Sonny Liston versus Dick the Bruiser

your points are meaningless. we were talking about REAL streetfights. sparring and boxing in the ring isn't a street fight. not defending pro wrestlers here or anything, but some of them would have been no one you'd want to mess with in a bar, whether you were a 'REAL' boxer, wrestler, judoka, karateka or mixed martial artist.

 

Keenan is definitly tougher physically, he imposed his strength on Liston before Liston tried to throw him out a window. Apparently he towered over Liston.

 

Dempsey's era of boxing mostly was a street fight for the most part.

Rocky Marciano was a good street fighter also.

 

Sonny Liston rates in my top 3 heavyweights of all time.

 

Sure it does ... Ali had him exactly where he wanted him ...

AS far as street fights go, who knows ? Guys like Sullivan, Dempsey and Liston were legendary street fighters ... I'm sure plenty of wrestlers were killers as well ... Ali, I doubt it ..

 

Jack Dempsey said that Chuck Wiggins was the greatest streetfighter who ever lived.

 

interesting
I never heard about that, but Liston was pretty badass himself. do you have an article about it? i'd love to read about it.

 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KrNlHjfR90[/ame]

 

AlFrancis (a poster on here) told me about it.

You do know who Peter Keenan is yeh?

Big guy from Scotland, absoloutly massive.

 

i was talking about this so called confrontation between Liston and Keenan
that video didn't really relate to my post lol

 

Captain kangaroo beat up Sonny in 1952

 

I read about this once.

Didn't Sonny object to Keenan smoking at a party,telling him to butt out and Keenan said something along the lines of "make me" and telling Sonny he'd never lost a street fight whereupon Sonny backed off.

It's a good story but if it had came down to a serious fight I'd back Liston to shove Keenans pack of smokes up his skinny arse.

 

He bit off the nose of the guy at the airport. He took out fellow wrestler Jesse Barr's eye. As the story goes, Barr was being a dick and kicked some dirt into a pit that t construction worker was digging. Haku told him it wasn't cool. Barr asked him what he was going to do about it, and Haku took out his eye.

When talking about how tough these guys are, you have to understand that some of them are former weight lifters and footballers, and some of them are shooters, or even hookers, who are trained in a form of wrestling to injure their opponents. It used to be that even in fake wrestling, to be a long term champ, you were required to be a hooker, because some smart ass might try to take something on you in a match.

Someone mentioned Ali- remember that they changed the rules in Ali's match with Inoki because they were afraid of him getting injured.

 

Bump...

As a fan of both boxing and wrestling I honestly don't believe this. Dave Meltzer said he had never heard of this story when asked and he's pretty good when it comes to the history of wrestling.

Now I'm not saying Dick The Bruiser would beat Sonny Liston but I'm pretty sure he'd have made Liston know he was in a fight. He would have had a good 30+ pounds on Liston, plenty of street fighting experience himself and likely knew some amateur wrestling due to who he was trained by so I don't think he'd be stupid enough to just trade hands with a guy like Liston.

Wrestlers of the 50's/60's with high level amateur wrestling backgrounds like Danny Hodge, Verne Gagne and Billy Robinson would have made mince meat out of Liston for sure though.