Sonny Liston vs Ingemar Johannson 1959

that's fine, I was joking too. I don't want to be a legalist.

 

no need to apologize about it

 

I dont think any of these guys was a product of the managers guild. Quite the contrary in that they all had ties to the IBC, which the managers guild opposed. However, at the tail end of its existence the managers guild was infiltrated and taken over by managers associated with Carbo and the IBC to destroy it from the inside, which they did. But I still dont think any of those three were products of it even when it was essentially being turned inside out by Carbo.

 

Do you think the deaths could be linked at all? All seems a bit cloudy to me.

 

Not really. Im not much of a conspiracy theorist. They may have met with foul play (I even doubt that) but I certainly dont think they were linked. Ive never really seen the convincing argument as to why the mob would kill any of those three. They made money off of all of them. If they were going to run around killing people they had grudges against years later youd think guys like LaMotta and D’Amato would have been at the top of their list. Or even some of the other managers and fighters that bucked them that were less visible but would have sent a message. No I think the mobs influence and interest in boxing was petering out well before those three died and they didnt really have anything to gain from those deaths. Those deaths dont really make sense as mob hits/retribution if you understand how the mob makes those kinds of decisions. At least not the organized crime that those guys were tied to. The closest anyone has come to an explanation tying any of those deaths to the mob was that Liston was killed because he didnt throw his fight to Wepner but come on, that makes no sense. The fight wasnt a big fight so gambling wouldnt have been heavy. Heavy betting, tipping the scales wouldnt have gone unnoticed and frankly Liston, coming off a loss and at his age wouldnt have shocked anyone to lose at any given time. Wepner was a mediocre clubfighter, its not like they were building him up into a star and needed a win over a big name. His lack of quality was already well known. So really the idea that Liston was supposed to throw that fight makes no sense. Its just one of those things that sounds fun to ponder but the more you do the more likely it seems they were unrelated.

 

Actually, Folley had a pretty clean, admirable life. His mysterious and sudden death seems out of place, whereas it seems very fitting for Liston, and even Machen.

 

Thanks for the response. I agree with you. The mob kills when it has something to gain. The careers were already over.

 

Liston jabs and bullies a seemingly passive Johanson. He is up 2 rounds to zip and begins lining him up for some heavy artillery. Suddenly in the 4th, Ingo launches a nuclear right that makes Liston's knees buckle and he is against the ropes. Ingo tries to follow up but the enraged Liston digs in with a right to the abdomen. Ingo is a deer caught in head lights as he does not expect such vicious retaliation. Liston lands a series of hooks and then a sledgehammer right to the temple, dropping Ingo. The Swede just barely gets to his feet only to get battered again. He tries another right but Liston simply absorbs it and smacks him in the jaw with a powerful hook, busting up his lip and sending his mouth piece flying. The ref has seen enough and waves it off.

Liston has a bloody nose and slight puffiness around his right eye but he is more damaged mentally than physically.

 

Folley and another guy were hanging out late at night by a pool with two women (neither of whom was Folley's wife). The two guys, who I believe were drunk, started wrestling and Folley slipped and hit his head on the edge of the pool.

The scandal was he was obviously not with his wife.

Died while cheating, as it were.

 

From what we know now about CTE, Machen probably suffered from that. Jumped out the window. Committed suicide.

 

Exactly. The press would only tiptoe around it at the time but as I recall there was the belief that there was some swinging going on. I think the press being tight lipped led some to assume that there was foul play.

 

Not trying to hijack the thread, but I have similar feelings about the first Dempsey-Fireman Flynn match. Flynn was one win removed from a five-fight losing streak and going nowhere fast, and a win over Dempsey at that time wasn’t going to vault him into the stratosphere.

Not to mention that $500 (a number I’ve seen tossed around) is like sinking $11,000 in today’s money to get someone to throw a fight — which makes sense if there’s a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow but nothing indicates Flynn would ever be able to cash in that win for anything remotely close to that kind of money — nor was there going to be anywhere to bet on a fight in the middle of nowhere that might make that investment in a dive pay off.

I’d like your opinion.

And while we’re at it, doesn’t it seem reasonable that Jake LaMotta would also have some fixed wins on his record if the mob was going to have him take a dive? Any of his wins you find suspicious? Sugar Ray Robinson even?

 

I do not believe the Dempsey-Flynn fight was fixed. Ive researched that one extensively and as you say, a fix doesn’t add up for it for numerous reasons.

I dont really believe LaMotta had any fixed wins on his record. In fact I think a couple of his other losses werent fixes per se but he was trying to look bad on purpose and it caught up with him with the judges. Ive actually done quite a lot of research into LaMotta’s issues with and ties to the mob and contrary to the idea that some of his wins might have been fixes his career would have actually gone more smooth and he would have had an easier path to the title if he hadnt resisted doing business with them earlier. He wasnt some paragon of virtue mind you, he repudiated the mob because he was so cheap, stingy, and distrustful that he wanted to keep everything he earned and didnt want to owe anyone anything. This actually worked in his favor for a long time because he became very wealthy being a one man show. But I think he got to a point where he was comfortable and only really wanted the title. Its all he could get motivated for. He was too young to retire but outside of the title he had accomplished everything he wanted to before he was 30. So in his mind he had to do business with them. But he arranged it so he wasnt really beholden to them outside of a promotional deal with the fledgling IBC. Essentially when he beat Cerdan he was back to being his own man for the most part. Unfortunately he had no more mountains to climb and spent the rest of his career never really training right or being able to get motivated for fights. He continued to have problems with the mob attempting to muscle in on him though because he was promoting televised fights which were a threat to the mob/IBC monopoly and he was managing fighters. The mob essentially forced him out of the promotional business and stole his fighters. So Jake was never really friendly with them like say Graziano, whose career compared to Jakes was a cakewalk.

 

ya, Folley was totally finished. Machen had been retired five years before his death. But Liston being killed by the mob is still possible, seeing as Sonny still had some left.