Herb Goldman's top ten 1. Muhammad Ali 2. Sonny Liston 3. Larry Holmes 4. Jack Johnson 5. Jack Dempsey 6. Joe Louis 7. Rocky Marciano 8. Harry Wills 9. George Foreman 10. Joe Frazier
Louis not 1. Liston at 3. W Klitschko unfeatured. Tyson unfeatured. Frazier above Holyfield, Lewis and Holmes?!
That's making a lot out of quite little. The man has three wins over top 5 fighters, one of them fairly competitive. And he lost badly to Ali twice. The excuses and overblown projections you have to add to with that to rank him higher than Louis (as Goldman does)...
As you can see, this list is very different to mine. But my point is, it's not ludicrous to have Liston in your top five.
I think it is close to ludicrous. You for sure can't be objective and do it, Everything has to be interpreted to suit that ranking. Ali looking him look foolish? Well, he was past his prime despite it only being 7 months after he wiped out Patterson a second time. Because you know, he was really 40, not 32. How do we know that? We just know know, or somebody somewhere kind of said it. He only beat three top 5 fighters? Oh, he would have beaten a lot more if he didn't start out boxing when into his 30's, don't you know. All that call for a lot of speculation. Pretty baseless speculation at that. Frazier, Ali, Louis, Lewis, Tyson, Wlad, Foreman, Dempsey and Johnson also have crushing victories over top guys, but in most or all of those cases they have a deeper resume behind it. And while Marciano, Holyfield and Holmes perhaps wasn't that dominant in fights against champions and/or top ranked opponents, they were more consistent. So that's twelve guys. I just can't see how Liston is going get a pass over eight of them. In fact, I'd think it somewhat generous to have him in the top 10.
It's personal opinion .Liston makes my top ten without any trouble. I think H2H he is a monster. One of the ," regular sized heavies", I think holds his own with the behemoths that have followed. I quite understand why some won't put him in their ten though.
