In the song dedicated to Mrs. Robinson, Simon & Garfunkel ask a fundamental question for a whole generation: «Where did you go, Joe Di Maggio? Our nation looks for you with its lonely eyes ». If there are summarized the helplessness and confusion of a changing, border time, the same yearning could have alluded to Rocky Marciano. Another Italian-American hero, like Di Maggio. Another strong, silent guy . Another representative of a simple and plethoric America, the fresh out of World War II, where sports champions were the emanation of a place, an ethnic group and a class, the worker, for which they meant the fulfillment of a yearning for overcoming with which they fantasized, thinking about their descendants, who passed through Ellis Island.
Rocky Marciano, first American generation of a few immigrant immigrants from Abruzzo and Campania, born Rocco Marchegiano in 1923 (Brockton, Massachusetts) and later changed his last name because the speakers of the ring were not able to pronounce his family well, he was a man integrated in the rules and values of that era. His Italian contemporaries did not want to subvert things, as the fighters for the civil rights of the later generation, Rosa Parks, Luther King and Malcolm X , tried, but instead tried to make themselves accepted by complying with all the sacrifices, including giving children on the beaches of Europe and the Pacific. The next time, Rocky understood her less, both as far as boxing was concerned, that she lost chivalry and at some point left the Eastern sanctuaries and moved to Las Vegas for mafia interests related to casinos, as for what happened in the Street.
On YouTube it is possible to find an interview that Rocky Marciano granted to an Australian television in 1966, just three years before killing himself, on August 31, 1969, when he crashed in Iowa, because of the bad weather and the pilot's inability, the plane in which he flew from Chicago and Des Moines to Fort Lauderdale to celebrate with his family, the next day, his 46th birthday. In that interview it is observed that all his confusion about a time concluded, identical to that of Mrs. Robinson's song, Rocky Marciano deposits it in what was then the new world champion, Cassius Clay . Rocky doesn't understand him as a boxer or as a man. As a boxer, he does not appreciate his elusive virtues, his mobility, because The Rock , who completely lacked technique and grace, gained, by letting himself stick, the position from which he released his Suzie-Q , the devastating short hook of right that his manager Al Weill called the equalizer because he allowed him to win by KO fighting that he had lost points against more virtuous boxers. De Clay, after Mohamed Ali, did not understand that he refused to answer the call of his Army while other compatriots did go to Vietnam. In reality, these two great fighters, characteristic both of their own time, were condemned, precisely for this reason, not to be understood.
Rocky Marciano became a boxer while serving in the Navy. But what he dreamed about was baseball, like Di Maggio. So, even in 1947, when he had already won the Army amateur championship and a Golden Gloves, he gave himself one last chance by testing with the Fayetteville Cubs , a Chicago Cubs affiliate team. Having seen what happened next, it seems like a joke, but they ruled it out because his arm lacked strength in the throwing of the ball. When Rocky lived on strength, physics and determination under the beating, which allowed him to impose himself on boxers with more kilos when the weight divisions had wider margins: today he would have fought in the middle weights, not in the heavyweight.
In his first major fight (October 51), he burst into tears after removing with a tremendous knockout an aging Joe Louis, his great childhood idol. His first world title (September 52) was won by Jersey Joe Walcott during the evening of Philadelphia, in which Liebling said that all of his grandstands, incensed by a mast, were left without seeing the Suzie-Q that left Jersey hanging by A hand of the ropes. Rocky fought blinded two rounds because the corner of Jersey, aware that La Roca was sticking his face to the rival's torso when he was looking for the near distance, was smeared with a mixture of liniment and pepper. Until his retirement at 33, he won defenses against Ezzard Charles, La Starza, Archie Moore ... His sentimental imprint was so deep that nobody liked that his unbeaten record (49-0), which seemed eternal, was desecrated by a boxy and stubborn boxer, as oblivious to the golden age of the Garden as Floyd Mayweather .
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