Sonny Liston, why is he ranked so highly?

Your grandmother sounds awesome.

 

Answer to thread title - He was one of the best & most devastating HWs that ever lived, great left jab, underrated boxing skills & dangerous power, very dangerous.

It took the greatest at his greatest to end his dominance, enough said.

 

:goodi'll have that

 

I agree that Valdes, DeJohn and Bethea were only second raters while Williams was an unknown at the time. But I don't think him beating Patterson, Folley, Machen and Harris in a relatively short span of time necessarily disqualifies him from having cleaned out the division. After all who else was there to fight at the time? Johansson? That's about the only major name that misses from Liston's record during the late 1950's and early 1960's. Thus he pretty much cleaned out the ranks until Ali came into the picture.

 

cooper and his manager jim wicks were in agreement on avoiding sonny.i don't blame them.:twisted:

 

But that's about the most important name to have on his resume outside of the champion himself, given that he was considered the best of the other contenders (having already KO'd both the champ and Machen). Without beating the best contender out there (regardless of who's fault it may or may not be that the fight didn't happen), no one can seriously claim to have cleaned out the division.

As for other available contenders, Cooper was rated in the top 5 throughout the late '50s through '61, and Lavorante through the whole of '61 (a year in which Liston contented himself with fighting unranked fighters and awaiting his due title shot); both of them had beaten Folley. I'm not necessarily saying these fights were readily available to Liston (I know Cooper has said his team wasn't interested in Liston), or that he was under any obligation to even consider fighting them (which he wasn't); but the fact is the top 5 wasn't totally barren outside of Machen and Folley, nor were those two necessarily the best contenders of the late '50s/ early '60s even after Johansson.

I agree that there wasn't a lot of big names lined up for Liston after he won the title, but that wasn't necessarily because he had cleaned them out; Ali had beaten fighters like Cooper, Lavorante, Doug Jones, and Billy Daniels on his way to the top rating and thus removed a number of prospects and leading contenders from title fight consideration. In the end, Ali had as much a hand in the eventual depletion of the division as Liston had.

 

Not quite.

More accurately, it took only the future greatest who had shown obvious vulnerabilities against Cooper and Jones to beat him. The greatest's greatest didn't come until a couple years later, against Williams and Terrell.

 

I also wonder if its really 84':

http://coxscorner.tripod.com/Images/liston3.jpg

 

its not 84' its 84" which is 7ft and true .he also had 15" steam hammer fists.all his weight was top-side and if his legs had been in proportion to his torso he would have weighed 16st

 

I don't think one cleans out a division over night. That quote is correct as Liston himself was still on the rise at the time, he made his way from the bottom to the top. You could also quote the associated press after Williams/Liston in that they were both avoided fighters who had trouble getting bouts with ranked contenders at the time.

I showed the Ring Annual Rankings to make a point that these were the consistent names of the division during this timeframe that he rose. Yes, Ingo and Cooper are missing. But realistically, Ingo was in a brutal trilogy with Patterson for the title before getting retired in a tune up and Cooper ducked him..... seriously.

 

How important was Johansson after the Patterson trilogy though? He was a diminished fighter and realized it when a no-hoper like Brian London nearly KO'd him.

I don't think Cooper even won that Folley fight but either way he didn't want anything to do with Liston.

Lavorante's run at the top lasted for less than a year before Archie Moore nearly killed him, and later he was killed in a ring tragedy. Don't forget that Liston was banned by the NBA in 1961, otherwise he would have fought Johansson.

When people think of the late 1950's and early 1960's era, they remember names like Liston, Patterson, Folley, Machen and Williams. Johansson and Cooper are the only notable names Liston lacks and for understandable reasons. I'd say he did a very fine job of establishing his superiority over any other fighter in the division until Clay/Ali.

 

London didnt almost ko Ingo, Ingo was back on his feet well before the count of ten.