How long was Listons peak?

There is no doubting Liston has proved to have been a beter heavyweight than floyd and therefore ingo but that posibly wasnt realised until Liston- patterson I.

What I want to know is when was Listons peak and how long did it last? I keep hearing people call him an uncrowned champion who took out all the top contenders from 1957 until he landed floyd n 62' but Im not so sure this could have been established opinion until then.

Even had sonny landed a fight with machen before ingo would he have won in one round? I think what ingo did to machen blew listons points win out of the water. Liston could not have proved to have been beter than either champion until he beat them.

Until Liston fought for the title it was tied up between a guy who beat machen quicker than he could and another guy tied to rematches he had not fought yet.

I think Listons "run" was more like 1959- 1960. During this spell wiliams, folly, harris and machen were at least winning fights when liston fought them, though all had been knocked out before. These were his most worthy wins but he recorded them during the ingo-patterson triangle and its only one year.
Its not quite "cleaning out" all the contenders over a number of years.


The bunch of guys Liston fought earlier, ben wise, daniels, ernie cabb, mederos, whitehurst, bethea, valdez, besmanoff, howard king and wesphal were losing fights at the time Liston squashed them, each lost their previous fight coming in against liston. Even dejohn had lost 2 of his last 4 fights. This cant qualify as clening out a division.

1961 liston did not fight a rated guy. Then he went 2-2 in title fights (3 in one round) up until 1965.

 

:good Thanks, That sounds a lot beter, wish I had came up with that.

 

I would say that was more a "brim" than a "peak" :good

 

I think that was a good win too but valdes was coming off a loss and in his final year as a pro. Ninos record at that time was not that of a contender on the way up. machen had already ended his chances as a top fighter knocking him out 3 years earlier, at the time liston fought valdes hed lost 8 times since hed been marcianos #1 contender way back when.
valdes actualy was beaten up by a young alonzo johnson in his last bout before taking on LIston, losing on points and a fight but one before was up and down like a yoyo before geting KO'd by 19-3-2 charlie powel who I think was really a football player in the NFL that took up boxing to become a journeyman.
Its still a good win for liston but valdes was prety much on the skids then.

 

I gotta change that title!