The Great .. Sonny Liston

Great video. Thanks

 

Interesting as I see it totally different .. no doubt he is hit but to me it looks like he decided a perfect shot to lay down from .. the fall back as he's trying to get up really looks staged .. guess this is why it's an all time question mark ..

 

Myself as well. I highly doubt even the KD was real.

 

I agree with this post except for the part near the end when you say Sonny intentionally waited to be counted out. I believe that he was waiting for Walcott to begin the count. He had no idea what the count was because of all the confusion in the ring. As a matter of fact, there was no count. Ali was prancing around and refusing to go to the neutral corner ala Dempsey in his second fight with Tunney. The count shouldn't have begun until Ali went to the corner. Walcott had the authority to delay the count until Ali did so. And, if you watch the fight again, notice that Liston was up and fighting when Walcott, with the "help" of Nat Fleischer (who was in this instance nothing more than a busybody), changed his mind and stopped the fight. By my lights, Sonny was a victim here in having the fight stopped prematurely.

BoxRec has a nice, even-handed take on the bout at https://boxrec.com/media/index.php/Muhammad_Ali_vs._Sonny_Liston_(2nd_meeting) . Read the portion of the article labeled "The Fight."

 

I am still on the fence about the punch as it was very short, and Sonny was known for a good chin. But it clearly landed flush in the video.

 

I don't see it as such a perfect shot to knock him down .. He didn't knock down Doug Jones or Henry Cooper with the same shot. He didn't knock down Floyd Patterson with the same shot .. to think that shot generated one punch power to have Sonny Liston on the floor for over twenty seconds is just a leap too far for me .. I can't think of one top contender Ali ever flattened with a single punch and had on the floor for that length of time .. of course it is possible but to me highly unlikely .. doesn't help that Ali himself was over him screaming for him to get up .. not the knee jerk reaction you'd see if he as the fighter knew he landed a bomb. In Ali's entire career he never flattened a fresh fighter with one right hand and ended a fight by one shot, ever.

 

No, that's true. Ali's knockouts were mostly stoppages by the referee and were brought on by flurries of punches. He did knock aging Zora Folley out cold -- but Folley woke up and resumed fighting. Still, the older version of Ali was a good puncher when he planted his feet and commenced to slug. See the Ron Lyle fight for evidence of that. Lyle himself commented to me years later that Ali was a good puncher. Ali never did floor him but he had him in deep trouble. Ali also dropped an exhausted George Foreman for the count. Patterson was often derided for his "glass jaw" but Ali couldn't put him away in two bouts. Maybe he didn't want to. It came out after their second battle that Ali had a lot of respect and liking for Floyd.

 

Except it isn't. Everything looks like that in slow mo. The punch definitely connected, but it did not have much power behind it.

 

As usual .. hmm. I disagree with you. Period.