Rocket Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 I'd pay to see it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Di Vita Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 OK, here's a good one for those of you who are into boxing at all... Rocky Marciano vs. Muhammad Ali (Marciano all the way) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhgtyre Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 OK, here's a good one for those of you who are into boxing at all...Rocky Marciano vs. Muhammad Ali (Marciano all the way) Even though Ali and Marciano are not fictional characters... I am going to have to take Ali over Marciano. Ali would watch fight videos of Marciano and do him just like he did George Foreman. -ld Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tightloop Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 This is somewhat of an oxymoron statement, but Ali was one of the classiest boxers ever; in the ring. He had the tools and the skills. Rocky wouldn't have lasted 6 or 7 rounds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhgtyre Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 ...Ali was one of the classiest boxers ever... He was also one of the smartest boxers to step into a ring. His loud mouth may have belied the class you mentioned but you are right he did have class, still does. -ld Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Di Vita Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 Very true, but Marciano had more heart than any other boxer to ever step into the ring. Not to mention he was the best conditioned. I forget the exact stats, but the average heavyweight throws around 40 or 50 punches a round. Marciano threw 120 every round, all hard enough to knock his opponents out. If Ali would have tried to rope-a-dope Marciano, the rock would have broken Ali's arms. It happened before (forget which fight). I think Ali would have lasted, but in the end, Marciano would have gotten him against the ropes and KO'd him. Probably not unlike his fight with Jersey Joe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tightloop Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 Stalion While it is true that Rocky was undefeated as a pro, he lost some fights as an amateur. His 49 win streak will probably not be matched or beated. What we don't know is that if The Rock had not died in a plane crash if he would have remained unbeaten. Ali was 55-6-0 and suffered most of those losses after his prime. Like all great athletes, it seems that they really have a hard time leaving the spotlight, and remain on the scene after their ability and tools have eroded. Very few have retired on top, even Michael Jordan, twice. Fighters seem to be among the worst of the lot in doing this, and it is probable that The Rock would have overstayed his time, as well, but we will never know. It was a smaller generation of fighters too, The Rock was only 5'9" at 185 and Ali fought at 6'2" around 205. Where do you get your data on punches thrown? Interesting data, but I could not reference it on the web. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Di Vita Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 Yes, the fights he lost as an amateur were mainly due to his poor conditioning at the time, the fact that he smoked, and also his inexperience. I do agree that if he had continued to fight, eventually old age would have caught up with him. However, in his prime, I believe he could have taken anyone, from any generation. Here is a pretty good website with a lot of data. http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Arena/1...1047//Rock.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tightloop Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 It makes an interesting comparison with lots of fighters vs The Rock. Never saw him fight, but I did see Ali. No offense, but I still have to go with The Greatest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Di Vita Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 "No offense, but I still have to go with The Greatest." Oh, none taken of course. You're perfectly entitled to your opinion. If you get a chance, watch his fight with Walcott...it's truely inspiring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhino Posted October 9, 2003 Author Share Posted October 9, 2003 Polar Bear v. Grizzly Bear Mugatu v. Mike Tyson The Barkleys ("Big Valley") v. the Cartwrights ("Bonanza") CSI characters v. CSI: Miami characters McGuyver v. Col. Jack O'Neill Flash Gordon v. Buck Rogers Munsters v. Addams Family Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tightloop Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 Elephant vs Donkey And the winna is AHHHNALD, in kalifornia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocket Posted October 11, 2003 Share Posted October 11, 2003 I just went over to the Marciano website. That guy was a serious bad ass. I bet he would have taken Ali. That picture of "The Punch" against Jersey