Sonny Liston vs these 80s and 90s bruisers

Tua V Liston would be something. Similar to Tua v Ike. I’d favor Liston in all of them but I’d assume he may drop one.

 

There are five genuine World Champs on that list.................

Liston used to be the "Big" guy, size wise he is a small fish here.

Lennox Lewis picked up two KO losses out of the list and needed to come from behind vs Bruno.

Liston aint going thru that list undefeated

 

Yep, he could go undefeated. But won't be a piece of cake.

In any case Tua, Old man Foreman and Bruno give him the hardest time and maybe pull an upset.

 

1: Liston TKO Weaver mid rounds

2: Liston KO Bruno inside 6 rounds

3:Oliver McCall would get maybe SD under 12 rounds

4: Liston KO Rahman mid to late rounds after brutal slugfest

5: Liston vs Tua 50/50, if Liston box like Lewis he would outbox Tua but if he brawled with Tua, he would have a big trouble, I won't bet on this but Liston unlike Ike didn't have that chin and Liston never faced someone like Tua, as strong with good chin

6:Liston KO Ruddock under 4 rounds same way he did Williams

7:Liston KO Morrison, harder fight than Ruddock but ends the same way under 4 rounds

8: he could outbox old Foreman but older Foreman is bigger, heavier than him and could KO him cold so it's 50/50 again.

9:He beats Stewart like a drum until referee stops it in mid rounds

 

Would favor him against every opponent even the goat but as a collective I'll say the group probably gets a win somewhere. They might even get 2.

Thats the answer for a lot of these "ATG vs gauntlet of legends a cut below that" threads. ATGs better than everyone but the level of difficulty is high enough where someones going to probably break through.

 

Sonny's 9-0

 

X2

 

No. If these fights could happen I think SL would lose more than he wins.

 

I take the bruisers

 

Those guys barely even belong in the same conversation as Liston.

 

Liston would probably lose at least one fight. I think what some other posters are saying is that even if Liston is a strong favorite in each fight, mathematically there is a high chance he loses at least one. For example, suppose you give a Liston a 90% chance of winning each fight (that's too high IMO, but let's go with it). The probability of him winning all 9 fights is (0.9)^9 = 0.39 = 39%. So even under this unreasonably optimistic assumption, there's a 61% chance that he loses at least one of these fights.

 

Liston was the bigger, stronger guy almost all of the time when he was fighting. Against these guys he'd be the smaller fighter. He didn't have a lot of speed or movement, fighting people bigger and stronger than him takes away his biggest advantages. Liston fought from a position of being physically superior to his opponents, when he didn't have that (Ali) things weren't the same for him. (Liston also fought another "physical fighter" in Cleveland Williams, but Williams didn't have the fundamental training or amateur experience that Ali had.)

Liston was a good, solid fighter. Arguably a leap forward in heavyweight boxing and beat one of the older style heavyweights impressively twice. But he lost to a bigger, stronger, faster fighter and I suspect that he would have the same problems with the 9 fighters that you listed.