Sonny Liston Children?

It does hurt his credibility.

But if he was interviewing people involved and they are the ones who brought it up and told him the specifics, and he has it on tape, the fact that he started to believe in psychics afterward doesn't change the original interviews.

I haven't read the book. So I can't comment on that.

But I'm very familiar about what was going on at the time with the Nation of Islam and the war going on internally. And the people in Ali's own early entourage who ended up dead (Malcolm X and Leon Ameer) and those in his entourage (Jeremiah Shabazz) who led the mosques many convicted killers from that internal struggle called home.

And Liston going down because he didn't want to get shot never seemed to sound quite right. And Liston getting stopped by a punch never looked believable AT ALL visually.

But one or two NOI members telling Liston they had his wife and kid, so go down in the first, because someone is going to start shooting at you and Ali during the fight ... and we need it over quick ... does sound plausible ...

Considering what was going on.

It wouldn't make sense if it was just another fight. But 1965 and what was going on around the fight wasn't normal at all. And the players involved were dying and killing people.

But, I agree, the psychic nonsense makes it easy to dismiss ... even though the kidnapping claims are completely plausible and probably should be investigated further. (If that's still possible.)

It's too bad.

 

But Ali's close friend Malcolm X was murdered by the Nation of Islam. And Ali's secretary was killed by the Nation of Islam. And Ali publicly said they deserved to die for going against Elijah Muhammad.

That happened. During the lead up to the fight.

Muhammad Ali at 23 and Muhammad Ali as an older man doting on kids weren't the same guy.

He was nice to little kids, and he publicly said he agreed with the murders of people very close to him by the people around him. Both before they were killed and immediately after they were killed.

It's not being a poor judge of character. He did both.

 

That's not how I saw it. The interviewer was trying to have Ali clarify his position on white people being devils. Ali started ranting about being "trapped" or "tricked" or whatever because his own views were so wrong he probably confused himself.

Anyway, it's up to you if you think denying close friends of yours based on skin colour is right.
I say it's wrong in every instance, in every context. It demonstrates low character.

I think you have poor judgement of character if you actually measure character of how someone "interacts with the people, and kid,"
There are dozens of murderous gangsters, and the like, who were known to be warm and genuinely kind-hearted to the people on the street and the kids in the neighbourhood.
It's easier to be like that when those common people are already looking to you as some sort of hero.

No, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Ali would have done one thing or another, and I don't even think the kidnapping occurred at all.
It's you who are making clear statements that Ali would "obviously" never have gone along with such a thing.
YOU make the claim ... based on him charming the kids and their mums in the streets apparently.

 

Yes, and my reasons for not believing the kidnapping are not to do with Gallender anyway.
I'd actually read a similiar story years before Gallender brought it up, a story than a Scottish man who was a kid in the 1960s and a friend of Liston has told a boxing magazine.
I just don't believe it for the reason that the NOI, or even rogue elements of it, would have very little to gain and a lot to lose by pulling such a stunt on 'civilians'.
There are simpler explanations for why Liston dived too, far simpler.

 

What they had to gain was stopping Muhammad Ali from getting shot by ending a fight that could've lasted for the better part of an hour in just two minutes.

And they did pull "stunts" like that with civilians. Guys from Shabazz's (a member of Ali's entourage) mosque slaughtered a whole family. Shot and killed them. Drowned a baby. At Kareem Abdul Jabbar's house.

They did it because the guy whose family it was wrote an article about Elijah Muhammad they didn't like.

If Jabbar was there, and the guy who wrote the article, they'd have been dead, too.

Civilians weren't OFF LIMITS. A baby is kind of a civilian, after all.

Calling a guy and saying we have your wife, go down in the first and we'll take her back home, and doing so, is pretty freaking tame by comparison.

 

Yeah, point taken.

 

I just don't buy it. If it looks like bull**** and smells like bull**** its probably bull**** and this story reeks of bull****.