Joe was awesome. Pure power unleashed. My god , has there ever been anybody else who could go out and continue fighting and win with his nose split in half. They don't make fighters like that anymore. That's the kind of guy who could just will himself to victory. I wish I could have seen him fight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Di Vita Posted October 11, 2003 Share Posted October 11, 2003 Yeah Walcott's face looks like it was made of clay doesn't it. That's why I believe he is the best ever...he has the most heart out of any person I've ever seen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nik Habicht Posted October 11, 2003 Share Posted October 11, 2003 The Barkleys would kick the Cartwrights all over the range..... Heck, Ma Barkley could do most of it herself.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexmoney Posted October 11, 2003 Share Posted October 11, 2003 your momma vs. your sister Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Di Vita Posted October 11, 2003 Share Posted October 11, 2003 Mom vs. sister? haha Mom would win vs. Marciano... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted October 11, 2003 Share Posted October 11, 2003 [off topic] Uh, the thread had 66 replies and 666 views. [/off topic] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Sweeney Posted October 13, 2003 Share Posted October 13, 2003 Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.E.I.L.D. would kick all their asses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhgtyre Posted October 13, 2003 Share Posted October 13, 2003 Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.E.I.L.D. would kick all their asses. Until Mr. Smith sent Remo and Chun in to clean up. Then Nick Fury would go down like an extra in a Ron Jeremy flick. -ld Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexmoney Posted October 13, 2003 Share Posted October 13, 2003 VS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duane Thomas Posted October 14, 2003 Share Posted October 14, 2003 Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.E.I.L.D. would kick all their asses. My MAN. Let's make it the Jim Steranko Fury though, not the bureaucrat we've been seing lately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duane Thomas Posted October 16, 2003 Share Posted October 16, 2003 Speed Racer vs. Racer X...yeah, I know they are brothers, and I haven't seen the cartoon in about an eon, but I remember thinking as a kid that they should can Speedy and Chim-Chim (or whatever the stupid monkey's name was) and have more shows about X.Here's how it plays out. Racer X gives Speedy one heck of a beat down with his fists, and all of Speedy's lame karate moves can't save him. Racer X steals the Mach 5, gets a running start at Speedy, uses the power jacks to go airborne, activates the twin power saws and decapitates Speedy. He shifts into reverse just in time to nail the monkey in a reverse bootlegger turn, or something. Stops to let the chick in (can't remember her name, remember thinking she was gropable ), and deploys the homing pigeon to tell Mom and Dad Speedy's dead. Yeah, it is fratricide, but Speedy deserves it for being so much less cool than Racer X. Well, now you've done it. I've been meaning to post my thoughts on Speed Racer in this section for quite awhile, and since you mentioned him, anyway.... Yes, Racer X was ultimately cool. But so was Speed, and if anyone in the world could beat the Mysterious Masked Racer ™ it was his 18 year old kid brother. I'm not saying definitely Speed could do it, certainly not in the series' early episodes when his racing career was just starting out. But by the end of the series, when he became world champion? Then it gets debatable. It'd be a helluva race, that's for sure. I've loved Speed Racer since I was a little kid. When Ted Turner's first television station, WTBS, Channel 13, started up in Georgia in the mid-70s, he had all the great old shows, The Munsters, The Brady Bunch, Get Smart, The Addams Family, I Dream of Jeannie, The Partridge Family....all part of his afternoon lineup. Speed Racer came on at 3 PM, Monday thru Friday. Every weekday for years I'd get out of school at 2:30, the bus would take me home, I'd rush into the house and turn on the TV just in time for the theme song. I never got tired of it. (Just an interesting point of trivia - I think - in a book on Speed Racer I read the results of a survey where Speed fans were asked what they considered the single most important reason Speed Racer is so popular. The #1 answer: the theme song.) SPEED CLASSIC What in America we call Speed Racer actually began in the Sixties in Japan as a manga (comic book) called Maha Go Go Go. In America you'll usually see this partially translated as Mach Go Go Go so that's the terminology I'll use from here on. Grand prix auto racing was very popular in Japan at the time, almost a national obsession. To Tatsuo Yoshida, the creator/artist/writer of Mach Go Go Go, the opportunity