Floyd was always trying to add weight. Floyd was always trying to pack on weight. That was his mission. When he did gain some weight to keep it on. Patterson could have been a super middleweight if he need to be.
Id say Patterson and frazier were prime ATG's and Liston and Foreman had easy fights against them. They crushed them like grapes. Maybe thats why you dont like them.
Those fights happened the way they did, and that is fine. Nobody could have predicted such easy results beforehand could they? There is probably a hundred reasons why they were so easily beaten and why Frazier and Floyd were so poor in them. This is not Liston or Foreman’s fault, they both took care of business, but neither of them proved to be as dominant long term champions as people first expected. Why do you think that is? I think it is a full endorsement of hasty generalisation to insist all fighters anyone thinks is similar go the same way as Floyd or Frazier against Sonny and George. Things are never that simple.
But it was that simple. Liston didnt just beat some random 6 ft tomato can swarmer, he was the first 2x champ, outstanding amateur record including national AAU and a gold medalist, young, athletic, legendary hall of fame trainer, etc. He was coming off the biggest wins of his career. On paper, Floyd was easily top 5 greatest swarmer of all time and a top 10 HW in general at the time of the fight. The fight between floyd and liston ended more or less the exact same way in a 1 sided devastating fashion both times. Its safe to say it wouldn't be any different if they fought 20x outside of a a fluke punchers chance+liston being careless or failing to train seriously. I could say the exact same thing about foreman/frazier and how frazier had literally everything going for him on paper. Like Floyd, he was coming off his biggest career win and was a gold medalist, young, etc. Foreman and liston simply knew how to dismantle and take apart smaller swarmers/inside fighters who came forward. The point of me emphasizing the skill and credentials of floyd and frazier was that they were damn near the best of that particular style at that particular weight/height. Bringing up obscure fights like Qawi or Marshall (who dont resemble Marciano in the slightest style wise) is completely irrelevant to the conversation. On top of that, Foreman was not at his best against Qawi. He was a fat old man who was neither ranked nor a champion. Liston was an 8 fight novice against Marshall. In a h2h discussion you dont take some of their worst moments and pass that off as evidence another fighter could keep up. Otherwise, by your logic, i can use the Ali of the Holmes fight or Wladmir of the Fury fight. Neither have jack **** to do with the conversation. No you cannot make a "hundred" of reasons why Floyd and frazier did so poorly. That claim alone is an attempt to detract from the quality of Liston and Foreman's wins. Why is this always such a huge mental hurdle for you? Ive already broken down and elaborated that the exact opposite is true: that you can make very few excuses for Floyd and Frazier based on their resumes. Just like LeBron James cannot make "hundreds" of excuses for his meltdown loss to the Dallas Mavericks or Shaq and Kobe's lakers losing to the Detroit Pistons. Or for or a boxing example, a prime undefeated Joe Louis learning a painful lesson against Schmeling, Baer's embarrasing loss to Braddock, Tyson to Douglas, etc. In your case I know it's because you have an agenda. Marciano wasnt a "domimant long term" champion either so this is a strangr criticism. Liston had to basically clean out the division while patiently waiting to get a title shot. He was no younger than 35 when he fought a prime Ali who is the unanimous #1-#2 HW. That's obviously a huge factor in how long his reign was. How long do you think Rocky would remain champion had he fought past the age of the 35 and took fights with Ingo, Floyd, Machen, Folley, Liston, Terrel, etc? He got out at just the right time and he knew it. -So in summary, you are flat out wrong in saying "things are never that simple" as they we're that simple in regards to Liston Foreman fighting the best swarmers of their era. 2-0 (2 KO's) in the 1st and 2nd rounds is about as decisive and emphatic a record as you can get. The fact other game fighters (Chuvalo, Ledoux, etc) tried slugging it out or swarmed and also got destroyed further emphasizes that Liston and Foreman were kryptonite for smaller swarmers. -You are flat out wrong in bringing up fighters like Marshall, Machen, Qawi or Young as if Marciano has some sort of correlation to them when they fought nothing alike. For a guy who eats his wheeties and puts on his cape everyday to defend smaller fighters, I find it very amusing and ironic you ignore all the factors, nuances, and styles that went into play in these fights and your primary focus is simply the fact that lighter opponents were competitive with Liston/Foreman. By making the size difference your main talking point you are ironically undermining the boxing ability of the aforementioned fighters. Young didnt stand there and go toe to toe with Foreman. They would have to peel his corpse off the canvas if he did that. Machen wasnt trading punches with Liston or coming forward in a crouch and crowding him. If they were these examples would have a little more relevance but they didnt. And...theres a reason for that. Because they knew better than to fight fire with fire. Marciano was a boxer who only knew how to fight with fire. Lastly, no one is saying that if Rocky fought them he'd literally lose the same way 100x of out of 100 attempts by early round ko. But based on styles, size, and the evidence we have on film MANY people believe it would be a bad matchup at best and a blowout at worst. All you read in thay sentence was tbe word "size" and got triggered and that's why we can never have open honest conversations with you. Because you straw man, use red herrings, shift tne goal post, and filibuster to save face or annoy the other person to avoid being objective or admitting someone has a point. Which is another thing i find ironic about you: that you are obviously very well read on boxing history, have seen many fights, and claim to have done some boxing yourself yet you fail to see what is so obvious to so many people. You consistently fail to grasp very basic concepts or notions that someone who has truly sat down and studied/practiced boxing for more than 6 months would obviously be aware of. Its not that you're stupid, you're willfully ignorant and hard headed.
Of course they both lost to Ali. In upsets. The key word is upset. For these generalisations to work so unanimously there would be no upsets.
