Sonny Liston in the following fantasy h2h matchups

I have him at number 6. He is easily top 10. Head to Head, he's top 3.

 

No he wasn't. Both were in the same class. Trust me, Liston would have been by far the best heavyweight Louis ever fought.

 

No great shakes. who else did williams ever bother?

For all the fuss and excuses Listonites make for sonny against clay you could say the same about patterson. Against clay they say Liston, threw the fight. they say Liston was tired of being a champion... you could say the same about floyd who was 2-1 against the last rated guy he met.

I am not going to but some could say Floyd was in no frame of mind to cope with the presure of ''decent america'' counting on him winning whilst being torn between hoping they give a fellow black man a break. the false beard and the rematch clause he had to go through with...

A quality win. Good champions are expected to have quality wins. Jack sharkey had great wins like this, he still lost to carnera.

Good win number two. Not earth shatering. Not as good as Ingo.. but still a good win.

Apart from williams who was C-grade against other contenders.

with no wins against curent rated fighters - ever. Only devestating puncher never to knock down a top fighter.

two good wins against rated heavyweights.

Not a fact. Cannot be proven. never happened. On paper Harris actualy had better wins.

 

Yeah he was better than Liston in his prime but by 1950 he was ****ing trash, come on you're crazy if you think that Louis at that point was even on level with a prime Liston.

 

Harris doesn't have anything on paper as good as a KNOCKOUT win over the very durable Ernie Terrell and a draw against Eddie Machen.

Williams would have destroyed Harris, which is why Williams was always the number 1 heavyweight in Texas.

 

Knocked out a Prime 24-3 Ernie Terrell, who was never knocked out before, and went on to become WBA champion. Knocked Terrell down in the rematch when Terrell was rated # 5 in the World. AP scored the fight for Williams.

Knocked out Alex Miteff who was rated top 10 in the world

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Beat Billy Daniels, rated # 9 in the world.

Fought to a controversial Draw with top 5 rated Eddie Machen. AP scored the fight for Williams.

"In a way he's tougher to fight than Liston because he has the speed the other doesn't have. You can't walk around Cleveland like you can Liston." -Eddie Machen


Your "facts" are off

 

I've only watched Charles and Gibbons from that list, I think Liston beats Gibbons but has more trouble with Charles.

Charles controlled the range well and was decent inside but Liston would be all over him with clubbing punches there. Liston probably still stops him.

Going to say something potentially upsetting here, I'm not a big fan of Liston's jab. Don't see what the fuss is about. It has power, like all of his punches, but is sloppy, brought back to the waist quite often and could be countered.

 

Hard to be countered when your reach is 84" and you throw it from far out, most heavyweight can't reach him on their counters. Liston had one of the most powerful jabs of all time, like a telephone pole. It was very disruptive.

 

True, I agree it was rangy and powerful, I just think against a certain type of opponent it would be less effective. As one of those individual facets people talk about for various different fighters, from what I have seen of Liston it seems overrated.

 

As it turned out terrels loss to wiliams was the turning point of ernies career. Terrel was still at the point of his career where he was losing SD's each year and williams was the first remotly famous opponent he had met. Ernie (no great fighter himself) would prove to be a better heavyweight than williams ever was because he beat a lot more fighters who were better than anyone big cat williams ever beat - and he beat williams back anyway.

Miteff had lost 3 of his last 4 fights before facing big cat Williams IN 1961. Cooper, machen and chuvalo all took any rating alex had before he met Cleveland. The year before Miteff also lost to folley and besmanoff, the only rated fighter miteff beat was old nino valdes by SD way back in 1958 but in the 3 years since he had lost anothr 7 times before meeting Williams.

Daniels was a good boxer with decent punching power. He racked up an undefeated record of 16-0. Daniels was rated 10th in the World Heavyweight rankings in Ring Magazine for the month ending November 21, 1962.
Billy Daniels was featured on the cover of the October 1962 The Ring magazine, along with a young Muhammad Ali. In a battle of undefeated prospects, Daniels was stopped on cuts by Ali. That was the end of his rating. Daniels career nosedived after the Ali fight and before the williams fight.

Nobody thought williams beat machen, nobody cared one way or the other. It was a draw in williams's home town, just another close fight that meant as much as the folley-machen draw or the cobb v dokes draw or any other heavyweight draw. Scott ledoux drew with ken Norton AND leon spinks and nobody cares about him!

Williams was rated by 1961, Lord knows why because Bob satterfeild was the only name on the big cats record before facing liston. his best actual wins by then were against unrated (31-13) frankie daniels or (27-16) john holman when both were on worrying losing streaks.

between the Liston and ali fights williams beat 18 fighters who could not win more than 2 of their last 4 fights, of those (6-4) mel turnbow knocked him down. Williams also beat george moore and ernie terrel who had better records but Moore was only 11 months into a comeback after a two year break from a 14 month career and terrel beat williams in the return.

Williams was a headliner who was popular in that he spectacularly knocked out journeymen. He wasn’t going anywhere because he was a good enough attraction in Miami and Texas for doing just this. when he went to new York or Philadelphia he’d get beat. 95% of williams's fights were in Texas and Florida as the "house fighter".