Why would the mob want to have Sonny Liston whacked?

Failing to pay his debts ..... or drug-deal-related stuff.

 

Add to that threatening to blow the lid off things if he wasnt paid. Or if I remember reading one of my books his lips were getting too loose when he was high or adleast that was part of it.
He wasnt fighting at that age because he wanted to IMO.

 

LOL, there was no mob hit..............Liston was a absolute nobody in the Mob world, the Mob does not use complicated hits, you get clipped, dismembered and buried somewhere and you never will be found again, case closed..............they made Hoffa , a 100 times more known and powerful as Liston, disappear why the F would they go full conspiracy on a washed up Has been who had zero inside track into Costra Nostra..

Reality: Liston was a lifetime alkie and junkie and eventually his heart said no mas and that was that. A Heroin junkie dies two ways, either liver failure or the heart stops pumping due to Heroins downer qualities....heart rate goes to nil aka acute cardiac arrest.

I fully expect the rose colored Liston fanatics come up with all kind of silly nonsense like the needle story..................one more time , he was a junkie who abused his heart/health for years, most likely already had heart disease at his advanced age and when finally all the stars lined up he bit the bullet.

 

I don't think anyone's suggesting this was a major decision made by the bosses of the Mob families, ala the Hoffa hit.
More like he was possibly killed by mobsters on a low level. Like you say "he was an absolute nobody in the Mob world", so he could easily be whacked if he got out of line. Just a washed up black guy who nobody thought was any good anyway.
No one important has to sit down and give the green light on that one.

But I agree, it doesn't seem like the M.O. of any serious gangster. They'd put a bullet in his head and leave it at that.
Or he'd disappear without trace, like you say.

 

This. Liston like a lot of fighters had a bad habit of borrowing money and not paying it back and also taking favors from the wrong people After Liston got knocked out by Leotis Martin I think it was clear to everybody that Liston was never going to be a top fighter again and based off the Wepner fight Liston wasn’t willing become a paid opponent to pad resumes either, so I think they put him out of his misery.

In an old article I’ve got in my garage Al Weil talked about some fighters ‘not getting it’ and paying the prize for ‘not getting it’ when being asked about a former fighter of his, who had a legal dispute with him, who conveniently for Weil went missing and was never found.

 

People say it because it adds to the myth of Liston for each generation. How long before someone’s going to say he was really working undercover for the FBI?

 

It is by no means certain that they did.

It might simply have been that his lifestyle finally caught up with him.

 

Loose lips, outlived his usefulness... more of a liability than asset.

 

That story is fantasy, Sonny knew Frankie Carbo as did many in the game but Sonny was old school and closed mouth and the mob get up close and BADABOOM especially in those days with less DNA & camera's if they wanted him dead they would find him in the streets or would not find him in the river or in the dump or compactor

If Sonny did cash in on the 2nd fight with Ali that means all the betters that believed Sonny would redeem himself and overcome the shoulder injury of fight 1...I remember I was young but Sonny was Champ and ex con (I think he only accually did 3-4 years) but quiet mean and strong, he was an imposing figure and nobody believed the skinny loudmouth accually beat him...The 2nd fight was a dive? or was it an early exit? or a poor acting job? Funny that Walcott was the referee and in his rematch with Marciano his subconcious advised him to take that 10 count in the 1st and save himself the 12 rd of pain leading to the same fate.

Sonny played with a little dope and it caught up with him taking many secrets with him but the mob would never kill him that way