Liston over Marciano - Can Anyone Sanely...

And I pointed out to you that there was a difference indeed, Liston in the minds of many was trailing because they expected him to cremate Ali, it was Liston who had the swelling and the momentum was building for Ali when Liston quit on his stool. Vitali on the other hand was in a fight with Byrd where they were matched even but Vitali dominated the whole fight until the last round but he was in total control

We also have the benefit of history on our side and Liston quit again in fight 2 ( you can call it a flash KD if you like) While Vitali proved in his fight with Lennox that he was willing to fight through adversity so the comparison that you used is not really a good match

 

I never said Fleischer was infallible but I respected his true love for the sport and his knowledge of the era's long gone. Did he in fact have bias towards fighter he saw as a young fan perhaps and do I, perhaps and do you, perhaps....Our minds eye in youth with the sport we love can have a lasting impression. I remember asking him about Ken Buchanan who I thought was an excellent fighter as a young man and he said Ken was very good but not great or near the great Benny Leonard. He loved Stanley Ketchel and Langford and had a very different point of view.

As far as the rest of the staff at ring there were a lot of old guys and they could bring you back to there era's, none of them thought much of Ali and they all fell Liston fell short. Dempsey, Johnson, Fitz and Corbett were there childhood Superstars but when they died off and Loubet and Ort took over I was much more impressed with the opinions of Flash Gordon who I knew well and a few other magazines included British publication Boxing News Weekly and Boxing Illustrated(for a short time) but again no one is infallible

 

Vitali was not dominating byrd, watch the fight.

 

Look Liston's career has been forever tainted by the Ali bouts and justifiably so however to misrepresent them is simply that ... Liston was 34, Liston was highly inactive and Liston was fighting an exceptional fighter in a young Ali who would have been a stylistic nightmare for him in his prime ... to say Liston was a career bully is nonsense as he fought with a broken jaw against Marshall and took out many tough fighters ... what else can you do when you are trying to build the case for a mismatch but stigmatize the opponent by distorting relative realities ... that's all that's being done here as there is no other way to justify how one man can give up thirty pounds, strength, power, over a foot in reach and logically be favored to defeat the other guy ..

 

That is what you do well against fighters you have an agenda against, while wearing rose-colored glasses for your own fighters.

For me I am pretty convinced that Liston falls into the bully who quit mode and I think Tyson had his moments (a FEW) to help me formulate my opinion that he gave up vs Evander (2 different ways) Danny Williams, McBride.

As far as Sonny vs the 179lb Marty Marshall who was just KO'd in 2 previous fights by Dembrell Davis, I think Liston's courage is overstated....many fighters like Ali vs Norton and Arthur Abraham fought for longer periods of time with a broken jaw and against guys who were not 25lbs less in weight.

 

Ali dominating liston, vitali dominating byrd, foreman dominating ali... These are all myths that can easily be dispelled by watching the fights in question.

 

I wont claim to know how much influence the mob had in boxing after Frank Carbo - or during his tenure for that matter - or the consequences of that influence. It is obviously a murky subject. I guess things changed somewhere along the line - at least the mob influence became less visible. But it continued. Don King was mob-connected - even at the height of his success he was out dining with John Gotti. Blinky Palermo was relatively small fry is comparison to men Don King associated with. And King almost monopolized the division in the 1980s.

With the mob in Las Vegas, again it is a matter of appearances. One investigative journalist wrote a whole book on casino mogul Steve Wynn's mob dealings - though Wynn did manage to successfully sue for libel in a Nevada supreme court where all the presiding judges had taken donations from Wynn during their careers ! Still a Scotland Yard report in 1982 claimed Wynn ran casinos for the Genovese crime family and Wynn was barred from being granted a casino license in the UK. Wynn is the most prominent mogul of the "new 'Vegas" of the 1980s and 90s but he certainly started out in a mob owned casino back in the 1960s. The US government line of strictness must have made it harder for mafia to carry on as they were but the way the mafia works in by corrupting and blackmailing the government itself and the mob becomes more and more sophisticated. Atlantic City became a big fight town too for a while in the 1980s at exactly the same time the mob moved some interests there.

I would say i am not convinced the mob ever controlled boxing. They were one of several interest groups. That is how they work across the how structure of society wherever they can get there claws in. They take their slice some way or another but they let all the other cogs keep turning. Maybe Frank Carbo was different - maybe he did take more control. The details are murky.

 

Don King was a mob-connected racketeer since the early 1950s.
He was still kicking back profits from his gambling racket to the mob in the early 1970s.
The OFFICIAL record has him killing two men in gambling-racket-related confrontations. That's two known street kills to his credit.

In 1982 AFTER his great successes in boxing he was associating with even bigger gangsters than he was in his early years.

Don King was no joke.
He was a serious crook, a very dangerous fella.

Good post. :good

For more on what the FBI found out about Don King's links to mobster, and general corruption in boxing :

Joseph's Spinelli's SI article ;

[url]http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1140332/index.htm[/url]


Preview Jack Newfield's book :

[url]http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sWYN6cETROQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false[/url]

 

Yes, Carbo was big time. Carbo worked under Frank Costello, one of the top men in New York.

Don King was an associate of John Gotti, who was on a par with Costello, a lot higher than Blinky Palermo in mob terms.

Yes, there are less two-bit hoods hanging around smoky boxing gyms. Less cigars. Less of the old characters. Times change.

American Cosa Nostra mafia has diminished I believe that. Other 'mafias' are strong as ever eg. Russian mafia. I dont know what they control ... and I'm glad to know nothing about it !

 

its amazing how innocent kids are playing Don King Boxing on Wii these days.

Although, mind you, kids are also taught that Washington was a noble president and only later learn he was a major slave holder (ie a kidnapper and racial terrorist), or never get told that Roosevelt signed up to the KKK. Man we were run by such evil men.

 

fixed sports are just as common now as they ever were.
one on one sports are especially vulnerable to influence.
whist i am not diminishing don kings evils i would say carbo inc had much more complete control over the sport of boxing.
fixing in american college sports is a big time business, i have no knowledge of the ethnicity of those corrupting it.
current boxing at the highest level is so profitable to a fighter it is almost impossible to imagine someone throwing a 'superfight' fight for extra profit.(refer to previous tennis related post of mine, no federer ect on those lists)

i think sports historians choose the rosy spectacles on this issue. willie pep had how many fights (post crash or just old), even if he didn't have any involvements with gangsters, it is statistically very unlikely not one of his oponents went into the ring with an agenda.

 

I agree with that point about fixing the big super fights. I think it is rare or non-existent and always was. I think some fighters might carry opponents for betting purposes (Froch recently revealed he'd done this for people betting on him to win in a certain round), and some 'opponents' might get in the habit of 'not trying too hard to win' (whether that is 'throwing a fight' or just 'opponent mentality syndrome' is open to question).

Carbo inc, and the International Boxing Club/Madison Sq Gdn. they allegedly controlled, DID have a lot of control over boxing I agree. But they were also being challenged for that control and hounded by a crusading press for the entire era they are said to have dominated. It was all over the newspapers throughout the 1950s, managers and fighters complaining that they were being frozen out by a criminal monopoly. The cartel had to give way a number of times if I remember rightly.