “How are we going to shift this? Let’s just leave it here”.

Along with his perfect record Marciano holds claim to one of the most impressive knockout rates in world Boxing. 11 of his opponents did not finish the first round with six opponents failing to reach the end of round two. Personally Rocky Marciano is my favourite boxer of all time and no-one comes close to emulating what he achieved. Many will argue Ali is the best but there is nothing you could throw at me about Ali that would change my mind.

A fitting tribute to an all time great, I couldn’t write this article quick enough and nor do I want to stop writing about the one and only Rocky Marciano.
Rocky Marciano died in a plane crash on the eve of his 46^th Birthday. September 1^st 1923 - August 31^st 1969