presented by this situation was obvious: create a series about a teenage Grand Prix driver. I have reprints of several of the original manga. At least some of the anime episodes (more about which shortly) were adaptations of previously published manga stories. The ....Go Go Go part of the title was a triple entendre. (1) "Go" means the number five in Japanese, it was a reference to the car's name, the Mach 5. (2) In the original manga and anime, the main character we call Speed Racer in the US was named Go Mifune (or Goh Mifune, I've seen it spelled both ways), a homage to Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune (Yoshida was a huge fan) which explains why "Speed" has a yellow G on his shirt and his support crew is called the Go Team. (3) The American word "Go," i.e. "Haul ass, dude." The big red M on the Mach 5's hood, which in America we commonly assumed stood for "Mach 5" was actually the emblem of Mifune Motors, Pops Racer's car company. Likewise this explains the M on Speed's helmet. Trixie had an M on her blouse because in the original manga/anime her name was Michi Shimura. Sparky lucked out; the S on his chest happened to match both his Japanese name, Sabu, and American renaming, as well. One thing that never made any sense to me, when watching Speed Racer as a kid, was that Racer X had the "Mach 5 symbol" on his chest. It makes even less sense once you learn this is the Mifune Motors emblem. "Hello Speed, I'm secretly Kenichi Mifune, your older brother who ran away from home years ago. In order to hide this fact, I will....wear the emblem of the family business in foot high lettering on my chest!" Good plan. They'll never figure that one out. And of course, they didn't. In the original manga - and this is something we never really got from the anime - Michi (Trixie) was the spoiled, willful, rich daughter of the head of a rival car company (which explains how she owns her own helicopter - something I always wondered about as a kid - and drives a Mercedes). She first met the Racers when she was sent to spy on them. Wouldn't she know it, she fell in love with Speed which kind of scotched that plan. In my early teens I couldn't understand what Speed saw in Trixie. She was stubborn, difficult, possessive and, most importantly, let's face it, the woman had really small breasts. Even at the age of 12 I had a firm grasp (so to speak) on the truly important things in life. It's only with adult sensibilities that I appreciate what a total little hottie Trixie really was. Of course I hated the bratty kid brother. And the monkey! Don't get me started. WAY too much unneeded so-called comic relief in what should have been - and was - a really exciting, dramatic adventure series. I took my Speed Racer seriously. I could never understand how a guy as cool as Speed could have such a whiny little snot-nosed punk of a brother, or why he didn't just strangle the little bastard and get it over with. All 52 episodes of the original Mach Go Go Go anime were translated into English and in 1967 began airing in America as Speed Racer. The series is about equally split between stand alone eps and two-parters (there's only one three-part Speed Racer). The series has a very self-contained air, with a beginning, middle and an end. It begins with Speed's first professional race and ends when he wins the world championship. In the late 80s thru early 90s the entire series was released on video tape. I bought about half the series, all the tapes I could find, at that time. Just a few months ago the first 11 episodes were released on DVD. You better believe I bought that one. (Hopefully we'll eventually see all 52 episodes on DVD.) All the video tapes that were dupes of DVD eps I then turned around and gave to my next door neighbor's teenage son. Spreading the glory and majesty that is Speed Racer to a new generation. And he really liked them. Obviously there's hope for America's future, after all. I've seen some TV shows I loved as a kid, years later when they were released on video, and wondered how I ever could have enjoyed them. Being three years old is no excuse. The prime example being 8th Man. But I watch Speed Racer today, and while I'm well aware that, because of my history with the show, the fact it was such an important of my life while growing up, I love it perhaps more than can really be justified by what's there....some episodes still do it for me. And that's pretty cool. THE NEW TASTE OF SPEED There have been two more Speed Racer series besides the original. In 1993 in America was produced something called The New Adventures of Speed Racer. I have never seen an episode, and I've read so many negative comments on this show from diehard Speed fans I don't want to. I have however seen the intro with theme song; it looks really, really bad. In 1997 in Japan was aired a modern version of Mach Go Go Go, put together by Tatsunoko Productions, the same company responsible for the original. I have two of the episodes in the original