Ali vs Liston II: the "Phantom Punch"

Obviously no fix. Too many eyes, the world, was watching this bout. Not the kind of fight anyone would want to risk a fix. Too easy to discover! Experts at ringside who actually were in position to see it saw no controversy. The right hand was a KO blow. It was a quick hard right followed by a needless storm of protests. As follows:

https://www.si.com/vault/1965/06/07/607743/muhammad-ali-sonny-liston-second-fight

 

Don King wasn't promoting until the 70s. Can you tell us his so called involvement behind the scenes regarding Ali - Liston?

 

FYI
Ali IS rated the greatest hwt champion of all time. Live with it.

 

I am not sure whether there were fix fights at that period or not. That fight happened long long time ago.

 

For me after many many years the first was obviously on the money and the second a fix.

Liston took Clay for granted in the first fight and paid dearly for it. Angelo Dundee is on record as saying he did not believe foul play was afoot with the whole eye thing and gave his own plausible explanation on the whole matter. Irrespective of this Liston saw Clay was having trouble and went much harder in an effort to get him out of there. The proof is in the pudding via punch stats. Liston threw more punches in round 5 than he did in rounds 4 and 6 combined and also had his best connection rates of the fight. He threw 50 "power punches" in round 5 vs 18 combined for 4 and 6. You can see on film some of the punches he was throwing (and landed at times) had the potential to end the fight particularly given the theory of the time was that Clay couldn't take much of a punch. This is it in a nutshell for me and his efforts were hardly that of a guy paid to lose.

I think it's almost as obvious the second was a fix. Given how ridiculously poor his acting was it's surprising he got a few movie and tv gigs afterward. Someone got to him. Truth be told Liston actually took a great punch. The whole fight, it's buildup and the chaotic ending was a complete farce for mine.

 

Your tin foil hat is on too tight.

 

Don King? Really?

 

Nat Fleischer (Ring magazine editor) messed the fight up. The fight continued (Liston never threw another punch though) and the fight should have continued... Nat should have sat down and shut the fvck up. Picking up the time keeper's count isn't always done. Ali was running around the ring and the count should not have started while he was doing that. The ref (Jersey Joe Walcott) should have ignored Nat Fleischer (who was not the time keeper anyway).

 

Liston beat the ref's count. It really doesn't matter how long a fighter is down as long as he beats the count... the ref's count. You can't blame a fighter if the ref doesn't "pick up" the timekeeper's count. The fighter goes by the ref's count... even if that count might be off. If a fighter is up before the ref reaches 10, he's up. You can't go back and stop the fight claiming a fighter was down for more than 10 seconds even though the ref never reached the 10 count or waved the fight off.... but that's what happened in this fight.

 

I agree. But being that I and more than a few people believe that fight was a poorly-disguised fake (Liston in particular was a horrible actor) it's moot.

 

Liston wasn't interested in fighting, that is true. If I'm the ref I am letting it go though. It would have been interesting to see how Liston would have responded to that. In the brief time that the fight did continue (after Liston got up) Liston basically just covered up.

 

I think Liston might have been stunned the fight wasn't over. He was going to lose, anyway. I think it was pressure from the mob, black muslims, or a combination of the two. Either way, to quote Ali "get up, nobody's gonna believe this!". That I think tells us everything.

 

Ali during that time period had developed a great right hand counter. Opponents would be caught as they stepped in and they never saw the blow coming. Look at similar punches flooring Williams and Folley.

 

I have yet to see a logical explanation for this.

Perhaps him not even protesting the stoppage when the fight resumed or him rolling around to buy time is evidence his heart wasnt in it, but getting up from a supposedly obvious "fake" knockdown is completely counter productive!

 

I've never found a contemporary account which quotes Ali as saying this. They all just give it as "Get up, get up!" or "Get up, you bum!"