Sonny Liston was one of what....60 , 70 kids of a poor Arkansas sharecropper..got beaten and abused by his ornery old man every day "whilst" growing up in abject poverty....and I believe that it affected his fighting skills by makin' him as mean as a snake for one thing..it contributed to his badass side developing..which made it a pleasure for him, and a natural thing to crack noggins for a profession. His upbringing no doubt made it somewhat a given that he would make some well known forays into the world of crime.
Liston was a bit of a bully who kind of could shut down when againist Ali...have to wonder if getting beaten by your dad can make you hard on the surface but then fold up when fighting daddy.
Actually, this is a pretty great analogy. Didn't Frank Bruno also used to get beaten as a kid?, which is why he froze up when caught flush... I dunno I remember hearing that somewhere.
I think another interesting question would be what great fighter came from healthy functional family with decent money...that would be hard to find.
Tyson was also bullied as a child (not beaten by dad...but bullied by other kids) until he was 12...then he became the bully....which is how he was as a fighter. Not sure about Bruno...I honestly don't know anything about his childhood. I'd imagine the best fighters where hard *******s as kids who didn't really start ****...but always ended it when it happened.
LaMotta did have a rough child hood..he was also a sick **** who really should have been locked up and had the key thrown away....
Yeah I was watching the James Toback Tyson documentary the other day, and he was saying how he was always afraid of his opponent embaressing him again, like when he was a child. Hard to imagine him being so scared, the way he just bowled guys over in his prime.
Saad Muhammand was abandoned as a child, but he did get help from catholic charity and was placed on a foster home. I think it affected him and that he was always in search of his identitiy and the identitiy of "champion" meant a great deal to him. Thus, he was instilled with great heart and deterimination and wasn't going to give up what he had easily.
Fred Whacker had a terrible chidhood- When Fred was seven years old his father took him aside, and left him there !
That reminds me of a time some pundit was talking about a news story where there were these two rapists and he called them "these two goofs"...