Did Liston Get Exposed By Ali

Peak motivated Sonny would’ve been the biggest challenge Ali ever faced outside Frazier. I think he would have met that challenge. I think he was the superior fighter to Sonny. I got a little overheated along those lines in debate but I stand by that. But peak motivated Sonny was utterly great and it’s not a cult to believe that.

 

The scheduled rematch may have gone into the 9th round, Liston because of his age and the younger fighters stamina and speed gets stopped while on his feet, defenseless. Remember the footwork that Muhammad Ali had at his disposal was peak Ali, he did not stand still, no laying on the ropes as he did against Frazier in March 1971 with only 18 rounds in 43 months of combat. I do agree that Liston would have made a greater effort in this fight but again his age catches up with him after a more gallant effort.

 

It's almost a cliche that styles make fights but cliches are wisdom that have withstood the test of time. Nobody is arguing Liston isn't a bubble top ten ATG but Ali was all wrong for him.

 

Joe Frazier and Ken Norton would always be any iteration of Ali's hardest outs. That being said pre-exile Ali would have an easier go of it with Norton because he didn't apply as much pressure.

 

Yeah because pre exile Muhammad Ali had the legs and stamina plus his impeccable timing would have enabled Ali to avoid getting tagged by Norton and Frazier, it sometimes is easy to confuse the 1970's much too vulnerable stamina less Ali with the peak Ali of 1967 who possessed all of his physical gifts.

 

It’s interesting to consider that until he met Ali, we never saw Liston get hit as much as that. For all that could be because Sonny was better than this when he was younger, it still remains that Ali was his best opponent and Liston was having to deal with a new experience here. He’s getting out landed for the first time. Nobody is quite so good as they can be when they are getting hit quite so much.

 

Good post Chok.

 

Great post, Chok. Nothing could have prepared him. If you went into a lab with a pencil and pad Muhammad Ali was the boxer you would invent to whup him.

 

Is Liston the only big puncher in history who gets to use the fact that he knocked guys out quickly as excuse of ‘inactivity’?

I never see that brought up with Foreman or Tyson or any great lower-weight puncher.

Patterson fought on almost the exact same schedule from Liston I to how things played out the next couple of years and it didn’t seem to take him off his game … and he was the guy getting knocked out twice in one round rather than the guy who won by KO.

Liston got in six rounds vs. Ali the first time and it didn’t seem to help him in the rematch. Yet by this theory it should have knocked off some rust.

And beating Patterson twice in one round saved him any wear and tear — if he’d been in two protracted wars leading into Ali and lost the same way, the excuse-makers would no doubt be telling us how going those tough rounds had taken something out of him.

There’s a lot of strangeness in current assessments of Sonny that seem to only apply to him — being a KO machine suffering because he knocked people out quickly is usually considered to be good, but in Sonny’s case it’s inactivity; a fight being delayed (by a mere six months) only gives a fighter more time to train and be sharper … yet with Sonny he apparently aged 10 years in those six months according to some (he’s already in shape, so all he has to do is maintain it); a fighter coming off a surgery and fighting six months later would seem to be at a disadvantage, but in Sonny’s case Ali’s hernia gave him an advantage? — we could go on and on.

It’s all geared to retrofit facts to fit them into a narrative — the ‘best’ Sonny Liston, his supporters say, would have showed better against Ali (win or lose) so therefore something must have been wrong … he was 58 years old, he had barely put on a glove in the last four years, he had to work hard in training (people have literally cited in this thread that the postponement made him work hard in a ‘poor Sonny’ way … aren’t you supposed to work hard to become heavyweight champ … do you think Ali didn’t work hard?). It’s borderline preposterous.

 

The argument that he was a fighter in decline when his last two fights resulted in the annihilation of a bubble top fifteen hw atg never made a lot of sense to me.

 

Sonny cleaned out an era of fighters ... Valez, Williams, Foley, Machen, Patterson .. he would have fought Ingo and destroyed him too but Ingo was too smart to fight him .. Liston's credentials are pretty solid ..

 

If I could creature a fighter to whip Ali, it would be Marciano with the speed of Dempsey and the combo punching power of Louis.