Sonny Liston's standing as an ATG if he got his title shot earlier?

Yes Sonny lost his ranking over it. But he was later reinstated after a campaign to show he had turned over another new leaf.

 

@SolomonDeedes

Are you able to check the highlighted mate? Perhaps we've had it before. I believe when Bethea lost a split decision to Valdez they were ranked something like #6 and #8.

You are still shocking when it comes to the likes of Liston chok, after all these years. A disgrace really

At the end of 57 Patterson defended against Pete Rademacher who was having his professional debut yet you harp on about Sonny not being able to have a title shot before 1960!!!!! Game up!

Stop the rot.

 

the Radmacher fight was taken as an extra fight off the back of the defence against the number one contender. Floyd didn’t even break camp, it was one training camp for two fights to accommodate the Olympic gold medalist. Hurricane Jackson was his number one challenger. Floyd took on the gold medalist 24 days later as a kind of gimmick.

Outside of those circumstances I don’t think the Radmacher fight could ever have happened.

it certainly did not happen at the expense of Sonny Liston or any other leading contender since Jackson was seen as the only threat to Patterson at that time.

 

Ah, but Machen was actually throwing shots and forcing the action from opening bell.

At the very least, I would say Machen was that much more wary of Liston and accented on evasion than he was vs Ingo. He certainly wasn’t boxing as if concerned by the potential of Ingo’s counter right.

And even after the Machen fight Ingo was still somehow somewhat underestimated I believe when it came time to fight Patterson.

 

I mean the main criticism against liston was that he only defended once against patterson the got immediately upset by young Ali.

I imagine if he has 5 or 6 defenses under his belt he'd move up in hw champ rankings for a lot of people regardless of who the defenses were against.

 

That is incorrect. In April 1958 #6 was Ingo and #8 was some guy called Cleveland Williams.

 

Don’t forget They say Folley put up more of a fight against Liston than Williams did!

I mean “they” are Chok’s imaginary friends but it still counts right?

 

Yes he did. He only received a broken nose, was staggered multiple times and nearly knocked out by his own admission.

Other than that, it was a walk in the park.

 

Depends whose ratings we're talking about. As you say, Bethea's last fight before meeting Liston was a split decision loss to Nino Valdes. At that point Valdes was ranked 10th by both the Ring and the NBA. Bethea was ranked 7th by the Ring but unranked by the NBA.

The loss, close as it was, pushed Bethea down to 10th while boosting Valdes to 6th. By the time he fought Liston four months later, Bethea had slipped out of the top 10.

So Chok's essentially right (I know, I'm shocked too). Liston hit the Ring top 10 in May 1958 after beating Julio Mederos, and the NBA top 10 three months later after beating Bethea. But his first win against a currently ranked contender was Mike DeJohn (#9 NBA, #10 Ring) in February 1959.

The reality of course is that Liston was convincingly beating every man put in front of him and very obviously ready for a higher class of opponent. As Cus d'Amato remarked, "He was too good for Mederos. Why didn't they stick him in with someone better?"

https://ibb.co/YTSvRy5

 

I rest my case.


So do you think it would have been possible for Sonny to get better fights than he was getting during the 1958 relaunch of his career?

I think Sonny was doing very well indeed. He needed those fights after his incarceration. He wouldn’t have been ready for a title shot earlier than the time Patterson fought Ingo. He needed building up.

1958-59 Sonny wasn’t yet viable as a challenger even if he was looking magnificent on the way. He certainly looked like a future champion but he was really 8 fights into a comeback.

 

Nailed it.

 

Floyd was not a great boxer?
Won Olympic gold medal
was the youngest heavyweight champion in history
First man to regain the heavyweight championship, when there was only one
wins over:
2 over Ingo
Henry Cooper
Archie Moore
Machen
Chuvalo
Oscar Bonavena , Floyd was almost 38
A draw and disputed loss to Quarry
went 12 with a prime 1965 Ali
Factually speaking, Patterson is one of the best "boxers" to hold the heavyweight title

 

Nobody can now understand just how mind blowing that was.

Titles had been regained in other divisions, but not the heavyweight division. Once the HW champ lost his title that was it. They never came back.

Winning it back was unheard of. It was like the holy grail.

in the decades since the magnitude of regaining the real heavyweight title has eroded to the point that nobody can really sense the magnitude of what Patterson did.

He won it back. And he did it by knockout.

 

Context is important.

 

Thanks for the info buddy.