Did Liston Get Exposed By Ali

Yeah mate type the word as is and let the filters do their work. Just edit your post. Best if Rich deletes the part of his post where he quoted you too as obviously that is visible as well.

 

Bob Mee. Nick Tosches’ book is a good read but it’s not a conventional biography and has much speculation although it’s well sourced, plus his hipster prose style can get old. He probably wrote the definitive Dean Martin biography that is also quite well sourced but it suffers from the same issues.

 

Thanks mate i appreciate it.

 

I agree with that and I don’t think it denigrates Liston’s status as an ATG at all, just like Frazier and Foreman.

 

Quite honestly, I don’t think the definitive Sonny Liston biography has been written and I don’t know that it can be written at this point.

 

Yeah there's too much unknown for anything too definitive.

 

A real naughty naughty man. The naughtiest man in boxing....EVA!

 

No, he was a pariah. He had to start over in Sweden and didn’t fight in the U.S. for like three years after the second Ali fight. Boxing people (including fans) would have been happy if he had just gone away after Lewiston.

He was seen as a guy who gave away the heavyweight championship of the world sitting on a stool when he clearly could have continued (shoulder or no shoulder, it’s not like he couldn’t lift his arm — look at the last round of the first fight) and lost the rematch under what were considered suspicious circumstances.

Hell if he had just given his all and tried hard and got outclassed he could have worked his way back into the picture … nobody had a crystal ball to know Ali would be a top guy for so long, much less that he would be stripped of his title for refusing induction in the U.S. Army draft. Sonny could have positioned himself well to be the guy who had the best chance to knock off a rising Joe Frazier, but the cloud over him made it OK for Frazier to ignore him.

After he died and years passed, a new generation of fans came along and revived his legacy. The cloud no longer was hanging over him. And maybe some older softies decided to forgive, forget or both.

It’s the same (in a different way) with Jake LaMotta. He was a guy who threw a fight. That’s disgraceful. But Scorsese made a movie about him and a new generation made it like tanking to Billy Fox was a badge of freaking honor.

SMFH.

 

Infatuations are, by definition, short lived. I've kneeled at the altar of Reverend Charles "Sonny" Liston for as long as I can remember. Why? Because, in all objectivity, he was a great fighter. No excuses, but there were extenuating circumstances involved in both Ali fights, not least being that my man Charles was 137 years old by the time of the first Ali fight.