Liston's Death

Discussion in 'Classic Boxing Forum' started by billyb71, Aug 6, 2022.



  1. billyb71

    billyb71 Member Full Member

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    I don't believe fight 1 was a fix. Liston truly had a bad shoulder. He tried unsuccessfully to get the fight postponed.
     
  2. billyb71

    billyb71 Member Full Member

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    She waited six or seven hours to call the police. She may have been involved.
     
  3. The G-Man

    The G-Man Boxing Addict Full Member

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    I believe the story was she wanted to get rid of the signs of drug use.
    Either way it wa suspect as was everything about his death.
     
  4. KasimirKid

    KasimirKid Well-Known Member Full Member

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    Reports about Sonny Liston's death are a hoax. I think he is alive and well in Argentina. And I am prepared to go on social media to prove it!
     
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  5. Saintpat

    Saintpat Obsessed with Boxing Full Member

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    I put little stock in the ‘Sonny was so afraid of needles’ narrative.

    What exactly do we have to back that up? I mean did he cringe and run away if a doctor pulled one out? Did he leave the hospital after the car wreck rather than get a shot? (And rather than speculate any needle marks came from that stay — how long exactly are those detectable anyway, I’ve had shots and no visible marks at all — how about some documentation that he actually did get shots in the hospital … and if so, why didn’t he refuse them out of this phobia?) How well did the people, or person, who claimed that he had this fear really know him, and how recently?

    I think he hot-shorted himself (accidentally, heroin ODs are not uncommon among users) and his wife probably cleaned up a bit before the police arrived to preserve his reputation (or not get him stained as a drug user, which held greater stigma in his day). IIRC there was some residue/evidence of drug use found.
     
  6. NoNeck

    NoNeck Pugilist Specialist Full Member

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    He didn’t have much morphine in his system.

    But he had heart disease. Look at his risk factors—alcoholic, smoker (?), high BMI, black, middle aged. He probably just dropped dead.
     
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  7. Saintpat

    Saintpat Obsessed with Boxing Full Member

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    Possibly, or a combination of factors that may have included heroin (which would not be good for someone with the above issues).

    Morphine, I’m pretty sure, doesn’t ‘freeze’ in the system at the level it was at death. It breaks down to morphine. Heroin can be detected in urine up to 48 hours and in blood up to 72 hours, in hair follicles (not sure if they had the technology to check that in Sonny’s day, honestly) up to three months. And morphine, after the heroin breaks down, also dissipates in the system — so if he was there six days and morphine is still detected in toxicology that indicates he had, at least, a somewhat substantial quantity of heroin or morphine in his body at the time of death. I’m not a CSI guy nor a toxicologist so I can’t speculate on how much.

    But what was in his body got there somehow. Just like the balloon with heroin in it got into his house somehow, and the marijuana discovered (it wasn’t as widespread as today and was considered a much more serious offense to possess) got into his pocket somehow.

    His wife didn’t notify police for 2-3 hours after finding the body. Plenty of time to get rid of the needle and spoon you’d expect to find if someone was shooting heroin. Maybe she didn’t notice the balloon (it was in the kitchen) or didn’t have enough street sense to understand what it was (common way to transport heroin).

    I’ll go with Occam’s razor here and say a guy found dead with a needle mark in his arm and heroin in his house might have actually taken a shot and OD’d.
     
  8. Holmes77

    Holmes77 Member Full Member

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    Is he with DB Cooper and Jimmy Hoffa?
     
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  9. NoNeck

    NoNeck Pugilist Specialist Full Member

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    I’m kind of doing an Occam’s Razor. I think I read that he had a non lethal amount of morphine in his system (normal for a heroin addict).

    The association between heroin and heart disease is pretty loose. And he wouldn’t have been a longterm heroin user. He should’ve been able to withstand a normal dose of heroin…but his heart would’ve been a risk factor for tolerating the heroin (I.e. drop in pulse).

    I guess we’ll never know, but I think it boils down to cardiac arrest primarily due to heart disease which possibly may have been pushed over the edge from a dose of heroin.
     
  10. Cobra33

    Cobra33 Boxing Junkie Full Member

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    First of all you don't have to inject heroin you can snort it/sniff it and alot of people do that.
    You can also smoke it which is probably almost as popular as injecting it.
    The problem with Heroin is the purity. It has to be cut alot and if its not usually people end up dying.
    For instance if heroin around your way is say 1% pure and a new dealer comes in and sells heroin which is 1.5 % pure usually you have a rash of heroin junkies OD as there body can't handle the extra 0.5%.
    Back in the day that's how you could easily tell when a new heroin dealer moved in : by the amount of heroin junkies that overdosed.
     
  11. Cobra33

    Cobra33 Boxing Junkie Full Member

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    What made it easy foe them to kill Liston is that his public persona was very unlikable in the first place for whatever reason.
    Add to the fact that he had assaulted Law enforcement on a couple of times and I don't see anyone on that side really putting too much effort into figuring out how he died.
     
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  12. ETM

    ETM I thought I did enough to win. Full Member

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    I ran into him just yesterday. Came around the corner and he punched me square in the chest. Then he looked down at me and said "(sorry I thought you were somebody else). I appreciated the apology
     
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  13. ETM

    ETM I thought I did enough to win. Full Member

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    Truthfully this will be forever a mystery. Sonny had so much intrigue going on, so much in the shadows. Whatever age he was add about 20 years to it. Could be just the drugs took their toll along with alcohol abuse over many years.
    It's also possible he pissed off the wrong person. Vegas had alot of dangerous people besides Sonny. He once was drunk and he was trying to intimidate an older man at one of the Vegas hotels. Turns out that man was Moe Dalitz. The Mafia's guy in Las Vegas.
    Dalitz told him very calmly "if you hit me ..... you better kill me because I'll have gone in less than 24 hours." After that they just know Liston didn't hit him and checked out of that hotel.
     
  14. KasimirKid

    KasimirKid Well-Known Member Full Member

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    I always thought Sonny was real gentleman. You confirmed my suspicions!
     
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