Nobody wanted to promote Sonny on a championship card. He smelled like fish after Lewiston. Can we be sure Sonny wanted it with Joe? At that time I doubt it. Liston probably wanted to keep doing what he had been.
Yeah I get that but I also rememberer @klompton2 saying that Sonny (or his people) rejected fights with Jimmy Ellis and Jerry Quarry preferring to select a run of easier fights while he was still something of a draw in Sweden and later when he came back to America with some wins behind him.
This is all fact and all easily verifiable. In fact in one of the Bill Miller instances Liston and Quarry appeared on an exhibition card to benefit Ferd Hernandez and to hype the match Miller was trying to make between the two. After the exhibition Liston backed out of the Quarry fight. Liston wanted no one with a pulse. You saw why when he faced Martin. Martin was the most dangerous guy he faced in his comeback and he damn near got decapitated.
Me and @george went through this a couple weeks ago actually. I would favor him over some though (like Carnera, Hart, Fitz maybe) but I can't do it with any real confidence. He may very well lose to all of them. I think he loses to Dempsey, Sharkey, Baer, Johnson, Marciano, Schmeling, Ali, Louis, Liston, Foreman, Tyson, Frazier, Baer, Holmes, Holyfield, Bowe, Klitschko, Lewis, Jeffries, off the top of my head.
I wouldn't give him edge over Fitzsimmons (very underrated HW, probably due to his lack of size) but I'd pick him to beat Leon Spinks or Shannon Briggs.
I admittedly don't know much about the pre-Dempsey champions. You're probably much more knowledgeable than me in that regard. I'd give him a good chance, against Spinks, Briggs, and Moorer. Who do you think he beats out of all the lineal champions? Is that it or are there more?
I have a theory that all the guys who win a title, always had it in them to win a title. Even if it was just for one fight. It might have took a careers worth of grooming to win it for one fight, but that’s ok. Some champs were not set to dominate. They had a goal to win the title, and with the right preparation they were able to achieve it. Look at all the challenges who almost made it. The ones who gave really good champions unexpectedly hard fights. They almost made it. It dosnt mean they might have made it against a lesser champion, it just shows how good a career best performance can be for one fight. One notch above this you have your one fight champs. These guys were good enough to be champions. I give them credit.
Braddock,Burns, Carnera , Leon Spinks maybe, but not many others,imo . He was in the right place at the right time,and was briefly The Man.
Sounds like a guy who knew he was aging and past his best,and preferred to fight those who were more stylistically suited to him at that late stage of his career. I ain't gonna condemn him for it! Its not like he was 28 and fighting Ron Stander or Terry Daniels!
Seems he had an appetite only for fights he already knew he could win. Like you say, he’d paid his dues by then..but by the same token making a case for Sonny against better fighters during this period doesn’t hold much water if that was his only ambition & attitude back then.
