fixed. Cleveland Williams on the other hand was dangerous. If you took Sonny Liston out of the equation he very well could have been the Heavyweight Champion. Those two beatings Liston administered didn't help his career or help him as a fighter physically or mentally. Williams would have decapitated Floyd Patterson on a bad day.
Geez you are calling Boxed Ears as well? That's like calling Superman in for a pickpocketer when the entire Justice League is standing around
If you want my opinion, then the best version of Joshua beats the best version of Liston. The size difference here is a large factor, because Liston was very much used to being 'the bigger man' in his fights. There's an argument to be made that Liston is better pound for pound, but he's not beating Joshua in a shootout and he's not beating Joshua at range. That's correct: the 84 inch reach is bogus, bull**** and and error. If you look at the Williams fight its clear that Williams has the longer reach and Williams has a 78-80' reach at best. AJ has an actual 82' reach and knows how to fight big. Joshua is the guy with an actual almost 90% KO record against a field of actual big men. While I think that AJ is mentally fragile, he also showed no signs of this during his peak. This seems to be a recent thing. In my opinion Liston, despite his scary reputation, may well be physically fragile. He was KTFO by Ali and was busted up by 'midget' Marshall. He beat Williams only because Williams has a paper chin. Williams set him on fire early on. AJ got crumbled by a much larger and greater fighter with ATG punching power in Wladimir, and he came back to win. Much more impressive than Williams let us be honest. Liston was the 'big bear' during a time when heavyweight was a wasteland.
Could go either way. As proved in his last fight. AJ is quite a glass cannon with not-so-strong chin and fragile mentality.
I'd pick Liston to poleaxe AJ myself but it's a fight I would truly love to see, so there's something intersting there I'm not thinking about when i'm turning over this fight.