What are some popular pugilistic myths that have been discredited(or need to be)?

How is that a myth?

 

You also favour David Tua over Mike Tyson, therefore you automatically lose all your credibility when in comes to Tyson.

 

Nah.He beat Dwight Muhammed Qawi,who was still great and was better than anyone else from that era.

 

Actually the Nation of Islam were quite an intimidating presence at the time of the second Ali-Liston fight. Members of the NOI had just killed Malcolm X, "one of their own", for breaking away from the cult's core values and taking members with him. A high profile assassination with huge political ramifications. That's not exactly child's play.

And Clay/Ali was their most famous member, very eye-catching and outspoken, world's heavyweight champion, and that means very useful as an advertisement and recruitment tool for the group.
It's not beyond reason to believe elements within the NOI were willing to kill to keep Ali as champion.

Liston may have met nastier, more serious thugs, but he was wise enough to know that it only takes one crazy n*gga to shoot, and these guys were political/religious extremists and many were ex-cons like himself.

Also, it would be wrong to think that Liston had "the mob" backing him, or benefitting from his success. It may well be that he had one or two mobsters or connected guys owning shares in him, but to the main Commission of the big crime families the takings of one boxer, even the heavyweight's champion, was mere peanuts. These guys were making millions every week through international crime rackets. The guys who were apparently making a serious proportion of their living out of fleecing Liston were obviously not top mobsters. Frank Carbo had owned virtually all of boxing but was in jail by that time, so he wasn't a top player, and it could well be that they were making very little off of Liston. Boxing had sort of dried up as a racket by '64 and '65, too much attention for too little profit.

I'm not saying I believe the particular conspiracy theory that says the NOI had something to do with Liston diving.
Or that mobster's ordered it necessarily. It may have just been Liston, or Liston and his friend Ash Resnick, a connected gambler.

I do tend to believe both fights were fixed though. They look like fixes to me. A champion quits unexpectedly in a championship fight and then goes down hard from what looks like a light punch in the contracted return match. It's suspicious.

 

Qawi is definitely his best win as far as handling another primed excellent light-heavy goes, but that is ONE fighter and Dwight was another guy who bridged the era's and was really more of an eighties fighter as well.The guy who most will say would have reigned for a while had it not been for Spinks.

Both Spinks and Qawi hit the big time when most of the better light -heavies that turned pro pre-76 had been in multiple brutal fights with each other and were on the way down for one reason or another(that's actually perhaps the biggest criticism i feel you can level at taht period, most of the fighters didn't have long primes ).They feasted on a few faded, though still decent to good remnants and fought each other, before Spinks continued his dominance over the new crop.

I'm not even really criticising Spinks or qawi here, their career's stand up for themselves.I just find Spinks light-heavy accomplishments to be often needlesly embellished, when what he actually did do was more than impressive enough.

 

Foster's opposition at the weight is in need of much more scrutiny.

 

Eddie Cotton, Henry Hank, Mauro Mina, Dick Tiger, Allen Thomas...these guys were just bums of the 60s right? :roll:

 

Neither of Thomas and Cotton were exactly smashing, though I was referring more to the likes of Kendall, Hicks, Quarry, Rondon etc.

 

Surf-Bat just hit the nail on the head with Tyson and lora just hit the nail on the head with Liston.

 

I dont ever recall favoring Tua over Tyson. Maybe about one punch power. But I honestly dont recall the former.

 

lol. A lot of these are purely opinion.

If were playing that game, then Johnson losing to Hart is a straight up myth.

back to the real topic.

Ali throwing the medal in the river.
There being a "phantom punch" in the Liston rematch

 

:deal

 

A very well put together post. But tell me this? I know its a matter of opinion but if the first fight was fixed, then how do you explain Liston going right after clay in the 5th?

 

Love Max Baer...he so cool.