Paul Gallender lays Ali-Liston II at the doors of the Nation of Islam

Yeah, it's a good one.
If he did it, it could have been to avoid jail?

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again

The Liston of the first Ali fight would beat anyone else

Except maybe Lewis

Would destroyed Louis, Tyson Holmes etc

 

When you have a sharecropper family with 25 kids living in a cardboard shack with no birth certificates anything could have happened.
Liston swapping places with a brother is definitely possible.

 

Not the Liston I saw in that fight. Too plodding, winging shots, brought his left back too low after the jab, overextended himself routinely....not even close to being the 2nd best heavyweight of all time that night.

He was a frustrated bully who couldn't cope with a guy he didn't have the same physical advantages against that he was used to enjoying over his opponents.

 

The "Liston was a bully" line has about worn itself out.
Liston was like any other fighter. He had strengths and he had weaknesses. His biggest weakness was laziness in training camp. He wasn't any more a bully than any other fighter was.

 

http://i8.tinypic.com/25ss7qb.jpg

I think this is a 20 year old kid.

 

Could be 20...could be 30...hard to tell.
What is the date of that clipping?

 

1952 I am assuming. It's from before he turned pro.

It only looks young for Sonny. I always thought sonny looked old until you see earlier pictures like this. If he was 40 in 1962 do you think Liston would look this young in 1952?

 

Okay. What happened to the real Charley?

And why didn't the folks in the area notice the change?

Other than a problem with the law perhaps, the reasons given-school, beer, work-one would want to be older not younger.

Also, all this is more speculation explaining speculation that has no factual basis to begin with. There is no real reason to think he was born earlier than about 1930. That he would have gone rapidly backward from his late 20's to his mid-30's is not really unusual among boxers, especially one who seems to have had a drinking problem.

 

Liston left Arkansas at 17 (or so) and went to St. Louis to live with his mother. He could have made the change then and no one would have noticed other than his mother. He could have wanted to appear younger to increase the amount of public assistance his mother was getting.
This is speculation, but it provides plausible answers to what you asked.

 

Doesn't answer what happened to the real Charley.

Did he pretend to be older than he was and somebody else?

I am certain everyone can come up with scenarios which are plausible in the abstract, but until there is some hard evidence, these are really shots in the dark to explain something which needs no explanation.

 

"Ok Charles, your older brother "Sonny" is in town and he wants your name. So he is going to be known as Charles. you are just going to have to be Wesley from now on....That's all there is to it"

 

I don't quite see the reason to bother with this charade. Why doesn't Sonny just call himself Wesley and claim to be whatever age he wants to pass for if he can pass for a much younger man as this assumes he can? Why bother changing identities with his brother? It would appear to me that this only would work if there is no identification available and if there is none, there probably is no reason to be this elaborate.

With a guy with a past as murky as Sonny had, faking a false identity would be possible, I suppose.

The bottom line problem for any of this speculation is that he still doesn't look all that old on film in 1958, regardless of who anyone claims he is or might be.