Japanese, and The Cartoon Network recently began airing English translations. My understanding is that the '97 Mach Go Go Go was never completed, only 21 episodes ever being finished before the series was canceled in Japan. Which I find amazing, because it was great. There have been changes from the original, some good, bad and indifferent. Compared to the more stylized "cartoony" artwork in the Sixties show, the art in the '97 version is much more "modern." Speed no longer has long (on top, anyway) curly hair and huge eyes, but a shorter haircut and looks much more like a tough, fit, handsome young man. The family name has been changed from Mifune to Hibiki. Michi's (Trixie's) first name has been changed to Mai; instead of a discrete M on her blouse, she now has "Mai" embroidered across the entire back of her jacket. Trixie is now a news reporter whose favorite topic of research is Speed Racer. Rex Racer faked his death years before which makes it much more believable Speed and Pops don't recognize him when shows up as Racer X. Spritle's still there, but he's no longer Speed's kid brother (yay!), he's Trixie's. Chim-Chim is nowhere to be seen (oh yes!) having been shuffled off to the limbo where bad old ideas go to die. Pops is still Pops, and Mom is still hot. Unlike the one and two-part, self-contained story episodes of the original series, there is an overriding story arc to the '97 Mach Go Go Go. Most episodes relate to Speed's conflict with the evil Ex Elion car company as they try to knock him out of the running to qualify, through a series of elminations races, for the World Earth Grand Prix. All eventually leading up to the big race - which apparently we'll never get to see. There are things not to like about this series. The redesign of the Mach 5 at first didn't do much for me. In the classic show it's this long, low, swooping coupe. (Piece of trivia: The design of the Mach 5 was based on a Sixties race car called the Chaparral. A beautiful machine.) The new Mach 5 is much more angular, more contemporarily techno-geek mangaesque. It's grown on me with time but I'll never like as well as the sleek original. The lettered buttons are still on the steering wheel but the functions have changed, and the Mach 5's special features are now called Safety Seven. For instance, instead of rotor saws the Mach 5 now has laser saws - that are so small, and with a big enough gap in-between, they don't even block the front of the car. On the plus side, the Auto Jacks (though God knows I love them) have been replaced with Aero Jacks. Yes, the new Mach 5 can fly. I always found the gliding Mach 5 from "The Most Dangerous Race," the original series' only three-parter, fascinating. And in "Mach 5 Vs. Mach 5" when Speed goes up against the guy impersonating him with a duplicate Mach 5 that could fly (and a laser cannon, of course) I thought the whole flying thing was the only way in which the duplicate was (gasp!) better than Speed's Mach 5. Every time Speed activates one of the buttons on the steering wheel, he yells out the name of the feature he's using, for instance, "Aero Jacks....GO!!" complete with dramatic pause - like the creators think we're too dumb to figure out what's happening otherwise. Considering the fact he's doing this to, at times, oh, say, stop himself from plowing into a wall at 200 mph, this strikes me as just a tad bit unrealistic. Just push the freakin' button already. Sparky is short, looks about 14, wears glasses and is now a computer genius instead of a mechanic. I can live with the changes to his persona, but miss the tall, gangly look. Racer X's mask is now a helmet with what looks like a bird beak on the front. His uniform design is busy and largely black and purple, with, on occasion, a (choke) cape. I greatly prefer the elegant, simple, mostly white uniform with mandarin collar and black face mask. Speed's helmet looks like he stole it from one of the Star Hawks. The forward part of the helmet (brim?) is so long, and comes down so far in front, in real life it would block so much of his vision he could barely see, let alone drive a race car. But for all that....this series has the heart and soul of Speed Racer. Speed is good and decent and brave, loyal, noble, proud, and a bit naive though he's learning. All the qualities we know and love from the Sixties show. Many problems with the original series are rectified in the modern version. This is Speed Racer the way it should be. Mostly. 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rhino Posted October 16, 2003 Author Share Posted October 16, 2003 Jackrabbit Special v. Herbie the Love Bug Trigger v. Silver Rin Tin Tin v. Lassie Dr. Strange v. Dr. Fate Astro Jetson v. Scooby Doo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted October 16, 2003 Share Posted October 16, 2003 Duane Thomas v. Alex Trebek Category: Comic Book Minutiae That's some cool stuff, Duane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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