Ingemar Johansson vs Sonny Liston 1959

Yes using 1 sole opponent for comparison can be misleading, but off the top of my head, Ingo & Liston only had 2 x common opponents to reference. Liston's 3-0 gives a clear indication of superiority over Ingo's 2-2. If you want to stretch the comparisons of their careers beyond their common opponents, lets compare their top 10 wins, in order:

1) SL = Patterson; Ingo = Patterson; Verdict = Draw (I could have been pedantic & gone for Liston as he stopped Patterson earlier, but I won't split hairs);
2) SL = Patterson; Ingo = Machen; verdict = Liston
3) SL = Machen; Ingo = Inexperienced Cooper; Verdict = Liston
4) SL = Folley; Ingo = Erskine; Verdict = Liston
5) SL = Valdes; Ingo = London; Verdict = Liston
6) SL = Williams; Ingo = Bygraves; Verdict = Liston
7) SL = Williams; Ingo = Bygraves; Verdict = Liston
8) SL = DeJohn; Ingo = Neuhaus; Verdict = Liston
9) SL = Harris; Ingo = Cavichhi; Verdict = Liston
10) SL = Wepner; Ingo = Richardson; Verdict = Liston

Total verdict = 9-0-1 Liston (forced to choose a winner for best win, it would be 10-0 to Liston as he was more dominant & KO'd Floyd earlier).

Admittedly I haven't put a great deal of thought into the ordering, simply because it wasn't necessary to demonstrate my point, Liston's record wasn't only superior, it was vastly superior.

 

Excellent post, which decisively demonstrates the superiority in Liston's resume.

One small nitpick, I would substitute Wepner for someone like Bethea, who was the number 8. contender.

 

Cheers & yes, I'd have no problem with Bethea in for Wepner. I'd have probably ordered some of the others differently if I'd applied more thought, but like I said, that greater level of analysis simply wasn't necessary to demonstrate my point.

 

Liston had a deeper resume but your list don't even give Ingo credit for the way he demolished Machen.
You could also look at losses and Ingo wins on that criteria as the only fighter beating him as a pro was an atg whereas Liston lost to lesser opponents.

Ingos win over Cavicchi is probably underrated as he had never been stopped and the fight took place in Bologna. Only way to beat him there was by stoppage.

 

You also rate Folley highly and Cooper is getting a lot of criticism here. At least the version Ingo beat. Note that Cooper beat Folley just one year after Ingo beat Cooper. Perhaps there is some truth to the idea that american heavyweights were overrated / european underrated at the time.

 

I think there really was. In a very short spell, the champion and the highest ranked Americans were all knocked off by Europeans. Brian London beat Pastrano. cooper beat Folley. Ingo beat Machen.

 

I listed Machen as Ingo's 2nd best win. It was up against Patterson as Liston's 2nd best win. Both were by 1st round KO. Patterson was a greater HW than Machen. Therefore, my verdict was that Liston has the better the 2nd best win of the two.

How would you order their respective 10 x best wins & what would be your verdict on which of them had the better of each, 1-10?

 

Should Ingo get some kudos for beating the first time around version of Patterson? Ingo was the first to beat quite a dominant champion.

By the time Liston got to Floyd, he’d been knocked out before. Patterson had been through that three year series had the weight of decent America on his shoulders too. Patterson was under pressure from all kinds of groups not to defend against Liston who sections of the public argued Sonny was not a good enough moral example. Floyd was having to defend his decision to meet Sonny regardless of his background. Let’s not forget, by then Floyd had a disturbing habit of turning up to fights with a disguise in his kit bag to put on in case he lost.

Imagine packing that lot? Gum sheild. Hand wraps. Gown. Shorts. Boots. Wig. Pipe. Hat. Fake moustache. Trench coat.

 

Oh yeah I forgot, the 27 year old Patterson was a shell of himself, but the 33 year old Williams who faced Ali with a bullet in him was as good as ever, and the 39 year old Liston who fought Martin wasn't "much past it". Never change Chok

 

Liston was probably past prime by the time of the Patterson fights. Any reasonable comparison of how Ingo and Liston fared against Patterson, favours Sonny by a substantial margin.

Do you care to list their respective 10 wins and call which was the better of each, as I did a few posts ago?

 

It's not the fights by themselves that I say is off but rather the scoring system.
No doubt the result against Floyd was clearly superior for Liston. As for the other guys on Liston's record, I think Johansson is better than all of them and would favour him the beat them also. The only other boxer they had in common is Machen. That fight should really silent a lot of critics as nobody else ever put him away in the same manner. He was undefeated and ranked no.1 at the time.

The way Ingo is written off by some posters in this thread is really hard to comprehend. Given his consistency and that he only lost to another champ shows that he is not one of those fighters who was gifted a shot at the title and then landed a lucky shot. His record was not padded by any means. As I've already mentioned, he never fought a fighter with a losing record. He beat everyone there was to beat in Europe and became European champion in his 15th fight. After that he fought the no.1 contender followed by the champ. Knocked out both in a total of 4 rounds.

There was nothing more he could have done up to that point and his rise was extremely impressive. That fighter would not have been an easy fight for Liston and if someone could have beaten Liston in those years, it would have been Ingo.

 

The scoring system of comparing their respective 10 best wins? Seems a reasonable barometer as to how they rank relative to one another to me. Though I agree its way off, if you want to argue Ingo as anything but clearly inferior to Liston.

Ranking Ingo ahead of all of Liston's wins apart from Patterson is reasonable. Arguing Ingo as in any way better, equal or even very close to Sonny, is not.

 

Had they fought and Ingo would have won, you could easily argue that Ingo had the better career / was the better boxer. As it stands now, yes Liston is ranked ahead.

 

That's your weakest response yet. You could argue all sorts of things if you factor in imaginary results of fights that didn't happen.

 

Williams is not relevant in this thread