Unbeaten: Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World

by Mike Stanton

Overview

From the bestselling author of The Prince of Providence, a revelatory biography of Rocky Marciano, the greatest heavyweight champion of all time.

The son of poor Italian immigrants, with short arms and stubby legs, Rocky Marciano accomplished a feat that eluded legendary heavyweight champions like Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Muhammad Ali, and Mike Tyson: He never lost a professional fight. His record was a perfect 49-0.

Unbeaten is the story of this remarkable champion who overcame injury, doubt, and the schemes of corrupt promoters to win the title in a bloody and epic battle with Jersey Joe Walcott in 1952. Rocky packed a devastating punch with an innocent nickname, “Suzie Q,” against which there was no defense. As the champ, he came to know presidents and movie stars – and the organized crime figures who dominated the sport, much to his growing disgust. He may have “stood out in boxing like a rose in a garbage dump,” as one sportswriter said, but he also fought his own private demons.

In the hands of the award-winning journalist and biographer Mike Stanton, Unbeaten is more than just a boxing story. It’s a classic American tale of immigrant dreams, exceptional talent wedded to exceptional ambitions, compromises in the service of a greater good, astounding success, disillusionment, and a quest to discover what it all meant. Like Suzie Q, it will knock you off your feet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250210876
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	08/27/2019
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	359,981
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Mike Stanton is the author of The Prince of Providence: The Rise and Fall of Buddy Cianci, America’s Most Notorious Mayor, which was a New York Times bestseller. He is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, having previously headed the investigative team at the Providence Journal, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife and two children.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Two Funerals 1
1 The Terrific Three 13
2 Brawler in the Brig 38
3 Rocky Mack 59
4 Suzie Q’s Broadway Debut 76
5 Timmmberrr! 91
6 A Good Dream and a Hard Fall 119
7 The Octopus 133
8 Requiem for a Heavyweight 153
9 Twelve Inches to Glory 180
10 The Lion and the Lamb 209
11 The Mongoose and the Mob 233
12 Amer­i­ca’s Guest 264
13 The Fiftieth Fight 293
Epilogue: Ghosts 312


Appendix: Rocky Marciano’s Professional Ring Rec­ord 323
A Note on Sources 325
Bibliography 355
Acknowl­edgments 367
Illustration Credits 374
Index 375

Editorial Reviews

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Boston Globe and Library Journal
A Wall Street Journal 2018 "Reader Favorite"

"Mike Stanton brings back Marciano, and with him, a whole era in American social, industrial and athletic history."—David Margolick, The Wall Street Journal

“In Unbeaten, Mike Stanton aims to bring the legend to life for a new generation. He delivers a meticulously researched and eminently readable account of the only heavyweight champion who exited a savage sport with a perfect professional record — 49-0 with 43 knockouts, 26 of them in the first three rounds. . . . [He] does a deft and detailed job of recreating Marciano’s journey through a violent and venal profession, with a direct style that pulls no punches.”—The Boston Globe

"It’s an amazing story, and it was an amazing era, and it’s all captured brilliantly. . . . Stanton is so good at describing the shadowy boxing world of Providence in the late 1940s and early ’50s you can almost smell the cigar smoke. For Unbeaten is far more than just a sports book, or even a biography of an iconic American sports figure."—Providence Journal

"This meticulously documented and well-written work should stand for both fans and scholars as Marciano's definitive biography."—Library Journal (starred review)

“The definitive Marciano biography. . . . [Stanton] runs down every source, providing rich detail —and fresh discoveries— about Marciano’s career. . . . Engrossing and gritty.”— Paul Beston, National Review

"Uniformly superb. . . . Mike Stanton has told the champ's life story in greater detail and with more pleasing complexity than any previous book has done."—Open Letters Review

“Unbeaten is one of the best sports books I’ve read in years. It’s an irresistible story told with beautiful writing and a keen eye for detail. Like Rocky Marciano, this book hits hard and won’t be easily put down.” —Jonathan Eig, author of Ali: A Life

"Marciano's improbable rise to the heavyweight championship of the world is a remarkable story, and Stanton tells it well. He conducted an enormous amount of research and has woven his findings into an engaging narrative. . . . He recreates places and events in impressive detail and brings them to life. . . . People who are just names in history books come alive as vividly-drawn characters."—Thomas Hauser, The Sporting News

“A satisfying biography of the iconic boxer, the only heavyweight champion to retire undefeated. . . [and] a sturdy contribution to the literature of the sweet science, reminding readers of a bygone era of fighting.” —Kirkus Reviews

“This is a story that has waited a long time to be told this well, by a gifted writer and reporter like Mike Stanton. It is a story about the way things used to be in boxing, in the sport — and the America — that produced the myth and the reality of Rocky Marciano. Finally, at long last, the real Rocky has met his match.”
—Mike Lupica, columnist, New York Daily News

