Rate the quality of Sonny Liston's resume

So your claim to have posted an article where Martin's manager said that he had eye problems before the Liston fight was untrue. You have no source, just internet chatter.

I'm only surprised you haven't brought up Russell Peltz yet.

 

He also said the scorecards of Martin v Bonavena prove Bonavena outboxed Martin,yet he hasn't seen either the fight or the scorecards!

 

I will find two more articles where close people to Martin said that it happened in the Newton fight.
But since you can't accept the truth, nothing is enough for you, dear Solomon Deedes.

 

Leotis Martin and Oscar Bonavena fought once, with Bonavena winning by decision in a 10-round bout in Buenos Aires. The fight took place in September 1968. The judges awarded Bonavena the win with scores of 238-229, 238-230, and 237-232.

Isn't that outboxing someone by winning on scorecards?

 

You wouldn't recognize the truth if you fell over it!

 

The amateur records on Boxrec tend to be a bit patchy. As a 15 year old middleweight, Terrell won the Chicago Golden Gloves novice division back in February 1955.

 

You can win fights by outpunching some one as Frazier did v Ali 1

 

"He was absolutely a top contender"

I disagree. He was a decent second-tier contender. Definitely above a fringe contender or a trial horse. Whom do you rate as his peers?

How does he compare with George Chuvalo or Bob Cleroux, two other decent contenders who were not top notch contenders and lost to the best? I would say on the same level. All got into the top five. All had good if somewhat padded won-lost records. I judge both Chuvalo and Cleroux beat better men at the time they beat them. Chuvalo and Harris for Cleroux. Jones and Quarry for Chuvalo. And both beat a post-shooting Williams. There is no good reason to consider the Williams of history a better contender.

"Daniels" "Miteff" "Holman"

Holman had lost 5 of 6. Miteff 3 of 4. They were losing to good men but they were losing. Holman retired after Williams. Miteff was stopped in his next fight by Cleroux. Daniels was the best of these--18-1--when Williams beat him the first time. He was rated #6. This is Williams best win. My take is this is a worthy win, but Daniels then went on a 2-14-1 slide and ended up 23-21-5. Not much to build a "absolutely top contender" status on.

 

Okay. But it also follows that Williams" amateur record might be missing. He had a few preliminary pro fights in 1949. Did he just then take off two years, or did he go back to amateur or "smoker" bouts? No way of knowing in the segregated old South.

Also, I don't agree with equating amateur experience in those days with pro experience. It was not like now.

 

When you win against someone in boxing, that means you won by scoring points over him, slugging, punching from distance or etc, but when you outbox someone, that means that you won on scorecards.

Liston was outboxing Martin, and Walcott was outboxing Marciano, yes they outpunched them too, but still they outboxed them.


So, does outslugging/outpunching = outboxing?

✅ If you beat him with cleaner punches, better accuracy, better control of exchanges, and smarter aggression, then yes, you could say you "outboxed" him even if it was a war.

❌ If you just swung harder, took more punishment but landed more shots through brute force, you didn’t really "outbox" him—you just outfought him or outslugged him.

 

Well, not according to Williams himself. As he told it, when it was discovered that he was too young to be starting a pro career, "I had to stop boxing." He then started up again after turning 18.

https://ibb.co/dsJtq3py

 

Thanks for this very revealing article. What it says is most interesting.

"Williams fought his first professional fight as a 14 year old in Griffin, Georgia."

Wikipedia has Williams born on June 30, 1933. His grave gives his birthday as June 6, 1933. Either way he turned 15 in June of 1948.

Here is Box recs record of his early bouts:

3-25-1949 Al Williams KO 2
6-30-1949 Philip Nelson KO 3
11-16-1949 Dan Bolston Draw 4

Okay. This record indicates his first fight was against Al Williams when he was 15, three months short of 16. Cleveland Williams said his first fight was a 2 round KO of Nelson at 14.

"Williams fought six fights before he was 17. He won 14, drew one, and lost one."

??? The plot thickens. So he had six fights before June of 1950. Where do the 16 fights come from? Apparently he was still fighting after his 17th birthday.

"After the last one, I got a cut on the lip from where the guy butted me. I went to the doctor. He found out I had been cut. He told the people so I had to stop boxing."

The reason given by Williams is not his age, but his cut. So when did this "last fight" happen. It seems probably in 1951. Just drawing a reasonable conclusion.

"Williams resumed fighting at 18."

But box rec indicates six months after his birthday that June. 12-11-1951 Lee Hunt KO 2

So what conclusion do I draw if the information in this article is correct--Williams had 13 extra fights which do not appear on his record. Not at all implausible for an African-American fighting in smaller southern towns in the segregation era. He probably began his career in 1948, not 1949, and fought more or less straight through except for allowing a cut to heal in 1951. He had 50 professional fights under his belt when he faced Satterfield. But against nondescript opposition.

Thanks for posting this very informative article. It raises a lot of questions, with the caveat that if this information is indeed correct.

And there is this interesting bit:

"I found out I could punch back in 1952. Bob Baker was training in Miami for Archie Moore. I went in against Baker and knocked him so cold they could have counted to 30."

Talk about tooting you own horn. If this happened in an official fight, it would have been his most impressive KO by far.

 

It says he had six fights, then claims a record of 14-1-1, which would obviously be difficult after only six fights. I'm going to go ahead and say that the 14 is a typo and it's supposed to be 4-1-1, which is what Boxrec indicates in its note under his first fight of 1951.

Other sources from around the same time also specify just six fights before being forced to quit because he was underage.

https://ibb.co/PGqVWXrz

 

"I'm going to go ahead and say that the 14 is a typo"

Your privilege. But it is equally possible the "six" is the typo, and should have been sixteen, or both are correct but referring to different times.

If we accept the six, he would have had 40 fights going into the Satterfield fight, with a record of 37-2-1

The bottom line for me is that this is clouded information, jumping all over the place on age and dates and number of fights.

We should be cautious drawing any conclusions from all this except that Williams had been fighting long enough to have had about 40 pro fights

and claims to have KO'd Baker in training before the Satterfield fight.

I don't accept that he was all that inexperienced.

*Even accepting the six, Williams would have had more pro rounds than Terrell had when he lost to Williams.

**And other sources don't mean all that much because no one has definitive info to quote from. Welcome to history. Much of the past is just lost into an unknown past.

 

It's not like Williams was an outright novice when he fought Satterfield, but two and a half years as a professional (plus however long it took him to rack up six bouts in his mid-teens) isn't enough to become a veteran even if you do fight frequently enough that your actual number of bouts looks quite respectable. Specially not when you don't even have the foundation of an amateur career to build on. Add the fact that he was just 20 years old, around 10-15 pounds lighter than he was as a contender, and took the fight on two days' notice, and it's not unreasonable to think that Satterfield wasn't facing such a tough proposition as Liston did 5/6 years later.