Would anyone pick Wilder to beat Liston??

He would have the advantage in height,I don't think the weight disparity would be meaningful.

 

Tempted to say Liston since it's the popular opinion, but Wilder is bigger than Liston as far as height and reach and they are actually pretty close in weight, Wilder may edge him there. Wilder was about 215-220 I believe. Prime Liston was 208-215ish. Liston is more skilled and hits hard enough, I believe, to hurt Wilder. But Wilder hits hard enough to hurt Liston. Liston took Williams power pretty good, but I don’t know how hard Williams hit compared to Wilder.

 

Ignore the haters, honestly this is the truth Liston outweighed his best opponents by 20lbs and one of them with one arm took him the distance… today if Wilder vs Machen was being made we’d never stop criticising DW as a fraud.

 

Probably not no. Wilder’s weight fluctuated from about 212 to 230. Man was all muscle though

 

Liston was “overweight” looking, big past his frame and I think that’s why he was so lumbering… he looks like a puffed up 190lbs guy who hit the weights and overstuffed himself, didn’t hold that weight naturally - see him next to Williams and Ali?

 

What it's really about is you getting yet another negative slant in on Liston or the 70's heavyweights.

Give it a ****ing rest, you'll end up with heart disease

 

Nope, I am very balanced with my opinions, you just don’t like them and call it an “agenda” lol. I don’t think you’d find a coach here who’d say I was raving mad or absolutely didn’t know what I was talking about the inverse is more likely.

 

I don’t know if I agree. He admittedly looked pretty good in the 210-213 range.

 

Thats cool, IMO SL was incredibly slow, slowest HW champ at his weight, we could agree on that much? He seems slower then guys like Bakole…

 

Stop quoting me with your weird obsessions. I have zero interest in your posts. Move on.

 

lol you’ve @‘d me multiple times, made “meat balls” and kicked it off with your snarky BS you’re a passive aggressive little B, just put me on ignore then I’m only trying to discuss boxing with you or whoever else says something in the thread because I have the right to.

 

That is true. If Wilder fought and opponent who weighed in the 190s on fight night, no matter how good he was, Wilder wouldn't be able to live it down on this forum.

That said, one can only judge a fighter by what they did in their era. In Liston’s era, 176 and over was considered heavyweight. So Machen was a quality, ranked heavyweight at 190+ pounds.

Also, since the heavyweight limit has been raised to 200 pounds, we really don't know how top 185-199 lbs fighters would do vs modern day heavyweights. And I mean weighing 185-199 on fight night. I suspect that it would be difficult for a fighter that small to do much, especially fighting a succession of big men. Unless he was highly skilled, could hit hard enough to hurt the bigger men and had an iron jaw that could take shots from superheavy punchers.

And even if there was such a fighter, would the commission allow them to fight at heavyweight while weighing below the 200 pound limit?

 

Go try and get someone else banned princess.

 

Below is some footage of the second Cleveland Williams fight from 1960. Liston doesn’t look very slow to me. He’s using a lot of upper body movement and throwing some fast and well timed punches. And to address one of your earlier points, notice how trim and sculpted he looks at 212 lbs. to be clear, this was a prime Sonny Liston and NOT the one who fought Ali..

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He looks kind of like bigger guys who weren't particularly lean used to before steroids and weight training. Just a normally large-framed big guy by 50s standards who was neither particularly chubby nor particularly chiseled.

It would be interesting if he'd actually blown himself up with weights. But I think he's just a slightly stunted big guy who'd be Rahman-sized if he'd grown up with modern amounts of food and later training methodologies. (Rather than being from the last generation without unlimited food security, with an abusive childhood on top of that, and a sport system that was allergic to weights and whose nutrition involved dehydrating people.)

EDIT: He was leaner when he was young, as some of the guys were back then.