Is Sonny Liston the most well rounded heavyweight ever on film?

No, I was replying to your post.

The two paragraphs above ‘I don’t make excuses’ was a list of excuses.

 

Liston was who he was and made no apologies for it. Many good people liked him. He had plenty of friends (among them Joe Louis, Sammy Davis Jr., Doris Day, Lem Banker, Davey Pearl, countless others). He could afford lawyers to protect him from himself. He was always well-dressed. Ate well, drove a new Cadillac. Had a nice house on a golf course. He knew pleasure intimately, yet his wife remained loyal through 20 years of ups and downs. Nobody should feel sorry for Sonny. He enjoyed a more colorful and interesting life than most of us. More than ANY of us is my guess. I'd say he did well for himself, considering his background. And he spent only about three years in prison for crimes that would have cost anyone else years more. Who else beats up a cop and breaks his leg -- and serves only seven months in jail? So the mob owned him and the sportswriters maligned him. Does this make him a victim? To me it seems like a small price to pay for the life he lived.

 

You cannot differentiate understanding why someone ended up the person they did that did bad things from making excuses for their actions? You can understand why a grown ass man did something stupid without saying that it was ok for him to have done it because of the reason what led to why.

Let's use an easy example. OJ Simpson killed the guy that was ****ing his wife. Can we understand WHY he did it? Sure. Dude was ****ing his wife. Do we make excuses for it? No, murder is wrong.

 

But growing up rough or poor does not mean it’s a reason for becoming a criminal — too many who came up under similar circumstances did not choose to become criminals. And many who did changed their ways after doing time, but Sonny did not.

Most boxers come up poor, uneducated (or at least undereducated) and from rough circumstances. I’ve never seen any assert that most boxers therefore become criminals.

Likewise, plenty of people who came up rich, educated and from good homes become criminals.

So I do not agree with your cause and effect of Sonny being a thug.

At best, the only crime which Sonny committed that might tie to poverty is the armed robbery he committed that sent him to the prison where he learned to box. Poverty or being abused/neglected as a child did not directly cause him to assault a police officer nor impersonate an officer to pull over and try to pick up/coerce women nor to drive while drunk or any of his other offenses.

Taking a broad ‘poor people and people from bad circumstances sometimes become violent criminals’ (or even do so at a higher rate than others, if that is actually true) doesn’t mean knowing that gives us an understanding of why Sonny did the (criminal) things that he did — especially when boxing itself offers tons of examples of people from similar circumstances who never became lawless thugs.

Sonny become the person he did because he made choices along the way that made him become that person — he could have chosen differently. Later in life when he was still in and out of legal trouble he was making a lot more money than an average person and certainly had more than a poor person. He had a home in Las Vegas along a golf course, right — so living the country club live (while also providing muscle for the mob and beating up people who owed, according to credible accounts).

 

What a beautifully crafted response.
However - my point remains - you berated someone for making assumptions, and you have done the same.
There are many world champions, often with superbly choreographed public personas who very were average people behind the scenes.

 

lol @Saintpat he was a warrior poet with a heart of gold cease your foolish ambitions, Sonny did no wrong and you’d be a fool to think otherwise.

 

This sounds like a slander. Sonny was one of those rare boxers with that sought-after "mugger strength" and all he did was keep in training if I understand it right.

 

Marciano causes people on here to disproportionately seeth simply over his existence, as does Holyfield with his roids. Meanwhile, Liston gets excused for legitimately sinister, premeditated crimes like impersonating an officer in order to trap a woman and do God knows what - stuff that should permanently sour a man's reputation forever. Same with Monzon and LaMotta. Honestly got to love this forum.

 

I'm trying to remember what this thread was even about.

 

It was different times, man.

 

I was sitting there wondering how the hell did it get to this—then of course, it turned out @Saintpat had derailed the thread. Same as always with Liston discussions. If it’s not the “he quit with no injury” garbage—despite medical evidence—it’s something else.

The contradictions are hilarious. Pat will harp endlessly on Liston being charged with impersonating a cop—conveniently ignoring that he was found NOT GUILTY Article clipped from The Daily Sentinel - Newspapers.com™—but flat-out denies documented proof of Liston’s injury against Ali. Yet when Holmes underperforms, his word alone is enough: suddenly every bad night is explained by some phantom injury, no evidence required.

And here’s the kicker: Pat insists Liston never said the cops were racist. Except Liston literally accused them of racism countless times, Article clipped from Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, the Evening News - Newspapers.com™ Add to that the fact that many of those same Philly (and Denver) cops had separate complaints about racist behavior as well as other misconduct and the context speaks for itself. But Pat’s selective memory kicks in whenever it helps him spin a narrative.

 

How do you know Sonny was guilty of all the crimes he was accused of commiting ?

 

@Saintpat, you’ve repeatedly insisted that the cops who arrested Sonny Liston were flawless: Yet here’s one of those very ‘flawless’ officers who frequently targeted Sonny and bragged about it Article clipped from The Muskegon Chronicle - Newspapers.com™ —. He was later fired for the **** of a young woman following countless separate accusations of sexual assault. Valanzuela v. Snider, 889 F. Supp. 1409 (D. Colo. 1995) :: Justia He was later arrested for kidnapping a woman at gunpoint, slapping her, and shoving her into a car Article clipped from The Daily Sentinel - Newspapers.com™

I’m curious — how does this square with your "the cops were paragons of virtue lolz" crap?

 

Oh maybe because …

1) Witnesses testified

2) Evidence was presented

3) He was convicted

4) He never even denied any of his crimes for which he was convicted as far as I’m aware — I’m not sure he even appealed … he absolutely admitted in interviews to the armed robbery for which he spent prison time andthe rest of his comments wer usually ‘I’ve done some bad things’ without addressing specific charges … good enough for me

Is it seriously your contention that Sonny was framed, lol?

Yet you want us to believe the cop Sonny assaulted (breaking his leg, cutting his face and taking his gun) was a racist because … Sonny assaulted him? Has anyone but you ever contended that this particular policeman was a racist? Did anyone present any evidence or testify to witnessing this particular policeman was a racist and not just a guy doing his job? Do you even know the cop’s name?

This has gotten beyond ridiculous.