The point is he never made a title defence whilst under 182lbs and most of his fights [34 ]from the age of 21, were over that weight.So I am right, and the poster I was replying to was wrong.
It's because they both shared an era with one of the single greatest fighters ever to have lived, who beat both of them. Watching you try to downgrade KO1 as an admirable result is one of the most rewarding and hysterical things on this forum.
On paper Floyd was a great champion. I agree. Between 1956 and 1965 he was one of the main players in the division despite being naturally a much smaller man. But he never delivered against Sonny. Just didn’t turn up. It is said Sonny was in this position after beating him. Did he have desire to rematch Ali? Then of course like Walcott against Rocky, Floyd was tied to an automatic rematch he probably did not want. He’d been knocked out by Ingo, won the title back and stagnated. it’s as entirely possible to assume Floyd never really had the same desire after the Ingo fights as it is to make generalisation about style results. That doesn't automatically apply to every single fighter like that. Talk about sweeping hasty generalisation. The way I see it is They each had their own style. There’s many unique attributes for individuals within any of the vague categories. Floyd was poor against Sonny. Frazier was poor against Foreman. Nobody would use those performances as their best nights work. Their resumes hold up. I agree. Listons Resume held up going into the Ali fight. Foreman’s Resume held up going into the Ali fight. Tyson’s Resume held up going into the Douglas fight. Lewis’s Resume held up going into the McCall fight. What connection do you make here? Style advantage, size advantage or sucker for right hands? Liston was absolutely an outstanding challenger but in reality no more than Joe Louis, Marciano or Ali had been challenging for titles. Liston hit the ratings in 58' for winning 7 fights against unrated fighters who had all lost their previous fight. 59' was the year sonny started fighting rated fighters but ingo quite rightly went ahead of him for iceing an unbeaten machen, the #1. It wasnt until 1960 where Liston was facing fighters rated above him in the ratings anyway. 1961 he had to wait for the rematches to resolve themselves remaining behind the former champion. Technically It’s not cleaning out the division unless he beat Ingo. the main factor was desire and heart. How can his age come into it, he was one fight from his best win? Perhaps Rocky knocked the last of the desire out of Walcott, sonny knocked the last of the desire out of Patterson too. Then when it came to Sonnys turn to rematch Ali the desire had left him as well? oh Rocky never would have lasted that long. I have never disputed this. I’m only defending a notion he would be easy meat at his best. no young never went toe to toe. He countered and turned. Picked off George because he was not the crowding type. ultimately yes, but he neutralised, crowded and mauled. Countered. Feinted. And he was a special “against the odds” kind of freak. Very unusual. Very unconventional. And it worked. well it does seem that way. I think the minority of people voting against him are predicting a long slow brave losing effort. The majority believe in a quick blowout. Yes a bad match up. A hard fight is a bad matchup. Any hard fight where two guys want to win is a bad match up for the fighters. They are both getting a hard fight to win here because they are both great opponents. Sonny is getting a hard fight. Rocky is getting a hard fight too. I don’t fail to see what is obvious. I see was is obvious to others. It can be too obvious though. Making hasty generalisation from history or boxing is often far too foolish. It doesn't work like that in the ring or in history.
I don't think this is correct Liston beat Summerlin 55 & ,Bethea 57 when they were ranked,he beat DeJohn in 59 when he was ranked,Valdes in 59 when he was number 2! Louis was fighting 2nd and 3rd raters. Liston cleaned out the division beating. Mederos Summerlin Bethea DeJohn Williams Valdes Besmanoff Williams Harris Folley Machen Ingo would not go anywhere near him.
Ingo didn’t know who Sonny was, Ingo was rated before Liston. 1957 Sonny was absent from boxing. So Ingo was there first and beat the better contender to earn a title fight. At no point before Ingo challenged for the title was Sonny rated ahead of him. Once a contender makes the ratings he’s looking ahead not behind him. Foley, Machen and Harris were legitimately good wins. 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 cleaning out a division. its regular form for a contender against has beens. Liston only fought maybe tworated HWs over the entire '50s, and didn't fight a top 5 contender until 1960. From Time Magazine: "Whatever his connections, many boxing buffs see Liston as the U.S.'s most promising challenger for Sweden's Johansson, even though Liston has so far fought only second-raters." -August 1959 (right after Liston had KO'd Nino Valdes)
OK, we've had this before. In the end, it boiled down to the fact that he "didn't turn up" because he got knocked out. But before we got there you claimed that 1) Patterson turned up with a false moustache and beard, proving, in your opinion that he didn't expect to win. When I pointed out to you that Patterson brought disguises to many of his world title fights (by his own testimony), and that he did it for purposes of leaving without being recognised rather than stashing it because he expected to lose, you dropped it (took about three posts though). 2) Patterson looked frightened in the ring. This took longer. You repeatedly claimed to notice symptoms of fear in Patterson in the footage pre-fight. When I managed to find examples of Patterson doing similar things in fights that he had won, you dropped this, but not before first trying to convince me of your superiority a a psychologist. Naturally, this didn't go great. 3) Patterson fought differently than was normal for him. This one was harder than 1) but easier than 2). So what is it today? What constitutes that proof that Patterson "didn't turn up"? I presume you mean this figuratively; I presume you know he was actually in the ring and that KO1 wasn't a result awarded in that era when a fighter just didn't show - though for the way you talk, it isn't definitively the case. You wriggle like a worm in trying to undermine the best, most impressive result in boxing: KO1 of a reigning champion. No more impressive result in the sport is possible but to hear you talk about it, it's some sort of embarrassment for the perpetrator.
