How would Liston have done against Marciano's title opposition ?

Archie Moore would have virtually no chance against Liston. He would be streamrolled. He was KOd by Floyd Patterson.

Charles had the boxing skills but probably not the chin. Liston would KO him.

Walcott I would give an honest shot. He had enough power to at least stun Liston enough and maybe get that room to box. He had those unique moves and his footwork was nice.

Walcott/Liston is a good fight. The other two not so much.

 

What is your definition of live? On the night, some of Listons guys simply did not come to fight. Patterson was psyched out both times! is that a live opponent?

Liston was a great fighter but his resume is thin. consisting of machen (on points) Folley (nobody seen the film and burt sugar claimed zora was blinded by substance from sonnys gloves) and a limp roy harris. Thats it. All the other fighters sonny steam rolled were losing fights, everyone else beat them.

 

Read he grants post he explains it quite clearly.

 

Sonny Liston is one of the very few in history I see going undefeated against Marciano's opposition. Marciano beat very good competition, he went 6-0 against hall of famers who were either champions/# 1 rated contenders at the time he faced them. They all still looked excellent on film. Marciano beat much better competition than the cream puffs Dempsey fought.

 

Sonny Liston is a top 3 heavyweight of all time

 

Charles would never be able to get away from Liston's jab. Joe Louis messed up Charles face in 1950 at 6'2 218lb. Liston would pulverise charles with the jab and break him down for the KO...although charles had the skills, speed to steal some rounds off sonny

 

In a one-off scenario the case could be made that Liston would beat them all as I do rate him as a very good fighter, but it doesn't appear he had what it took from a mental discipline standpoint to go 49-0.

I'm also not sure why a mob fighter with a bully mentality and ponderous style gets rated so highly. The mob part is the biggest question mark for me, because I'm not sold that the Ali was the only shady fight- just the most blatant and obvious one. It's naive to think that he'd be involved with the mob for years and they only influenced 1 fight, or to believe that there was no mafia influence at all. Wouldn't surprise me at all if there was mob involvement in the Patterson fights, honestly.

Bottom line is Sonny's an enigma and I really don't know what to make of his career as a whole, because I can't trust the story on the surface. As a fighter I consider him very good but overrated on a H2H basis, but even that is going off of film where either he or his opponent could've been fighting a rigged fight. Nobody really knows how legit he was or wasn't, myself included.

 

I do. Foreman and Holmes were both 42-43 years old. Moore, Walcott were 38 years old, and Charles was only 32. Holmes was coming off a 4 year layoff, Foreman was coming off a 10 year layoff. Charles, Moore, Walcott were coming off zero layoffs..Walcott was the heavyweight champion, Moore was a champion/# 1 contender at heavyweight, and charles was rated # 1 at heavyweight. Were Foreman and Holmes even rated in the top 5 in the world at the time?