Sonny Liston vs. Vitali Klitschko

Vitali takes Liston to school and wins by TKO in late rounds. Probably by stoppage due cut.

 

Never has such an aura of invincibility, been built on such a flimsy resume.

 

Mendoza sent me a pm concerning Suzie Q , should I make it public , I believe Suzie would want to fight him again.:yep

 

I think I'd pick Liston prime for prime.

Yes, Vitali is bigger. He's stronger. He's durable and is dangerous in a fire fight.

I still think Liston's jab and overall demeanor would win him this fight though. it's a fight i struggle to ****yze stylistically because neither fighter has faced anyone remotely like their opponent. Liston would be bringing a combination of power, great inside fighting, a nice ram rod jab and of course his other intangibles. Vitali brings that awkwardness and the size. I don't know. It'd be a war.

 

Tbh, I think I'd lean towards Vitali in this match up. Sonny simply wouldn't be the scary monster he was portrayed as by today's standards. I also think Vitali hits hard enough to keep Liston honest, though nowhere near as hard as Mendozy claims. This coupled with his punch output, and granite mandible, and I can see a Klitchko points win.

 

You such sweat heart of a man. Did you not say you were going to avoid this type of stuff? Wow, that did not last long.

You're a cry baby loser type who has to get in the last word. Just ponder which thread I’ll bump and what I will say when you disappear from posting here. :hi:

 

We could be comparing apples with oranges here. In my ratings, head to head or whom I think beats whom in a round robin fashion matters a lot. In yours they do not seem to matter nearly as much.

Leaving boxing out of the debate for the moment, is there another sport where athletes of 40 or 60 years ago would be able to defeat modern teams, or individual opponents on best of 3 basis?

Not in Football, Basketball, Soccer ( Futbol ), Tennis, Golf, Hockey, Track and Field....you get the picture. I could name just about every sport that demands physical activity.

Modern people are bigger / faster / stronger / etc... Those are the facts.

Boxing gets a pass because there are weight divisions where bigger and stronger is contained, but the heavyweight division has drastically changed. Modern heavies are 2 to 4 weight classes above these 165-195 pound guys you feel were better. Loughran, Maxim, Conn...those types would not be able to compete and get ranked at heavyweight today. They would be cannon fodder vs. the ranked.

It seems you give old timers higher rankings than modern just because the won and lost to each often. That is not very scientific.

The old timers that are the elite and did not lose very often can be compared in a statical sense to modern day boxers who are the same.


As for Vitali, he took both fights on less than two weeks notice and was in the lead. Had the Byrd fight been later in his career for higher stakes, or had Vitali been aware of how the UK / North American press would view the result, he might have finished it. But he said the arm went numb, and being a sports doctor feared for his career.

If this were Tennis and Novak Djokovic withdrew due to injury up two sets and leading in the third. Does anyone credit the guy who won under those circumstances or hold it against Novak Djokovic? Certainly not. The Byrd fight deserves an *, and is not the same as 99% of the other losses.

Losses on cuts happen, but seldom do when one fighter was in the lead. I would have liked to see the 7th as Lewis was tired, but the ring doc called it off. Okay, Vitali was winning. Lewis did not want the re-match. You could say Vitali retired Lewis then rose #1.

No other ATG has these type of losses. Not all losses are the same. You could argue being in the lead in both fights ( Shoulder team and bad cut ) shows how good he really was.

Ponder for a moment if Schemling didn’t give Louis a re-match, or Lennox Lewis was avoided by Rhaman. Or if Frazier never gave Ali a re-match. See my point. Vitlai did not get this chance. He would have beaten Byrd for sure. Lewis? I think he wins. And Lewis retired because the re-match was ordered.

Why should Vitali be in the top 15 of all time?

#1. He can out box anyone. No one was as good on the scorecards. Not even Ali or Holmes at their best vs. similar levels of opposition.

#2 He was an ATG puncher and had an ATG chin. He could stop anyone, but no one could even floor him with a punch in 40+ fights.

#3 He lost some of his best years due to personal interests outside the ring, and had to over come multiple surgeries

#4. His record vs. top ten rated opponents is very good. He is 15-2 in world title matches.

#5 His comeback was very impressive. Out of the ring for 5 years, he won back his belt with no warm ups in dominating fashion.

#6. His longevity is impressive. Few are champion past their 40th birthday.

#7 Size matters.

#8 Activity matters. Few threw more punches.

#9. He fought very few fighters under .500, and the better fighters he beat were not has beens, or guys coming off a loss.

#10. He did not have a great trainer.

To rate him #26 as you do is not correct.

I said Loughran, Maxim, Conn...those types would not be able to compete and get ranked at heavyweight today. I'll stand there. McGrain likes to rank these types high just because they fought often and won and lost vs. many in their times.

If the bottom top ten fighters today fought each other many times, would that make them great?

I do not think Fitz, Patterson, Charles or Schemling would be champion in modern times either, outside of a puncher’s chance or facing a very a weak champion such as L Spinks, under motivated Douglas, McCall...those types

On Vitali's power, how come his punches had more effect on Purity, Peter than Wlad's did? How come Universum said Vitali hit harder? Who hit harder is debatable.

Like I said Wlad has better speed and technique, Vitali is heavier handed.

As stated Vitali was injured vs Chisora you dumb man. Briggs gained a lot of weight and took a much better puncher later in his career. The fight should have been stopped by the ref or Briggs corner, as it nearly killed him. Briggs ended up with broken facial bones and slipped into a coma.

By the way I could list plenty of guys that any puncher did not Ko. I'll keep Rocky Marcian out of it because we know your thoughts on him.

 

Mendoza

"Is there another sport where athlete's of 40 to 60 years ago would be able to defeat modern teams."

*just an aside, for golf I wouldn't be certain myself that if Ben Hogan or Jack Nicklaus at their peaks popped up today they couldn't win major tournaments. I would be interested in your view on why they couldn't. I think skill trumps size in golf.
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But let's take American football, where I agree that your statement is probably true, or at least a consensus of experts would say it is true.

Let's take the Green Bay P-ckers and Pittsburgh Steelers of 2014.

I think the 2014 P-ckers would defeat any of the Lombardi championship P-ckers of the 1960s, a team whose heaviest player was about 260 lbs.

I think the 2014 Steelers would defeat any of the Steel Curtain Steelers of the 1970's, whose heaviest player was Mean Joe Greene at 275 lbs.

my questions--

If you were doing a history of the NFL, and picking the ten greatest teams,

would you choose the 2014 teams over the championship teams of the 1960's and 1970's?

and if you did, how valuable would your history be?

 

The nickname for the Green Bay team was censored.

I am so old and out of it I don't even know what the awful meaning of the word
P-A-C-K-E-R is.

Does anyone know?

 

I don't know. Could be this :

[url]http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=****+******&defid=734421[/url]

 

Of course, that was censored also. atsch

Sh!t P*cker

 

I managed to find it on the internet.

P-A-C-K-E-R---in slang refers to a man putting an artificial pe-is in his pants to create a bulge.

Well, I live and learn.

The Green Bay team was named after the main employer in the city which was a meat p-cking plant.

I must say that this word censorship has gone over the edge into stupidity.

 

A lot of people fall back on this argument, but nobody seems to want to follow it to its inevitable conclusion.

You basically acknowledge boxing to be the sole exception, as soon as you pick a fighter whose prime was before the year 2000, over his modern counterpart.