Not necessarily. In addition to long arms... This content is protected he had very wide shoulders and giant 15 inch hands. https://nation.africa/kenya/sports/...-world-champ-with-fist-of-cannonballs-4396506 Reach, at least when I boxed, was measured middle fingertip to middle fingertip. Wide shoulders and long hands don't necessarily add to the ape hang as we used to call it. My reach is almost 6 inches longer than my height but it's mostly in my shoulder width not in my arm length. The 84" reach is pretty consistent on the tale of the tapes I found.
It was legit. Sonny’s Piston would be in the face of all these modern super heavies, Sonny would dominate
Agree 100%--at some point Sonny's reach began to be cited as 84" and nobody seemed to question it. (81"-82" seems to be the legitimate measurement.)
So, 82" seems by your eye test to be legit, but the consistently repeated 84" or 83.5" by sportswriters and newspapers over a decade and a half is not legit? And why would his reach have been listed at 83.5" against Martin had they not measured and merely copied what was printed before? Scroll down this article to the picture of Sonny holding up his hands next some normal dude. Tell me that did not add to his reach. https://www.bbc.com/sport/boxing/48974341
I think your last paragraph is not being taken into consideration by the OP. Liston had a very long reach for his height. And then add to the fact that Liston had ridiculously big hands which would've added significant length considering how long his fingers were. Then it looks very legit to me.
I tend to overlook finger length as part of the measurement--(in my mind I picture a closed fist when measuring reach--but the palms are actually open.) And Sonny had MASSIVELY big hands--his gloves had to be custom made! So maybe a reach of 83.5"-84" is legit after all!!
Sonny vs Eddie machen Sep 1960. Not only in the paper as 82" but pretty sure this was the fight they show his reach in the stats on the TV COPY (again my memory isn't certain) which fight it was but it was 82" There's literally a boatload of evidence it was correct to begin with... The Tv copy backs up multiple newspaper reports it more than just one report folks.. it was everywhere you looked prior to Patterson. They are doing weight In for fight's they probably do measurement's expecting person after person to be inaccurate when all the data points the the same answer in THAT time frame its likely verified over & over for multiple fights by multiple different people doing the measurements. Expecting it to be anything different that what it started as is wishful thinking. The first is most likely the most accurate. I'm sure several different folks measured him. This content is protected
Those fingers! On an unrelated note, I recall reading a piece Geraldine wrote about Sonny, and it painted a far more gentle picture of him than his violent public profile. Apparently, she loved it when he used to tenderly tickle her belly button in the evenings. Probably because he did it......from the inside.
It's far easier to undermeasure than to overmeasure. I remember being made to stand flat against a wall for measuring one time. Other times, it was just perfunctory.
How was it measured and was it the same every time? Keep in mind, they measured that across his back, with his arms outstretched. So the width of shoulder would play into that. And if, in some cases they measured from tip to tip of the longest fingers, that would add to it. If they had him make fists and measured from knuckle to knuckle, across his back, that would account for the difference. I have never heard of any rule defining how to measure such a thing and I doubt that there is one because it doesn't matter in any practical way.
No he didn't. Watch the Cleveland Williams fight. Williams is 78' and the commentators repeatedly go on about his reach advantage over Liston and how he needed to keep the fight at range. When they exchange, you can see that their reach is similar, and that if anything the commentators are right when they say Williams has a longer reach.
Anthropologists and Misanthropologists say that mating patterns in the early days, before baskets were invented, had females choosing dudes with the longest arms, because they could carry the most fruit back to the lazy hoes chilling by the fire. So, in a way, a lot of this makes sense.