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

What assumptions have I made?

 

You’ve already closed the book pretty conclusively, I don’t see anything wrong with your posts brother.

 

You're absolutely right.This has gone beyond ridiculous.Your stubborn refusal to believe that different
circumstances mean men have to use different paths in their lives beggars belief.Your unbelievably
naive assumption that the cops of 1950s/60s America were pure as the driven snow also beggars belief.
Swag has provided you with the facts regarding just how rotten and corrupt members of the police
were.Yet you ignore all this to support your pathetic anti-Liston agenda.
Perhaps there really is a Grand Canyon gap in your education.So let me please explain--way back
in the dim and distant days of the 1950s and 1960s the cops generally had a very bad attitude towards black
people.A black man would have to be provoked beyond endurance to attack a cop.This was illustrated
by the fact that a police sergeant told Liston that he was literally risking his life by staying in St Louis after
beating up that cop.
I think that reflects rather badly on the American constabulary,don't you ?
I am not exactly a woke,bleeding heart liberal but it is blatantly obvious to me that if a black man like
Liston dared to stand up for himself against a racist cop there would be Hell to pay for Liston.

 

Damned by Journeyman's support !

 

OK, where did I say ‘all policemen are paragons of virtue’?

Did you actually read any of the articles you provided? Because I’m missing the part where the officer ‘bragged’ about arresting Liston. The only mention linking him to Liston is the first, in which he is the arresting officer. Nothing about bragging. In fact, the story has a headline about Liston’s ‘court problems’ piling up including this arrest on four counts, an ex-manager suing him and an ex-employee suing him for never being paid money owed while working for a company owned by Liston … is he your ‘paragon’?

As for Snider, who arrested Sonny for driving like 40 mph over the speed limit in a residential neighborhood and found on him a gun (which Sonny admitted to) that was not registered (that’s a crime there at this time) and not having a drivers license (he shouldn’t have been driving) and resisting arrest by trying to escape the vehicle — the officer did not even cuff him but was driving him to the station in back of the police car and called for assistance (which resulted in Sonny being cuffed) after Sonny became belligerent and tried to leave the police car at a stop sign.

The other links allege misconduct by Snider, the officer, like 20 years later. None allege racism. None have anything to do with Sonny Liston.

One of those links is to a lawsuit where the judge entered summary judgments against some of the people sued (meaning the judge ruled for the person suing) … but not Snider. You wanna give me a link to how that lawsuit turned out as far as this particular officer? The other is a long-after-Sonny-was-dead arrest where the officer is charged … but again, nothing about a conviction. So we have some allegations — very serious and troubling ones — but no verdict or judgment against the officer.

(It is worth noting at this point that the well-researched book The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches — a very accomplished journalist who also wrote acclaimed biographies of Jerry Lee Lewis and Hall and Oates, among others — presents compelling evidence that Sonny raped more than one woman supported by the fact that he paid them off to keep them from reporting. Seems like he wasn’t a ‘paragon of virtue’ in other ways.)

This Snider quite clearly seems to be a scumbag … but literally nothing you posted suggests Liston was improperly arrested nor that the officer was racist. Hell, nothing here even says the officer ‘bragged’ about arresting Liston, which wtf does that even mean? I bet the officers who arrested Charles Manson probably told people about it, same as any officer who ever arrested any famous person — ‘hey, I’m the guy who arrested the heavyweight champion’ isn’t a crime or even an indictment of their character.

So other than documenting what Sonny was arrested for (and yes he ended up guilty of these charges, the record is clear on that) and that he had some lawsuits against him, what does any of this have to do with whether Sonny was a thug (the record is clear that he was) or whether police were racist?

Keep in mind that Sonny was arrested at least 20 times in his life (and at least one source says more than 100 times!) and it’s very likely that among that many police officers (there are records that make it clear that in more than one case it took more than one officer to subdue him, including the one in the article you linked) there are probably some brave, pure and dedicated men, some outright heroes, and also some scumbags. None of that exonerates Liston of being an actual career criminal and thug.

 

Go read the articles linked by Swag (you clearly haven’t) or read my summary of them below. None of them say anything about racist cops, about framing Sonny Liston, etc. It says that 20 years later one of the many cops who arrested Liston on some of the very many charges lodged against him (mostly with guilty verdicts) is alleged to have done some very nasty stuff way more than a decade after Liston was dead (none of which alleges any racism).

