Had his mother, Pasqualina, had her way we might have seen Marciano the quarterback, such was her fear for her son’s safety in the rough and tumble world of pugilism. As a youngster, Marciano worked hard at a career in baseball even earning himself a tryout at the Chicago Cubs but was eventually cut because he lacked strength in his right arm. Such was Marciano’s natural athletic prowess, he might never have laced up a pair of boxing gloves had his love of another sport, baseball, perhaps the only sport in the US that captured the American imagination more than boxing in the 50s, panned out. A very crude fighter (and a tiny heavyweight by modern standards at just 5ft10in), he certainly wasn’t the silkiest heavyweight to ever step foot in the ring but what he did well, he did almost effortlessly: He came. He's only got two halfway decent purses so far, and it was like a tiger tasting blood.”Ĭombining formidable punching power, seeming inexhaustible stamina and a granite-like chin, Marciano was relentless on his way to the top, beating all who stood before him including the likes of Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles, Jersey Joe Walcott, Joe Louis and Roland La Starza. He was a family first kind of guy, an important mantra for anyone of Italian heritage and it was a route along the Pursuit of Happiness that mirrored the era perfectly.Īl Weill, Marciano’s manager, once said of his fighter, “Rocky is a poor Italian boy from a poor Italian family, and he appreciates the buck more than almost anybody. As the family’s eldest son, Marciano felt huge pressure on those broad shoulders at a young age to rescue his family from a life of poverty, living in a run-down section of the immigrant-filled city of Brockton. In the end, it would be his family values that would motivate Marciano to achieve all he did. “Get out of this factory and be somebody important,” he would repeatedly urge his son. It was his father, Pierino, who told the young Rocky that anything was possible in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, and that he shouldn’t be wasting his life toiling away. Rocco Francis Marchegiano, the son of two Italian immigrants, was born in 1923 in Brockton, Massachusetts, rising from a shoemaker to become one of the most celebrated boxers of the 20th century.
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