I'll say it again--there's a lot more to Sonny Liston's story (if you take the time to look deeper.) Sonny was the 24th of 25 children growing up in an impoverished sharecropping family. He basically had no schooling (basically an illiterate throughout his life) and had to work in the fields from a very young age. His father beat the hell out of him regularly and even made him pull the plow on the farm when the family mule died. He ran away at the age of 13 to escape living with his mother in St. Louis but without any schooling and guidance quickly ran afoul of the law, ultimately serving time with multiple prison sentences. With a background like that just SURVIVING is a miracle in itself. Becoming undisputed HW champion of the world goes beyond the miraculous!!
Yes we all know, respectfully this it’s been discussed to death with endless amateur poetry and flowery prose but that doesn’t change the two other truths. Liston was a “thug brute” and a quitter.
ROTFLMAO--"endless amateur poetry"...."flowery prose." Ohh man that is RICH!! Look, it's obvious you don't care too much for Sonny Liston- and that's cool! BUT--a guy that basically worked from sunup to sundown doing hard labor as a young child with a father that beat him so badly that the scars were still visible decades later is not the kind of stuff "endless amateur poetry and flowery prose" is made of!!
Off topic but poetry is built on exactly those sorts of ingredients. I don’t really care, you can pity Liston all you want and he’d still mug you for a few cents or maybe flag a girl you know down impersonating a police officer lol, Personally I don’t really care, what I was saying is no matter how much you like him it’s not a complex subject matter he was a quitter, he was a thug brute those are facts.
You see it your way....I see it mine. Or to get "poetic" about it..."East is east, west is west, and never the two shall meet." (Horace Greeley)
Oscar is a good one for me. Interesting that Ray and Ali went into the fight as heroes. For me, Oscar went into the Pacquaio fight as a spoiled weight bully trying to stay relevant. Pac beat him so badly that I somehow ended up halfway rooting for Oscar.
Jack Catterall, completely robbed of his crowning moment where he would've won 3 world titles, only to avenge the loss in a fight with no belts on the line and then fizzle away into obscurity without getting that homecoming and big money defence that he thoroughly deserved. An insomnia-curing fighter who is horrible to watch, but that first Taylor fight and the way it unfolded, both during and after, is a perfect microcosm of all the things wrong with the sport.
Gerald McCellean , Wilfredo Benitez, Wilfredo Gomez, to name a few, the brutality of boxing took more from them than it gave.
Hi Guys. Plenty of course, but 1 that resonates is the absolute beating Duran gave to the inexperienced and untested Moore, it was truly difficult to watch, Roberto showed not a glint of mercy that night, he seemed to relish in the punishment he dolled out to the hapless Moore, at such times it's hard to recognise its a sport. stay safe guys, chat soon. Mike.
Not as tragic as other circumstances, but Oba Carr having to try and go through Felix Trinidad, Ike Quartey, and Oscar DeLa Hoya to win a world title. A very tough gauntlet to have to go through and end up with no title.