WHO do you rank higher, liston or schmeling in legacy?

Liston without a doubt!

 

I'm not sure.

 

You could ask the same question of almost every heavyweight in history.
Who do you rate ABOVE Schmeling ?

 

Liston was pretty dominant in his prime too.

But Patterson was the youngest HW champ ever.

 

This is a great question. Schmeling often gets overlooked and Liston always seems to get built up while his resume while good, doesn't seem to warrant it.

Schmeling clearly has the best win- Louis

However other fighters have had great wins but not great careers. Most notably Buster Douglas. So what separates Schmeling from someone like Douglas.
He defeated #1 contender Hamas
P4P great Mickey Walker who was on a 5-1 roll at heavy.
He split with Sharkey but should of been 2-0 by almost all accounts.
His career record against hall of famers is 4-3 but should be 5-2 (Young Stribling 1-0, Mickey Walker 1-0, Jack Sharkey 1-1, Joe Louis 1-1, Max Baer 0-1)
He does have losses to lesser fighters that Liston does not during his prime. The most glaring one is the KO1 loss to Gypsy Daniels which stands out like a sore thumb. His other losses were either early on while still a teenager or post world war 2 where he was in his mid 40s.
Liston beat a several good fighters notably Williams, Foley, and Machen. Then destroyed Hall of Famer Patterson 2x. Then went on and was defeated himself 2x by Ali. So his Hall of fame record is 2-2 against two men.
I would say as far as legacy goes it's Schmeling.

 

Schmeling had that win over Louis and a loss and Liston had 2 vs Patterson but 2 losses against Ali...Max fought better fighters with mixed results, Liston had a good run before Ali

this is very close -I rate them equal

 

I agree that Schmeling does get overlooked, but I can't see any way to rank him ahead of Liston. The victory over Louis greatly elevates Max's legacy, and is better than any one win of Liston's. However, the way that Liston easily disposed of highly regarded contenders (Williams, Folley, Machen, Valdez), then crushed the very talented champion Patterson twice, easily gives him the better legacy of the two.

If Schmeling had beaten Baer, then it'd be a lot closer.

 

So tell me, please, how is Holmes higher than Schmeling?

 

You forgot to point out Louis didn't train at all for this fight and when he trained for the rematch, he brutally knocked the **** out of Schmeling proving their first fight was a fluke. The same can be said for Trevor Berbick, does he rate higher than Liston as well? Just shut the **** up biased clown. You're the first person I've ever seen rate Schmeling higher than Liston

 

this is actually a good question.

I like longcounts post but i'm not having schmeling's win over walker as meaning much, it means more for walker if anything.