Sonny Liston vs Henry Cooper

But lets say, Cooper by some luck shot, ko's Ali to win the title in there title fight. (Yeah a REAL long shot I know lol)

Cooper as heavyweight champ would HAVE to step up to the plate and defend against the best, or take the Patterson route.

 

question about patterson's reign: how much do people feel it was due to fear of being beaten by big punchers and how much do you feel it was cus trying to keep the mob influence out of his fighter's life?

 

A murder picture. Liston would have slaughtered him

 

:good



the tyson era realy brought back an intrest in liston. people started to wonder about all the "what ifs and "maybe's" surounding sonnys life, age and career and got carried away. a myth and legend grew that was never realy there before. since most of it enhanced ali's legend a lot of respected historians let it go.

I like liston. He legitmatly won a world title and was for a short time the best heavyweight for the moment. he was great to watch and impresive but there are a lot of things that dont stack up when considering true A.T greatness.

 

very good post but liston's best form and accomplishments were likely before the patterson fights. he was the best heavyweight in the world for about a 3 year period; the heavyweight title may have been held by patterson but liston was still number 1

 

the two heavyweights most worthy of a shot at patterson were machen and foley. Liston beat both before fighting patterson so yes he was doing patersons job whilst ingo and floyd rematched each other. his wins over paterson enhanced this dominance. however, its worth puting into perspective that floyd was a protected champion who fought London, mcneely and radmacher who were not rated and had already had his bubble burst by ingo who was rated. you could argue liston got sloppy seconds over patterson and could not match ingo's win over machen.

 

good points. overall it speaks to liston's path to the title, earning it the hard way and patterson, whatever the reason, fighting signifcantly lesser competition. the machen comparison with ingo is interesting

 

in fairness to liston, it could be a style thing. ingo caught machen with a counter where as liston was an agressor who did more leading. machen was ever so much more wary by the time he fought liston. even so we do measure results against comon opponents to gage a fighter today and it is a fact ingo had the beter result.

 

Same with me. He was always criticising Bruno,but I've only heard him say positive things about Lewis.