Liston was 218 when he was 18

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Watch this, 218lbs not 200lbs like I thought, this is your quote straight from the horses mouth.

 

I just posted the filmed interview where the quote is from.

 

Id always heard that Father Stephens recruited him for the MSP boxing team and taught him to box.

I just cant think of anywhere in that part of Arkansas where a 13 year old black sharecropper could walk into a gym in start boxing in the mid 1940s.

Maybe Memphis but that would have been a big adventure for a 13 year old.

 

I do agree with you brother, I’m just supplying the quote source for OP. I’ll have to assume it was a once off a visit to a gym? Maybe he was in some town or something with his daddy or his friends…

 

I didn't think he was quite that old.

 

Sonnny was 18 years old when he was born, according to some in these parts, lol.

He actually started shaving the day he turned 3 — his 27-year-old big brother gave him a hand-me-down rusty razor for a birthday present.

My question is whether they even had accurate scales in the late 1800s when Sonny turned 13.

 

Andy Ruiz is no more super heavyweight than Toney was. More like very fat CWs. Was Liston bigger than them? Yes.

That someone loses weight when he starts serioiusly with a sport doesn't really surprise me. Being out of shape and heavy is not the same as being in shape and heavy.

 

Ruiz did try losing weight and getting in shape, but he said that it just made him weaker and less resistant to punches.

 

Though Sonny did leave home at age 13 to live
with his Mum in St. Louis, IIRC?

 

His mom reportedly moved to St Louis in 1946. Liston followed a year later. If Liston was born in 1930, as seems most likely, that would put him at 17 when he hit St. Louis. Typically, those that dont agree with that age think he was older, so he would have still been in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas at age 13. Even at the youngest age Ive seen stated for Liston, which was his own account of being born in 1932, he would have been 15 when he made it to St. Louis.

Its certainly possible that under some odd unknown circumstances Liston found himself in a boxing gym somewhere but he also wouldnt he the first boxer to embellish his story. In my experience more of them than not have taken creative license with their own story.

 

Ruiz wasn’t fat.

Just a whole lotta man.

 

Also captain “I don’t know when I was born” can pin point when he was 13 now?

 

Genuinely my favorite trope.