I also continue to be mystified by the "Liston getting stopped by a punch never looked believable AT ALL visually." comments. Liston wasn't stopped by a punch. The fight was halted while Liston was on his feet by a blundering Jersey Joe. Liston was not some inhuman juggernaught. He was not unbeatable. He could be hit and hurt and psychologically I think he was pretty weak. Look what happens when he gets that nose bleed against Leotis Martin. He suddenly went from being this aggressive hulk to literally looking like a scared child and that was well before he even got hurt or knocked out. In the first Ali fight he fought his usual fight and then as soon as his eye starts to swell watch how his demeanor changes he goes from pursuing Ali to standing, waiting, and even occasionally retreating. I think he realized in that first fight that there wasn't anything he could do outside of the unlikely lucky punch to beat Ali. Just like Foreman. Ali owned Foreman in their fight. That Foreman fight should be enough to give people a clue that Ali didn't need the NOI to beat Liston. Foreman was bigger, younger, stronger, and hit at least as hard Liston did and couldn't do anything with Ali and despite his occasional bleating about a rematch he was never serious about wanting another go at Ali because Ali ate guys like Liston and Foreman for breakfast. He was too smart, fast, and mentally tough for those guys. I think at the very worst Liston's heart wasn't in that second fight and just wanted an easy out and a paycheck so he could move on with his career and make some relatively easy money. All of this b.s. about hobgoblins and trolls hiding in the shadows and conspiring against him is silly IMO. Like I said, from what Ive read of Gallender most of his stuff sounds like B.S. and if he really does think hes communicating with Sonny from the dead then that's enough to tell me hes totally unreliable and likely nuts.

 

The truth.:good

 

You don't know any of that. You're making it up as you go.
You have no idea what Ali is more interested in and what he may or may not have done.

You are the one who took the conversation here when you said you knew that Ali would not have known what the NOI might have been up to.
You don't know that.

 

I agree with some of that.

But he almost definitely took a dive in the 2nd fight, the most damning indication being Ali's immediate reaction. The fact that he got up again proves nothing to the contrary, under the circumstances.

Why he took the dive, I don't know. I seriously doubt it had anything to do with a broad conspiracy involving Ali's side or kidnappings or anything like that.

I will say Sonny Liston was a known loser on the gambling tables, and he bet heavily on fights and sports from many accounts too. He mixed with mob guys and mob-connected gamblers.
He drank and possibly used drugs. He was probably ripped off and underpaid by his managers.
It's not exactly far-fetched to think he might have found himself in debt often, large debts, and so he manipulated his fights to wipe out debts, whether they be carrying some opponents or even losing a fight or two.
On the other hand, yes, he might have just said "f**k this" chasing Ali around the ring, and decided to quit.

 

That is all true.
I don't completely discount the kidnapping story.
It isn't that far fetched.
It would have been ridiculously easy to have pulled off-get the wife and kid in a car and take them to a motel room.
Call Liston and tell him to go down in one if he wants to see them again. Done.

NOI thugs were a dime-a-dozen, ready to do as told.
The NOI could have had any number of reasons to want to do this.

To name a couple:
1. Ali was a huge PR asset for the NOI. He brought them more attention than anything ever had. They wanted to keep him champion.

2. Betting coup. Liston was a slight favorite in the fight. Being able to call round 1 would probably pay 10-1 or so.

I don't know if it happened that way, but it certainly could have.

 

I think at best (or worst depending on your perspective) can say that Liston MIGHT have INTENDED to take a dive but say he categorically took a dive doesn't jive with the facts. He did rise and was defending himself. It was Walcott who stopped the fight. Im not saying the knockdown didn't look fishy. It did and his little flop afterwards was worse but like I said I would guess he more likely decided to give up and go home with his paycheck than take a prolonged, frustrating, embarrassing whipping. I don't buy the betting angle either because Liston opened as a 9-5 favorite and the odds were bet down to only 6-5 with him still being a favorite. Where is the flood of money on Ali that would have swung the odds dramatically. He would have had to have bet a lot of money and early to make good money on the bet and that doesn't jive with the supposition that he was in financial straights. Also, its my understanding that betting was very light on the fight due to the circus atmosphere, the result of the last fight, and the switch in venues etc. If betting was that light anyone, whether it was Sonny himself, or the mob, betting enough money to make a flop worthwhile would have swung those odds. So I don't see this as a clear case for any of those shenanigans laid out above.

 

I agree. It looks like it was one of those in the moment "screw it" flops similar to Walcott/Marciano II.

 

Betting the round would not have swung the odds to either fighter.
Most US betting in 1965 was done through illegal bookies.
They didn't publish statistics.

 

Except the hobgoblins had just killed two guys (Malcolm X and Ali's secretary) in the weeks leading up to the fight. The hobgoblins also went to jail later for the killings.

Unlike most conspiracy theories, the hobgoblins weren't make believe.

Whether they actually kidnapped Liston's wife is debatable. That they existed and they did much worse isn't.

They left actual dead people behind them. And they got caught.