Seventy-two years ago this St. Patrick's Day, Rocky Marciano — one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time — came to fight in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It was a turning point in his life. A friend set Marciano up with the Holyoke fight. It was 1947. He had just gotten out of the Army and was digging ditches for the gas company in Brockton, Massachusetts, where he grew up.

Marciano didn't think he had many options in life, said Mike Stanton, who wrote about the Holyoke fight in his book, "Unbeaten: Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection In a Crooked World." "This was his first professional fight," Stanton said. Not knowing what was ahead, Marciano wanted to preserve his amateur status.