[Rocco Del Sesto]

01/03/67

Las Vegas, NV, USA
Billy Marsh – LHW (27-20-7) vs. Johnny Brooks – WW (32-13-5)

Billy Marsh - USA Rating 1
Light Heavyweight 1961-1973

50 wins / 81 losses / 15 draws / 11 KO

Hometown: Little Rock, AR

Rating by: Rocco Del Sesto

A busy, busy career for Billy Marsh in the middleweight/light heavyweight arenas.

Some of the guys he fought who are already in the game....Jimmy Cross, Andy Kendall, Roger Rouse, Johnny Featherman, Tony Mundine, Gomeo Brennan, Larry Buck, Ray Anderson, Mark Tessman and Don Fullmer. He fought many of opponents who had some pretty good looking records. The first have of his career was spent against the usual array of mostly club type fighters. But over the latter half he fought some pretty good looking competition.


Johnny Brooks - USA- Rating 6
Welterweight 1961-1970

40 wins / 34 losses / 5 draws / 7 KO

Hometown: Wichita, KS

Rating by: Rocco Del Sesto

Brooks fought his way up and down the divisional rankings between lightweight on up to Light Heavyweight. He's listed in BoxREc as Welterweight and that's the majority of the fighters rated in the game that he fought. He battled quite a few guys with some pretty good looking records including a good number not rated yet in the game.

One's that are currently rated in the game that Brooks fought are....Manual Gonzalez twice, Adolph Pruitt twice, Denny Moyer, Emile Griffith, Ernie Lopez four times, Paul Armstead, Jose Angel Napoles, Bage Terronez, Jean Josselin, Carlos Hernandez,Jerry Pellegrini twice, Percy Pugh, Stanley Hayward, Billy Backus, Carlos Monzon, Oscar Albarado, Charlie Shipes twice, Willie Warren and finally to end his career, Tony Licata. Problem was in all those fights against the above mentioned opponents, Brooks was only 2-23-0! He only managed to beat Ernie Lopez and Pellegrini once each. 38-11-5 against the lower echelon fighters. The top guys though he couldn't beat.

And the fight.....

Brooks comes out fast in the first couple of rounds scoring with enough of punches to hold a slight 58-57 lead. After that though the bigger Marsh takes total control of the bout, scoring at will and getting the only knockdown of the fight in the 6th round of this fight putting Brooks down for a short 4 count with a good combination. Even though the fight goes the full 10, it’s not close at all. The final judges scores being 98-91, 99-91, 98-92. Brooks in the replay just could not make the jump from WW to LHW. During my play testing of Brooks, I had Marsh in the schedule (I rated Marsh first), and in every 10 sets of fights, Marsh would win on average 7-8 of them. So you look at Brooks’ 6 at WW and Marsh’s 1 at LHW, that jump from WW to LHW obviously causes quite an adjustment in the ratings for Brooks in the game moving up that many weight divisions. In real life, this fight also went the full 10, but Brooks won a 10 round decision. These two will meet again later in 1967 so we’ll be seeing them again later in this replay. Marsh will be making several fights in 1967.