Thoughts On Sonny Liston - Over rated Or Not??

Yes and no. Among casual fans, he is often severely underrated, if not forgotten.

Among people who are more serious about studying the sport, he can be overrated. I hear many claims he would KO peak Louis, Tyson, Holmes, Lewis, etc
Liston had a great grasp of fundamentals, a world-class jab, and great power. However, he was flatfooted, lacked much body or head movement, largely beat people noticeably smaller than himself, and above all, lacked willpower under pressure and often quit when it started getting tough. As good as he was, he does not fit with the top all-time greatest boxers.

 

You've obviously not watched much of Liston i you think he lacked head movement, and willpower under pressure. Ironically you sound like the casual fans you're criticizing for severely underrating him.

 

I think Lewis is a wild card, if he takes the fight absolutely seriously he could stop even prime Liston. But he'd have to be Rahman II level prepared, otherwise he gets snuffed. Bad.

 

Sonny Liston in my opinion was not underrated as many people make him out to be. He is found in every heavyweight all time rankings and is placed literally above guys like Lewis, Holyfield, Foreman, Holmes and Frazier. But what has he ever achieved that is superior than the achievements of the mentioned fighters to place him higher than them ?

His resume is filled mostly with cans and undersized heavyweights and his two best wins are against an overrated Cleveland Williams and the 189lbs LHW Floyd Patterson. Williams had an awful record that included crushing cans and folding to a journeyman Bob Satterfield. Floyd Patterson was literally a light heavyweight. And Liston also lost to journeyman Marty Marshall.

Liston reigned over a very weak division and his dominance of this weak division is blown out of proportion. The fighters of that time were the same size as Chris Byrd or even smaller, and the only big men he faced was the no name Wayne Bethea and the journeyman Chuck Wepner (who were both around 220lbs !).
In every hypothetical matchup against him I see that most people just bring up his reach and say "Liston longer reach so he wins by KO under 6". Some guy also mentioned in a discussion that George Foreman is a poor man's Sonny Liston.

However I will admit one thing that he was one of the most avoided fighters of all time as he was avoided by most of the fighters of that weak division like the plague.

 

Who'd you pay to write this for you clown? You don't have half the intelligence to type anything resembling coherency.

 

Nothing but insults when you are losing a debate.
Is that the best you can?

I quoted one man, but I'm inteligent enough to spread those straight facts without quoting someone.
I did so many debates without quoting anyone except you to show your stupidity over the years on this forum.

 

Liston did prevail over some smaller opposition - that’s merely happenstance. He also prevailed over well sized opposition - that’s often ignored.

I rate Liston’s chances fairly against the more mod., supersized HWs.

I guess you could “overrate” Sonny (in the manner that some do with Mike Tyson imo) perhaps if you were completely resolute and totally emphatic about his chances and his ability to comprehensively KO much bigger opposition - whose superior size, like it or not, could make the task a bit more difficult.

The size transcendent beauty of Liston is that he held several important (certainly in boxing) disproportionate features, physically and in terms of power to body weight ratio. At best, he was also extremely durable - vs big and small.

And Sonny wasn’t just about terrific power - power that would still stand him in good stead against today’s SHWs…he was also a terrific boxer, well above the skills I’ve seen displayed by HWs today.

So, the total package that was Liston would compete very well today, imo.

 

I think Liston had to play/live life against those be that in society, boxing or those in the mob who all had "stacked the deck" against him.

Now i could be guilty of getting enveloped in the mystery of Liston and his life, but i rate him higher than some others do, he was hardly given opportunity to compete on a even playing field, so i wonder if we were given chance to see the best of Sonny.

Liston was a man of few words, even his gravestone epitaph is succinct:

"A Man"

 

Liston is both over rated and under rated at the same time. He really didn't beat many ring magazine raked opponents when he fight them. ( my gold standard which applies to all form 1922-presnet ) But he certainly crushed the few he fought and other tier two ranked men. Sonny had the misfortune of fighting Ali the first time ( my scoring 3-2-1 for Ali ) and the judges scored it:

• Referee: [url]Barney Felix[/url] 57-57
• Judge: [url]Gus Jacobson[/url] 56-59
• Judge: [url]Bunny Lovett[/url] 58-56

Yes, Ali was behind one official card and even on another card which is seldom mentioned before Sonny for some reason quit! Ali moved and boxing beautifully on that night. IMO one of his top three performances. If not for Ali, he reigned longer as in years, I say at least until 1967. So allow me to fence sit in the middle of the debate until someone comes up with a better information.

 

The power of Sonny Liston lives on, I can attest to that. Ha Ha.

 

So true Mendoza, if not for Muhammad Ali, who is a big threat for champion Sonny Liston in 1964? Eddie Machen again? or Ernie Terrell?, Liston used to say he did not like Terrell's style of mauling and grabbing.

 

Liston was not and easy fighter to clinch due to his psychical strength. Not sure if anyone did it effectively in his prime and I doubt Terrell could do it! One of my favorite audios is " Westpahl is trying to tie Sonny up. Liston will have none if it. "! A good defensive ranked fighter fighter in Eddie Mahen tried his best to slow Sonny down. Liston delivered two mean low blows and lost 2 points for the effort. Almost DQ'd he won the fight easily.

 

The fact is, if a fight wasn't going his way, he often lost motivation (Ali 1&2). He lacked much body movement, he had "some" head movement sure, but was easy to hit from someone who knew how to get past his jab. Again, he was slow, not hard to hit, and while dominated his era, he was never tested against anyone at his level except the smaller glass chinned Patterson until he was inactive against Ali. I'll say this, for a guy of his age he really dominated and was a killer, had he not been a criminal, started boxing younger he may well have ended up as a top 3, or who knows even higher. Again, Liston was great, but I see no reason why he should be on a top 10 ATG list.

 

When your best win is probably Patterson or Folley? And people rate you like the second coming of Joe Louis your overrated. He’s got a just as shallow a resume as Bowe really, just that Bowe fought someone who was as good as he was and won.

 

He started boxing as a young teenager, young as many guys but left after being exposed to sparring too soon. To quote him “it was different when I came back at 200lbs” lol.