Sonny Listons resume? Who couldn’t repeat his run?

Mate,honestly.......Sonny Liston has been hailed by renowned experts such as Emanuel Steward,Eddie Futch,
Herbert Goldman, and Hank Kaplan as one one of the top 10 or 5 greatest heavyweights in history.
Oh hang on,what's the name of that other bloke who absolutely rated Sonny Liston as an ATG ? Ah yes,Muhammad Ali.
I know all this makes you very unhappy but try to deal with it.

 

Assuming you're asking who could repeat the manner and/or dominance of victory, I'm not sure I'd favour anyone in history to KO1 Patterson 2 out of 2. Clearly Foreman, Tyson and a few others would be favoured to score early KO's and two first round stoppages would be possible, but that's about it.

It wasn't just who he beat, but up until Ali, Liston had been utterly dominant against a decent proportion of the world's best HWs. I always find it impressive when a fighter distances themselves to such an extent from a group of world class fighters with a wide range of styles.

 

Understood and admittedly a list of HWs favoured to beat all the fighters Liston beat, would be longer than the list of HWs who should be favoured to beat them as decisively as Sonny did.

There are still too many HW champions and contenders in history that I wouidnt favour to match all of Sonny's wins under the same circumstances, including ruleset and conditions, for me to be prepared to consider and then list them all. Liston had a fine resume, even discounting the utter dominance of his peak wins.

 

Off the top of my head, Old Foreman, Tommy Morrsion, Ray Mercer, Norton, Hasim Rahman, Andy Ruiz, and Lamon Brewster would be likely to screw up somewhere along the way. 70s Foreman also might gas out against one of those guys.

Dempsey, Jack Johnson, Schmeling etc, also probably screw it up.

 

Oh dear,still not dealing with it are you ?
Ok,let's put it this way---Sonny Liston could only beat the opposition that was around at the time,and he did so
in a way that had so many observers comparing him to the immortal Joe Louis.In other words like Joe Louis
himself,and Rocky Marciano, it was the way he defeated his opponents that marked his greatness.

 

Excellent summary Greg.

 

Agree n everything except...Norton was def not bigger than liston. ken was taller and had a smaller frame, more jacked (probably because he did alot of bodybuilding stuff I heard that he even owned a chain of gyms)

 

Greg - Excellent highlighting of an important qualification - manner of victory.

Interesting that the “how” component is not part of the analogical equation. Maybe I’m too much of an hysterical heretic.

So I guess, given the same treatment, if we asked who could repeat Mike Tyson’s victory over Spinks? - all that is required at the least is a “W” and voila, the nominated fighter is on par with Iron Mike as associated with that particular victory.

Pickle me Grandmother. It’s enough to make a man want to keep walking until he falls off the edge of this flat Earth.

 

I wouldn’t say Norton never touched a weight in his life - I mean we all have in some way shape or form - but how much weight work warrants a reasonably understood “yes” answer to the question: “Do you or did you lift?”.

Just my opinion, but Norton didn’t look like he lifted in any significant way if at all. Williams, who I believe was more or less natural also, was also bigger than Norton.

Sure, through time Liston’s relative size has been diminished - but its amazing that he held several stats that are still comparable to some of todays top end sized SHWs -

 

True, that qualifies as “lifting”.

I like the old push mower training - as we saw Dempsey etc. utilising in the old films - probably only practised for the duration of filming. I actually mowed a medium sized backyard with one of those - quite the workout tbh.

 

Before him, only Joe Louis could go through that line-up. After Sonny, there are more, but the division changed, in part due to the impact of Liston himself, a real athlete competing in the ranks.