Cleveland Williams is nowhere near even Ingemar Johansson in any OBJECTIVE metric.

Lots of points, even!

 

Your correct though with Liston he aged in dog years. Just his lifestyle alone. Self abuse worse than even the best lefthooks.

 

Another lie. He'd been through wars or taken quite a bit of punishment by very hard punchers such as Williams, Valdez, and Dejohn.

So aging isn't a process that naturally erodes skills, speed, conditioning, durability, resistance and literally everything in the fight game? Liston was at the earliest in his late 30s and likely in his 40s, not to mention he had a massive decline in lifestyle. The drugs, booze, etc all took their toll on him. Also, you're acting like he didn't get hit ONCE in any other fight besides Martin and Ali. Call me crazy, I am starting to doubt you were actually a professional boxer or closely involved in the game as you claimed.

Just because these men weren't good enough to KO Johnson like Williams did, let alone in the first round, and had to go the distance with him doesn't mean anything.

 

He had never been stopped by anyone before Williams and withstood punches and came back victorious against a Nino Valdez who later in his career by your own admission, punched hard enough to shut Liston's eye. So which one is it? Was Nino hopelessly shot when he lost to a fighter who was ko'd by Williams in the first round, or should we bow to Valdez's later performance against Liston when he shut his eye?

I'm seeing a bit of a double standard here. You previously claimed that Dejohn in blowing out Miteff in one round, showed more power than Williams' ever did yet neglected to mention it was his 13th fight and had just turned pro in the last year! But when a fully matured and still relatively young in his mid 20s Miteff is knocked out by Williams, he's "shopworn."

I mentioned Betha as a common opponent of Williams and Valdez in response to a poster who claimed Williams' and Valdez were on the same level, this discussion was not an evaluation of punching power.

So let me get this straight; it's OK for you, and Choklab, among numerous others to mention Williams' performances when he was in his mid to late 30s with a bullet in him in your statistical comparisons between Williams and Valdez, but it's blasphemy for me to bring up Miteff and Johnson who were in their mid 20s? This is a double standard of breath-taking proportions!

 

Yes I agree Liston was old. I never said he was just as good as his prime. He couldn’t possibly have been. A prime Liston would have stopped Wepner much earlier. But he was a good fighter even at the very end. He had to be. The guy was a machine. An impressive looking athlete in spite of his lifestyle which would have also took some effect.

 

Sonny had the wear and tear of a winning fighter though. It’s different to the hammering a guy losing so often gets.

yes I agree with you. Sonny did decline. But not in relation to or in the extent of Alonzo Johnson, Liston was never on skid row as a fighter.

no, only in relation to a guy losing nine fights in three years.

it is conceivable Alonzo would have had the resistance punched out of him losing that many times against so many top fighters. It’s not healthy. Plinklon Thomas was stopped in one round by Tommy Morrison. And the result is always taken into the context Because people are aware of The fights Pink lost before this.

By comparison Sonny was just older. Getting to become too old for that level. He Was winning fights but had become ripe for a contender despite the wins. Even though There were few signs in his boxing performances he was at that point where you get old overnight.

Alonzo was a ruined prospect. A guy losing too often ...and at the elite level.

 

Well, exactly. The only way to make it work is by pretending Williams was in his prime when he fought Muhammad Ali.

I think you may have just put your finger on the reason why Klompton has spent the last several days doggedly refusing to defend his own statement.

 

He was good enough to have been given a title fight.

Williams went through a horrific ordeal being shot by that policeman. I’ve seen the photographs. He lost a lot of weight and no doubt about it, life changing for a normal person. But Williams was not normal was he? Williams was a superb athlete. And he made a full recovery. It was miraculous. His comeback win over Tod Herring was as good on paper as anything coming before.

What I want to know is how different the result against Ali might have been without Williams taking that bullet? To me, all the evidence points to the same thing, or something rather similar happening against Ali without the shooting.

 

lol

 

Jack Johnson,JimCorbett,BennyLeonard.

 

They all broke their nose too. There’s a thousand types of broken nose. You don’t have to be disfigured to have had a broken nose.

 

Are you saying Williams was never good enough to fight for the title in the first place? Or are you saying it was such common knowledge Williams should not have been in the ring hardly anybody would have wanted to see the fight?

There were 35,460 fans at the Astrodome, which was the largest crowd ever to see an indoor boxing match at that time.

If all those people thought he had no chance seems like a rather lot of them came to see the slaughter.

 

A lot of points here, but you are debating positions I don't hold. I think you are confusing me with other posters in some cases.

Alonzo Johnson "had never been stopped by anyone before Williams"

And if you look at my post, I said that was impressive. But I'm comparing Williams to Valdes. Heinz Neuhaus, Hurricane Jackson, Joe Erskine, and Pat McMurtry, (off the top of my head) hadn't been stopped in their careers until they were stopped by Valdes, and I think all were rated in the top ten at the time, not on losing streaks. So Valdes is much more impressive on this basis.

"You previously claimed DeJohn in blowing out Miteff in one round, showed more power than Williams ever did"

I don't think I ever posted that. You are confusing me with someone else. On Miteff, though, he had been rated for several months by the NBA before he fought DeJohn. Miteff was a veteran of 140 amateur fights and going into the DeJohn fight had already defeated Archie McBride, Willi Besmanoff, Julio Mederos, and John Holman. Miteff was rated in the top ten when DeJohn flattened him in a minute. I guess everyone can draw their own conclusion on whether DeJohn's victory was the more impressive or not.

"It's OK for you, and Choklab, among numerous others" to mention his post shooting career."

No. I am not doing that. Such a physical trauma undoubtedly left Williams a lesser fighter. That is why when I compared him with Valdes, after comparing their total careers, I compared exclusively Williams pre-shooting to Valdes. It complicates things, though, as we are comparing Valdes rise and decline only to Williams' rise. But I think this the only fair way to do it.

"Bethea"

Hard to see what Bethea proves one way or another as both Williams and Valdes outpointed him and neither KO'd him. Valdes did fight Bethea when he was younger and I think rated. Williams later after Bethea had fallen out of the top ten.

"The Nova comparison"

My point with Nova was only that Savold KO'ing Nova twice while Baer was unable to stop Nova, and ended up losing to him twice, does not to me prove Savold is a bigger puncher than Baer. It also doesn't prove Baer was washed up. Between the two fights with Nova he KO'd Galento and Comiskey. Valdes obviously was not washed up in 1959 either as he beat Brian London later. My point is just that Nova and Alonzo Johnson went back before fighting Savold and Williams. That seems the obvious explanation, and was in response to the argument that Williams KO's of Johnson and Miteff clearly show he was a superior puncher to Valdes.

Anyway, so far a nice debate.

 

lol

 

No they didn't, look it up.