“Mike Stanton has done phenomenal work – where did he find so many great stories? Rocky Marciano was a legendary champion whose path to glory was so much more complicated than his undefeated record suggests. And his story transcends sports; it’s a window into a changing America in the middle of the twentieth century. I was a big fan of Stanton’s book on Buddy Cianci, and I’m an even bigger fan of this one.”—Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy and Casino

“Sitting down in the ring with Muhammad Ali to share slices of grapefruit, visiting the dying mob boss Vito Genovese in a Kansas prison — Mike Stanton’s book on Rocky Marciano teems with marvelous scenes and revealing insights into the chaotic boxing world of the unbeaten heavyweight champ.”—David Maraniss, author of When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi

“Take a seat in the smoky arena. (Please remove your hat.) Listen to the jabber-jabber talk around you. Make a wager, preferably on the stubby white guy from Brockton, Mass. Plug into the excitement, the jostle, the sweat and the grind, the 1950s action when boxing was important and the heavyweight champion of the world was the king of all athletes. Mike Stanton makes Rocky Marciano walk the earth again in Unbeaten and nothing is going to stand in his way. This book is wonderful.” —Leigh Montville, author of Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. the United States of America, 1966-1971

From the Publisher

04/30/2018
In this entertaining history of the “Brockton Bomber,” Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Stanton follows Rocky Marciano’s unlikely rise from factory-town high school dropout to heavyweight champion. Born Rocco Francis Marchegiano in 1923, the firstborn son of Italian immigrants only devoted himself to boxing after his professional baseball dreams were dashed at age 19. Although small for a heavyweight and stylistically crude, he possessed relentless tenacity and one-punch knockout power. Appearing during a heavyweight talent drought, Marciano further benefitted from his marketable whiteness and a manager who was allied with the Mob that controlled the sport. After retiring undefeated in 1956 at age 32, he roamed the country as a celebrity, appearing in various television shows, until his death in a 1969 plane crash. No heavyweight champion before or since has matched Marciano’s record of 49 wins and no losses. Despite Stanton’s meticulous research, he offers little pugilistic insight, and, while no hagiographer, Stanton generally soft-pedals Marciano’s Mafia ties and obsessive cheapness, as well as his compulsive philandering. Boxing aficionados will find little new here, though general readers will find much to appreciate in this charming rags-to-riches tale that seems at an enormous remove from the 21st Century. (June)

Publishers Weekly

To imitate real-life characters in nonfiction is an art not attempted by many narrators. But Keith Szarabajka is outstanding here, creating voices not only for the biographer’s subject but also for the many people quoted. None come off as caricature. All have appropriate accents and emotions. The best are for Rocky Marciano, who never lost a professional heavyweight fight. Szarabajka gives the Massachusetts native a New England accent and an ever-so-slightly high-pitched voice that fit the bill. The audiobook does what a good biography should: It informs listeners about things they probably don’t know about the subject in a readable way. Szarabajka’s delivery elevates this audiobook to a level that is both informative and entertaining. M.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

2018-05-01
"I will beat Joe Louis and I will beat any fighter I ever fight": a satisfying biography of the iconic boxer, the only heavyweight champion to retire undefeated.Born Rocco Marchegiano (1923-1969) to Italian immigrants in Massachusetts, Rocky Marciano wasn't a pretty fighter. As Stanton (Journalism/Univ. of Connecticut; The Prince of Providence: The True Story of Buddy Cianci, America's Most Notorious Mayor, Some Wiseguys, and the Feds, 2003) writes, he had "short, stubby arms, clumsy feet, and a bulldozer style that opened him up to fierce punishment." He had a high-pitched voice and a gentle way outside the ring, but within it, he was lethal; his style may have lacked elegance, but he pounded his way through to 49 victories and zero defeats. Marciano also steered clear of the usual temptations of the ring—and from the mobsters that dominated the pro boxing business in those days. The author writes admiringly but not uncritically of Marciano, who, on leaving the sport, traded on his celebrity to snag free meals and hotel rooms and insisted on fat fees for showing up to events until his death in a plane crash. Stanton writes with knowing accuracy of the ins and outs of both boxing and Marciano's storied career, including the development of what has forever since been known as the "Suzie-Q" punch and his work with Jewish trainers who, having worked the circuit themselves, appreciated Marciano's ability to take a pounding and emerge the victor. As the author notes, many other fighters have held Marciano up as a model: Floyd Mayweather, a welterweight, waited for his 50th win before retiring undefeated, just to beat Marciano's 49-win record, and Muhammad Ali reckoned that Marciano was the only fighter from the past who would have given him trouble in the ring. Famously, of course, Sylvester Stallone took big chunks of his screenplay for Rocky from Marciano's life, which, overall, seems every bit as admirable as Rocky Balboa's.A sturdy contribution to the literature of the sweet science, reminding readers of a bygone era of fighting.

Kirkus Reviews