You literally claim as evidence that the cop was racist ‘well he must have been or Sonny wouldn’t have assaulted him.’ So the fact that Sonny battered a policeman proves the policeman was racist? Try that one out in court. Sonny never said the guy was nor has anyone but you as near as I can tell. (And that’s not even the policemen mentioned in the stories Swag linked.)

Here’s the truth about Sonny Liston’s ordeals with police — he was guilty of committing crimes, so he was arrested, charged and convicted.

Here’s another truth about the police and their interactions with Sonny Liston — had they wanted him dead, they’d have shot him and killed him. He beat up a cop and took the cop’s gun: that is legal justification if another policeman arrives on the scene to gun him down — he’s already attacked and bodily injured a cop (broken bones and all) and he’s holding the cop’s gun. He’s armed and dangerous. If the arresting cops were racist, they could have gunned him down and any court in the land would have found the shooting justified.

So in fact, they were lenient in not ending him right then and there.

The copy in the one article Swag linked that details an arrest by Liston establishes that he has a gun on the seat next to him (and that gun wasn’t registered, which means he was illegally in possession of a weapon) — if that cop is so racist, why not shoot Liston dead then and there? He didn’t. He took the gun into evidence and put Sonny in his back seat without even cuffing him — and called in another officer after Sonny tried to escape the car on the way to being booked, at which point he was cuffed.

Sonny was everything I have alleged he was because his criminal past says so … not because I say it. You say ‘well if a black man was arrested, if a black man beat a cop, then obviously the cops were racist.’

The fact that there were some racist cops (and plenty who weren’t I think even you would admit) during that time period does not explain away Sonny getting arrested 19 times from 1950-1961. Jim Brown wasn’t, Sammy Davis Jr wasn’t, Bill Russell wasn’t. I think it’s safe to say zero people, black or white, who weren’t hardened criminals were getting arrested at a rate of nearly twice a year in that period. So it doesn’t account for ‘poor Sonny was a victim when he was pulling over women while impersonating a police officer, while committing armed robberies (which he admitted to), when he was assaulting a police officer and stealing his gun.

He was a thug. Pure and simple. Lots of poor people don’t become thugs. Lots of people who serve time decide to stop being criminals and go straight. Plenty of abused children don’t grow up to get 19 arrests in 11 years. But Sonny did because Sonny make the choices he made.

Read what you wrote. Those are your arguments. It is beyond ridiculous.

 

I would like to interject here that Liston was obviously a headache, a near-impossible fighter to manage. Jack Nilon testified to this during the 1964 U.S. Senate subcommittee hearings on organized crime. Sonny was constantly in trouble with the law, whether for driving drunk, resisting arrest, impersonating police officers or other things. Time and again his management had to deal with his unruly conduct, domineering personality and bad temper. And yet, some who post on this site continue to blame his mob management for victimizing poor Sonny.

I contend that Sonny was well-represented by Carbo and Palermo. They were bad people but suitable for Liston, and though he was very difficult to please, he liked and respected them. They were his kind of people --fellow criminals who nurtured him better than he deserved. While he moved up the heavyweight ladder in the late 1950s they tried to protect him from himself because they thought he was going to win the title and make big money for them -- but they were wrong. They underestimated the degree to which he was a liability rather than an asset, and that in his huge hands the title wasn't going to be the diamond mine they had envisioned. The bad publicity he brought forced them to assign and reassign his front management from Pep Barone to George Katz to Jack Nilon -- obvious ploys that nobody bought. It turned out that Sonny was more trouble than he was worth. He brought them unwanted attention, not just in the newspapers but also from the FBI, the U.S. Attorney General and the U.S. Senate. By the time he became champion Carbo and Palermo were already in prison and they were ready to get rid of him. It had become obvious that neither the public nor boxing promoters wanted any part of Liston. He was poison and it all came to a head with the putrid stinker in Lewiston.

 

Not reading all that. I'm happy for you though. Or sorry that happened.

 

Made the point better than any records I could dig up.

