Rate the quality of Sonny Liston's resume

Well. You've pronounced the details of Williams's early career "lost in a murky past", but that doesn't stop you pushing the idea that he had "6 to 7 years" professional experience when he fought Satterfield, which is totally unsupported by any evidence or probability.

There's nothing cloudy about the number of fights in his abortive early career - multiple sources say it was six. I never imagined this would be a point of contention, but I'll post one more article giving his record as 4-1-1.

https://ibb.co/YvCjzRn

It's also not true that "he was training" when he got the call to face Satterfield (the famous sparring session with Bob Baker was months before). He had been out of the gym since knocking out Sylvester Jones two weeks earlier.

 

"6 to 7 years" professional experience when he fought Satterfield, which is totally unsupported by any evidence or probability."

You just posted the evidence in your above article.

"In 1947 an overgrown kid . . . began fighting professionally to support his grandmother."

"It was when he was repeating the seventh grade that Williams decided to quit and start boxing professionally because his family needed the money."

"Cleveland Williams, only 14, weighed 182."

"Williams won four, lost one, and had one draw until Georgia boxing authorities found out he was underage and retired him until 1951."

box rec lists---11-16-1949 Dan Bolston, draw 4

So, off the 1947 and 1949 dates, he was a pro for at least two years before his suspension, resuming his career in 1951. So Williams had been a pro for 7 years although he apparently did not fight in 1950. And it is clear he had at least 40 fights before facing Satterfield.

I stick with murky. A big caveat is if any of this info is accurate. It comes from many years later.
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Baker lost to Moore on March 9, 1954. So the sparring session was before that. Williams knocked out Jones two weeks before the Satterfield bout. The article posted does not provide any info about Williams not training. What is the evidence, and does it only come from Williams?

I must say it is something of a headscratcher why there is so much effort put into writing off the Satterfield defeat. Fighters with better records than Williams lost to Satterfield.

 

They can't write it off no matter how hard they try. Williams badly lost to Satterfield. An ageing LHW coming off two recent defeats. All the noise you're hearing is just a severe case of copage. Williams just wasn't all that.

 

I really love that Liston is going the same way as Marciano with the whacky gymnastics for his C tier resume, poor H2H capacity and overall lack of substance. Marciano may have fought older guys but they were not 20lbs lighter - Liston would be BODIED by basically anyone we think would comedically overwhelm Marciano.

 

I’ve already explained the contradiction in terms and, for some reason, on this occasion, you didn’t quote me in full re those terms.

Claiming a fighter to be both duly experienced BUT also carrying a heavily padded record at a certain stage of his career IS the cut and dried contradiction.

So you’re contending that the barely aged 21 yo, 201 1/2 lb, late sub Williams did not improve after the Satterfield fight - that he was already as good as he ever was going to be - and are you now suggesting he had very good wins on his record going into the Satterfield fight?

As compared to Williams prior comp, - which included 4-5 debutants, even 1-2 of those engaged in the later stages of his then record, Satterfield was a major step up, not an incremental one.

I also believe that, post fight, Satterfield himself cited a greater potential and future for Williams given more more maturity and experience - he could see that but you can’t?

If the Satterfield fight inexplicably reflected Williams’ career ceiling in respect of his capabilities, we would’ve seen Cleve trip and fall in similar fashion far more than he actually did during his career going forward - the only abbreviated KO losses be suffered were against an absolute prone Liston 5-6 years later -

No one is trying to erase the Satterfield KO loss - but there are those who are applying due context in order to analyse and weight that loss accordingly.

A lighter, 21 yo Ali, brought along far more considerately than Williams in terms of incrementally improved opposition and due development, almost met a similar fate vs Cooper in 1963 - no one is pretending that didn’t happen either but they’re also not pretending that the near KO loss defined the prime Ali or the fighter that Ali later became.

Suffice to say, pre title Ali’s team knew to steer clear of the seasoned, rough/tough Chuvalo during his march to the title and not engage the Canadian before Ali had fully ripened.

For another analogy, 23 yo, 5 year pro Jack Johnson was KO’d in < 3 by a beyond prime, virtual SMW in Joe Choysnksi - again, due context has to be applied to view that loss in its rightful perspective.

 

Do you happen to know Leotis Martin’s birth weight? Because, in all fairness, that’s the weight we should be running with, the weight he started out at - his most natural weight.

 

Maybe we should assign weight divisions to newborns:

14 pounds+ = heavyweight
11-14 = cruiser
10-11 light heavy
8-9 middleweight
6-7 welterweight
4-5 lightweight
2-3 preemieweight

I have it on good authority that Leotis Martin weighed 7 pounds 8 ounces at birth. He was a junior middleweight.

 

Love It!

 

Brilliant!

As to Leotis, is that a same day weigh in weight or * 3 days prior with room for rehydration and added lbs/ounces by fight time?

* I’ve never had much respect for baby weight bullies who go off the milk in order to make weight only to fatten up their little bellies immediately afterward.

 

This was reported in the press at the time. Despite putting a brave face on his fighter's chances, Viscusi acknowledged that he'd done no sparring since his previous fight.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-miami-news/70468728/

Have you allowed yourself to consider the possibility that you're not totally unbiased about this, and that the headscratcher is why someone would devote so much time to insisting that Williams was a "mature and experienced fighter" at the age of 20?

Of course, if someone was determined to believe that Williams was easily beatable it's not hard to see why they'd obsess over the Satterfield fight. It's the only time he was ever counted out, the only time in the first 17 years of his career he was stopped by an opponent who was not a prime ATG, and the only time he was ever stopped by an opponent under 210 lbs. It's hard to sustain the myth of his vulnerability if you acknowledge that he was nowhere close to his prime.

 

This newspaper clip is a good find. Fascinating to me.

 

There's no limit to what Solomon Deedes can dig up. He's an absolute beast on this stuff.

 

Did any great HW lost his last fight against journeyman LHW?

I don't think so, especially when that HW is in reality 40 pounds bigger.

We have Joe Louis losing against Ezzard Charles and Dempsey against Tunney, but those two were the greatest LHWs of all time, not joruneymans.

 

Fortunately I've had this argument before, so I already know where to look for a lot of this stuff.