Liston should get A lot more stick for being a cheat

Isn't that the same line Margarito gave to explain his hand wraps? The overwhelming majority of people dont believe him.

 

Yes! Usually it's an alternative fact at that. Bonus points.

 

Correct, Dundee called the allegations "a load of crock".

Liston didn't blind Ali | London Evening Standard | The Standard

Furthermore, the referee checked Liston's gloves and found sweet **** all.

The reason felix is so sure there was no liniment on Liston's gloves is because he personally inspected them between the fourth and fifth rounds"

The-Journal-Herald-Thu-Feb-27-1964 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB

Blows my mind, even veteran posters who should know better, still buy into this garbage.

 

This “he said, she said” stuff is paper-thin. One guy repeating an alleged confession decades later isn’t hard evidence (this didn't surface until David Remnick's 1998 Ali biography King Of The World)— it’s hearsay stacked on hearsay. If something was really smeared on Liston’s gloves, there should be more than vague stories and disappearing bottles to support it.

And notably, these allegations only surfaced long after Pollino’s death. That timing is convenient in the worst possible way — it ensures the story is permanently insulated from verification, cross-examination, or contradiction. No contemporaneous record, no accountability, no way to test whether any of it is even remotely accurate. At that point you’re not dealing with evidence anymore; you’re dealing with recycled boxing lore being passed off as revelation.

Here is another one of McKinney’s “Pollino supposedly told me this decades ago” stories that only surfaces long after the fact, once Pollino is already dead and can’t confirm or deny any of it; the absurd story that Sonny Liston wasn’t even the “real” Charles Liston, but allegedly one of Charles’ older brothers living under his identity. Supposedly the “real Charles” showed up one day, Sonny acknowledged it privately, then brushed it off. That tale is so outlandish it borders on tabloid fiction.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/philadelphia-daily-news/149433203/

So, we’re supposed to treat him as a rock-solid witness when it comes to glove conspiracies? Come on. If a source is willing to entertain or circulate bizarre identity-swap stories about Liston, it absolutely raises questions about his credibility on everything else.

At the end of the day, the liniment story is still just hearsay layered on hearsay — no physical evidence, no commission findings, no corroboration from the referee who inspected the gloves, and no proof beyond old boxing gossip.

 

And Frank Dux is a totally legit ninja! He's not a clown at all.

 

Agreed. I have never found your facts anywhere else!

 

It s happened in several fights.
It cant be a coincidence,tgey were definetely putting something on Liston s gloves.

 

Oh I’m not saying Sonny didnt know about it.

 

That didn’t happen in “several fights.” The only opponent who ever floated a claim about being blinded was Machen — and even that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

Machen said sweet **** all about being blinded for years after the fight. It only comes up after Ali fights Liston, which makes the timing highly suspect. Before that, he never raised it publicly, and even when he did discuss the fight, he referenced a compromised arm, not any alleged blinding.

He also had opportunities to mention it closer to the event — including when he was in direct conflict with Liston during training camp — and still said nothing about it at the time. That’s a pretty major omission if the core claim were true. Article clipped from Press of Atlantic City - Newspapers.com™

So what you’re left with isn’t a pattern across multiple fights, but a single retrospective claim that appears long after the fact and only under circumstances where there’s obvious incentive to reframe old losses.

 

So why dID ali do that then?
Was he acting?

 

These Liston threads are so tedious. The people who always think the worst of Liston will always believe the word of sources speaking against him. The people who always think the best of Liston will always believe the word of sources speaking in favor of him.

It's all hearsay. Both sides. Angelo Dundee is an unimpeachable source of truth, except for when there's audiovisual evidence proving that he's exaggerating at best and lying at worst. The referee is an unimpeachable source of truth, because it's not like people try to cover their ass when questioned about their job performance. Newspapermen, cornermen, the degree to which they can be trusted depends on which side they're on.

 

No, he wasn't. Ali was blinded but it was not intentional. The most likely answer is monsel's solution applied to Liston's cuts, slipped into Ali's eyes when they were up close. Dundee himself said as much.

"Now what had happened was that probably the kid put his forehead leaning in on the guy—because Liston was starting to wear in with those body shots—and my kid, sweating profusely, it went into both eyes."

 

@swagdelfadeel

I'm not gonna lie you cooked in this thread good information.

 

The problem with treating this as “all hearsay on both sides” is that it ignores the difference in quality of evidence.

We have Dundee’s statements directly, on record, in real time or close to it — not vague attributions decades later after people are dead. That can be debated, but it’s at least identifiable and testable.

By contrast, the Pollino material is multiple layers removed: “someone said Pollino once told someone years ago,” surfaced long after the fact and after he died. That’s not comparable evidence.

The referee isn’t “unimpeachable truth,” but he is the only neutral official in the ring tasked with inspecting equipment and controlling the fight in real time. That matters more than stories built decades later.

In this case, he checked Liston’s gloves at the time and found nothing. That’s contemporaneous, on-the-spot verification — not a recollection or narrative reconstruction years later. If there had been something obvious enough to affect a fighter’s vision, it’s exactly the kind of thing he was positioned to catch.

And that finding wasn’t contested in the moment by Ali or Dundee. The dispute only emerges much later, once the story gets reshaped in retrospect.

 

Cheers mate. Means a lot coming from you.