 

You really do need to take some lessons in comprehension.Where did I say the cops in Swag's articles were,
on these particular occasssions, involved in racism ?
It served to educate you just how rotten and corrupt too many cops were in the not so good-old days of the 1950s/60s.
Oh I don't no know,but somehow I think these vile individuals would also be guilty of racism.
So according to you Sonny Liston decided to leave St Louis just because he felt like a change of scene rather
than being warned his life would be in danger if he stayed put.
So according to you all of Liston's arrests were justified.Funny that,that majority of people would see that as
overwhelming evidence that the cops were engaged in a vendetta against Sonny.Nineteen arrests ? Yeah right,
sure, good gracious to think that some people accused the cops are running a vindictive campaign against Liston.
So according to you because a handful of black celebrities weren't subjected to racist behaviour from the cops
everything was all right ? I suggest that you read some history.Read the narratives of what the majority of black people had to endure from the police and society in general during that era.
So according to you the fact that Liston's father virtually used him as a slave labourer, giving Sonny such brutal whippings that scars remained on Liston's back for the rest of his life, had no bearing on the path that Liston took in his life.
Such was the brutality of Liston's life with his father that Sonny fled home at the age of thirteen to
relocate with his mother in St Louis.
By the way, would you like to refer to those other guys I mentioned in an earlier post ? Guys like Carlos Monzon,Mike Tyson and Riddick Bowe ?
Compared to these fellows Liston was a boy scout.Yet did they get the terrible press that Liston was subjected to ?

 

Your whole argument (to the extent that there is anything comprehensible at all) is a strawman.

You: There were racist cops in the 1950s/60s therefore Sonny must have been arrested due to racism.

You: Sonny was arrested a lot proves racism rather than proving Sonny was breaking the law, lol.

Sonny was arrested, and convicted, far more often than the average black person of his time. How do you account for that?

Sonny did hard time. He admitted to the stickup for which he was convicted and in interviews said it wasn’t his first one.

Sonny admitted he beat up a cop and took his gun. Your conclusion: Well that proves the cop was racist. WTF?

Do you realize that it’s also documented that Sonny was arrested by black cops?

Liston was one of at least 25 children sired by his father. All of the males (not sure about the females) took beatings. How many of them ended up doing hard time and being arrested so many times in their lives? Same upbringing, same poverty … yet not the same results. Why is that? Racism?

I never mentioned Sonny’s suicide so have no idea where that is coming from.

As for Tyson/Bowe/Monzon … what about them? All were criminals, although only Tyson probably fits in the mold of career criminal (with breaks when he was rescued from juvenile lockup by Cus and kept away from trouble at least to some extent) but none had the kind of repeated arrests and convictions at the rate that Sonny did … about the only time Liston wasn’t being arrested was when he was in jail or prison, lol.

Every bit of documentation of Liston’s life through research of numerous writers and journalists who bothered to check seems to uncover even more criminal activity on Sonny’s part — beating up black laborers in St Louis for mob-controlled union bosses (which is why St Louis police kept such close tabs on him — he was known as a leg-breaker) … if that’s racism, was Liston being a racist for beating up his own people to keep them in line for white criminals?

Stop making excuses for your guy and just admit he was a thug but he was a good fighter. That’s the documented truth of the matter.

 

No, Liston was one-dimentional, he just had a good reach and power.

 

INB4 the next chapter of Sonny the leg breaker, suspected ******? cheating (boxing and on his wife) mugger of bus change, dead beat dad, armed robber, associate and pal of “Blinky”, weirdo MFer (flagging women down at night disguised as a cop is perverse and deranged…) Mafia cash cow, cop beating, scowling career criminal Liston… is a victim of life, SL grew up in a harder time for black men in America but he was also a scum bag of exceptional quality, so on and on we here of his “underrated” intelligence and yet how’d it all work out in the end? He was an antisocial jail bird who had a full life not worth pity SL got to enjoy the higher things, was a figure of history, captured a silly, silly rare gem (the title) and still made wretched decisions. Sick of the “gold hearted warrior poet” romanticism lol.

 

Didn’t expect you to read it given you didn’t even read the stories you linked as you misrepresented what was in them. The only story you linked that was about Sonny just underscored that he was a thug and a scumbag, lol.

Next time link some recipes for cookies. That way you’d provide something of value to the discussion.

 

20 love