never wanted to give his opponents any opportunity to get an upper hand psychologically. The other thing that was so good about Marciano's mental preparation routine was the way he used visualization to practice the fight in his mind beforehand. The old saying, "Practice makes perfect," is true. Dr. Maxwell Maltz in Psycho-Cybernetics (1960) says psychologists have "found that if rats were permitted to learn and practice under non-crisis conditions, they later performed well in a crisis... People react the same way. Persons who have to learn how to get out of a burning building will normally require two or three times as long to learn the proper escape route as they would if no fire were present." According to Dr. Maltz, people who have not practiced what to do in a crisis situation try too hard; "the automatic reaction mechanism is jammed by too much conscious effort," he says, resulting in poor performance. Marciano avoided this fate. Under non-crisis conditions (training camp), Rocky endlessly practiced what he had to do to beat his opponent. He practiced this mentally—using the visualization—as well as physically and technically, against sparring partners. So, when the actual crisis (the fight) occurred, Marciano was able to think clearly and act correctly, because he had essentially been through it all before.
Dr. Maltz reports that Gene Tunney, heavyweight boxing champ from 1926 to 1928, used a visualization process over an extended period of time in preparing to fight Jack Dempsey, who had preceded Tunney as heavyweight champion:
Years before he actually fought Jack Dempsey in the ring, he had fought an imaginary Dempsey more than a hundred times in the privacy of his own room. He secured all the films of old Dempsey fights. He watched them until he knew every one of Dempsey's moves. Then he shadow-boxed. He would imagine that Dempsey was standing before him. When the imaginary Dempsey would make a certain move, he would practice his counter-move.
Tunney constantly visualized how he would fight Dempsey, but he did much more than that. Consciously or not, he often put himself into a trance-like state, generating seething, aggressive feelings towards Dempsey. In his book, The Tumult and the Shouting (1954), Grantland Rice relates how in 1925 Tunney was totally preoccupied with defeating Dempsey:
That winter in Florida I played golf with Tommy Armour and Tunney. Gene would hit his drive, toss aside his club and run down the fairway throwing phantom punches—left and right hooks—and muttering, "Dempsey... Dempsey... Dempsey."
"He's obsessed," observed Armour. "His brain knows nothing but Dempsey. I believe Jack could hit him with an ax and Gene wouldn't feel it. I don't know if Dempsey has slipped, but I'll have a good chunk down on Tunney when that fight arrives."
Despite Tunney's use of visualization and self-hypnosis, he almost lost the mental war to outside negative influences. Comments made in the press to the effect that Dempsey would win hands down worked their way into Tunney's subconscious. Tunney recalled how this happened, the comments' insidious effect on him, and what he did to correct the situation:
Dempsey was an overwhelming favorite to knock me out. The newspaper talk was that he would murder me. Being human I read the papers to find out what they were saying about me. One night, at the beginning of my long training period, I awakened suddenly and felt my bed shaking. It seemed fantastic. Ghosts or what? Then I understood. It was I who was shaking, trembling so hard that I made the bed tremble. I was that much afraid. . . afraid of what the great Dempsey would do to me. The fear was
lurking in the back of my mind and had set me quaking in my sleep. I pictured myself being mauled and bloodied by Dempsey's shattering punches; helpless, sinking to the canvas and being counted out. I couldn't stop trembling. Sure, the newspaper gossip was getting to me. Right there I had already lost the Dempsey
Dr. Maltz reports that Gene Tunney, heavyweight boxing champ from 1926 to 1928, used a visualization process over an extended period of time in preparing to fight Jack Dempsey, who had preceded Tunney as heavyweight champion:
Years before he actually fought Jack Dempsey in the ring, he had fought an imaginary Dempsey more than a hundred times in the privacy of his own room. He secured all the films of old Dempsey fights. He watched them until he knew every one of Dempsey's moves. Then he shadow-boxed. He would imagine that Dempsey was standing before him. When the imaginary Dempsey would make a certain move, he would practice his counter-move.
Tunney constantly visualized how he would fight Dempsey, but he did much more than that. Consciously or not, he often put himself into a trance-like state, generating seething, aggressive feelings towards Dempsey. In his book, The Tumult and the Shouting (1954), Grantland Rice relates how in 1925 Tunney was totally preoccupied with defeating Dempsey:
That winter in Florida I played golf with Tommy Armour and Tunney. Gene would hit his drive, toss aside his club and run down the fairway throwing phantom punches—left and right hooks—and muttering, "Dempsey... Dempsey... Dempsey."
"He's obsessed," observed Armour. "His brain knows nothing but Dempsey. I believe Jack could hit him with an ax and Gene wouldn't feel it. I don't know if Dempsey has slipped, but I'll have a good chunk down on Tunney when that fight arrives."
Despite Tunney's use of visualization and self-hypnosis, he almost lost the mental war to outside negative influences. Comments made in the press to the effect that Dempsey would win hands down worked their way into Tunney's subconscious. Tunney recalled how this happened, the comments' insidious effect on him, and what he did to correct the situation:
Dempsey was an overwhelming favorite to knock me out. The newspaper talk was that he would murder me. Being human I read the papers to find out what they were saying about me. One night, at the beginning of my long training period, I awakened suddenly and felt my bed shaking. It seemed fantastic. Ghosts or what? Then I understood. It was I who was shaking, trembling so hard that I made the bed tremble. I was that much afraid. . . afraid of what the great Dempsey would do to me. The fear was
lurking in the back of my mind and had set me quaking in my sleep. I pictured myself being mauled and bloodied by Dempsey's shattering punches; helpless, sinking to the canvas and being counted out. I couldn't stop trembling. Sure, the newspaper gossip was getting to me. Right there I had already lost the Dempsey
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