'Why I Took A Dive' by Sonny Liston

Your agenda is starting to make you look foolish.

Coulda,woulda,shoulda.......all theories and myths.

Now if you had any kind of credible evidence.......no, wait a minute....there ISNT any.


As for Clay dancing when he realised Liston wasnt coming out, is that supposed to 'give' the game away? In that case Wilfredo Benitez 'gave' the game away when he knew he bingo'ed Maurice Hope by turning and smiling before Hope hit the canvas. Was that fixed too SP:yep

 

As he should, Liston was entitled to continue under the rules

 

Sonny cleared his throat, sat up and began talking like a man who is discussing a painful subject for the absolute last time. "Clay caught me cold and the count was messed up, and that's all they was to it," he said. "Clay knocked me down with a good punch. Anybody can get caught cold in the first round, before you even work up a sweat. And when I was down, Clay stood right over me. No, I never blacked out, not for a second. But I wasn't gonna get up, either, not with him standin' over me. See, you can't get up without puttin' one hand on the floor, and so I couldn't protect myself, and he can hit me on the way up.

"So there was Walcott [Referee Jersey Joe Walcott] and Clay wrasslin' over me and Walcott finally got him to a corner or somethin', and then I got up and Clay come back and we started back to fightin' again.

"And Nat Fletcher [ Nat Fleischer, editor of The Ring Magazine] began wavin' his arms at ringside and Walcott stopped the fight. Nowadays Nat Fletcher says he was just callin' Walcott over to tell him that the timekeeper wanted to see him or somethin', but other people says it was Nat Fletcher stopped the fight.

"I was never counted out. I coulda got up even right after I was hit. And I still felt pretty good when I did get up. I mean I could still go on. What Walcott shoulda done, he shoulda sent Cassius to a neutral corner. When the referees call you out in the center of the ring before a fight, they tells you that: go to a neutral corner. And that's when they count you out, not with no fighter standin' right over you.

"They shouldn't have fighters refereein' no fights no way," Sonny added, now back in his horizontal position. "They should have people that don't get excited."

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1081166/6/index.htm

 

To quote Sgt Joe Friday 'Just the facts sir'

 

Senor Pepe is the saddest poster on ESB.

Its amazing.

 

Pepe' has convined me that Ali's true record, without all the fixes, is 3-1-1: he split with Leon Spinks on the up-and-up, and also got the deserving nod in the third Norton fight.

The rest were all predetermined, except, of course, for the draw with Inoki -- that was completely legit.

 

......first fight...if you look at the film/tape you will see that ali started dancing and waving his arms because he saw that liston was not going to come out of his corner. it was a quick reaction but a legit one.


second fight.....there is nothing more to add to the hundreds of comments that have been made about this one liston tanked it...walcott screwed up and fleischer butted in even though he had no official connection to anything.

 

Liston was defending himself there.
That doesn't mean the fight wasn't fixed.

If the fight was fixed, it would be fixed with Liston having to go a certain number of rounds before bailing out (like he did !). If he's taking some nasty blows in round 3 and he's intending to bail out after 5 or 6 rounds, he has to defend himself in round 3.

 

He was defending himself by trying to knock Ali's head clean off his shoulders. Those same punches dropped Floyd Patterson in a single round, twice. You think he would've taken a chance with knockout punches on an opponent who had been floored by Henry Cooper in his previous bout if he was trying to take a dive?

Ali also tried to quit in round 5 with only Dundee being able to calm him down and make him go back into the ring, yet people are acting like he was "in" on the fix.

Arguing that the 2nd fight was a fix makes more sense, but even then Liston's explanation holds more water than mere speculation about him being afraid of the Black Muslims or the mob or whatever. Walcott did mess it up, and Liston should never have been counted out.

 

Awesome. A completely fictional "1st person account". Definitely your best one yet

 

You talk as if tanking a heavyweight championship fight is an easy feat and an exact science.

You're saying Liston threw big bombs and that proves he didn't tank the fight. I don't know about that.
When I take the fight as a whole, I can only see it as a very unsatisfactory performance and result that leaves a bad taste in the mouth, a fight that could well have been fixed.

I have no idea whether it was actually fixed, and whether Ali would have been in on it. You could just as easily say Dundee pushing him out in such a blind state and panic should raise suspicions that the fight was fixed and that Dundee knew the fight was bagged.

Liston shouldn't have been on the deck in the first place. Ali screaming at Liston and making those angry gestures and telling him to get up suggest that it was a fake KD, and Ali wasn't amused.