You speak as if Povetkin were a "modern giant", when the truth is that he is the same size as Liston. Plus Liston have a significant reach advantage too. Liston was a freak, freak hands, freak arms. A 185 cm guy with 213cm reach, a freak that would spank 188cm Povetkin all night long until KO.
Povetkin was fighting big men and Liston small men, barring a few. Majority of povetkins opponents were bigger. Povetkins knocked out hard hitting bigger men. Etc liston can be seen as a bully beating up sub 200lbers. Cognitive dissonance is fully on show when you and posters like Noel believe Liston is a h2h monster, when it's been 50 years since he last fought.
Povetkin is 6'2 and 218-225lbs prime fighting men usually 6'3 and 235lbs+ and more. The modern day shws. The SHW limit used to be 6'3+ 230 maybe 240+lbs, it will soon be an average of 6'5+ and 250lbs with alot weighing between 260-280lbs, sorry if the sport has moved on and your cognitive dissonance cant handle that. Liston wasnt a freak physically in modern times, and although he was skilled and powerful, he wasnt like Muhammad Ali or Holmes nor did he have the will of Frazier.
It's not a fair fight. Because At Liston's time, training techniques and boxing coaches' knowledge bases were not as advanced as in Povetkin's time. Thus, Povetkin was trained better in 90s and 2000s.
Liston was built for 15 rounds as it was back then. Boxers have much better cardio training and have run several kilometers a day. Society these days is fatter and unhealthy, that's a fact. Even small children have problems with being extremely overweight. These days when most Heavyweights can barely breathe after 5 rounds, Liston can easily gain 20 pounds today for a total of 240 pounds. I don't know if that's good or bad, but he would just adapt to our times.
So why are athletes across the board beating all records from that era then? From sprinting to jumping to long distance running and marathons, to body fat levels, discus, Javelin … everything under the sun. people of that era thought bruce lee was super ripped, when today you find more ripped guys down the local gym. High school kids are running as fast as olympic athletes back in listons time.
It's really useful to have the internet and streaming to be so easy now. They had TV in Liston's time of course, but they did see a lot less. Just earlier, I saw Taylor use a strategy I would have never thought of, where when Teo turned his back, he stood behind him and landed upper cuts on his face for a minute. Legal shots, that would catch many opponents off guard. I could 100% see it catching on. Povetkin stands on the shoulders of giants, including Liston.
Didn't Wlad gas out in a scheduled 12 rounder? He didn't go a full 12 and damn near passed out. In Liston's time they did 15. I guess it would come down to strategy. If Liston can consistently push Wlad out of his comfort zone and force him to fight at a higher pace consistently Liston has a very good chance of stopping Wlad. If Wlad can use the oh so exciting jab and grab tactic he wins.