Sonny Liston vs Rocky Marciano

I'd give the older Walcott and Charles a better chance to beat Sonny than Patterson had. Same with Archie Moore. Despite that, Patterson was a better heavy than all three, IMO. Just one of those quirky things.

 

And really I did not mean it in a way to degrade Liston, I think the likes of Max Baer should of been a better champ than they really where. Fitz though a great fighter himself was just a stop before Jeffries would get the title, and Walcott kinda of falls into it, though Charles did knock off 8 title defenses in his short rein.

 

Not sure if Marciano would of been stopped in Charles 1(2 sure) but your forgetting Charles was in pretty bad shape as well as his face was mush up and both eyes where near close.

 

Yes I thought that was an unusual thing to say given Charles was hurt more in that fight.

 

I'm sure that poster was referring to Marciano-Charles 2 where Charles had pretty much split Rocky's nose into and if Rocky hadn't taken him out quickly that fight might very well have been stopped.

 

Yeah, we're splitting hairs over the details, but we generally agree with the same idea that the minimum size for effectiveness in the current division isn't drastically different from Liston/Ali sized guys.

I personally think that more guys aren't showing up that size is partly due to the creation of the cruiser division, the rule changes, and the fact many guys simply lack the discipline to get in shape. They see other guys somehow still functional flabby and heavy so they don't bother either.

 

OK, let me give an example of where I think Marciano adoration went a little bit overboard. When I found this place, I first spent a lot of time researching through old posts before posting anything myself. Basically just entering fighters names and seeing what came back. One day I entered Marciano. Way back in the archives there's a thread about a comedy skit on some black and white TV show back in the early 1960s where Phil Silvers slapped Rocky. It was a freakin' comedy show, they certainly rehearsed it, Rocky was cool with it or he wouldn't have done it, and he knew it was coming. But I swear there were folks who absolutely lost their merde in huge piles over how dare he insult and humiliate Rocky like that, didn't he know the man was the undefeated heavyweight champion? Well, I hope the man himself didn't take his mystique as seriously as some of his acolytes do.

 

Let's say you're right and people only single out Rocky to get KOd (you're wrong, but let's just speak hypothetically).

If people are claiming that it's a bad matchup based on size, style, and how the boxers abilities stack up, using sound logic, it would be a purely emotional response and deflection to bring up what people are or not saying about another boxer. Address what they said about Rocky without complaining if there are some valid points being made.

To address the Hagler stuff, Hagler only competed at middleweight so there's really no point in discussing him fighting Qawi, Foster, etc. I'm sure most reasonable fans do no expect Hagler's chin to hold up against monstrous punchers several divisions above them just as they would not pit Chavez against Hagler in a h2h discussion. You would probably not even see die hard Hagler or Chavez fans claiming they'd "find a way to win" or dismissing the very idea they could be KOd and calling people who disagree biased or haters.

But that's what often happens with Rocky for whatever reason. People act as if we're picking on him when he was a heavyweight and fought against heavyweights. When people match him against guys who were actually his size such as Beterbiev, people get offended and angry saying he was way too big for Beterbiev and would demolish him in 1 round. If threads put Rocky against a giant like Vitali, some of those same people also act as if we're picking on Rocky. Which is it...???

The bolded part is a very telling Freudian slip on your part. You think a lot of these boxers put up against Rocky in discussions are inferior to him in status and that is part of why you can't accept Rocky losing to them. I think most people, even Liston fans, acknowledge Rocky was the better overall champion in terms of accomplishments. But that is different from h2h ability. Frazier was WAY more accomplished than Wilder, but that's still a very dangerous fight because of the matchup.

Nobody is singling out Rocky, there are plenty of people who will be quick to say Dempsey may get brutally KOd by Lewis, or that Johnson may meet his match against Wladmir. The issue is that Rocky fans are by far some of the loudest of any boxer in h2h discussions and rarely give an inch no matter how seemingly bad the matchup is. It doesn't matter whether people are polite or blunt, whether they construct logical arguments or short dismissive ones, Rocky fans cause a riot unless you agree with them that he can "find a way to win" in virtually any scenario. They rarely give an inch or meet the opposition halfway. It's tiresome. The only boxers who comes close are Tyson and Pacquiao fans.

 

Exhibit A.

I can remind this fellow that Liston did not quit in a fight with a broken jaw, or a fight where his nose was smashed in and bleeding (addressing his hypothetical directly), but he'll just ignore those instances because they do not suit his agenda. The one instance of him quitting, due to an injury, is somehow the most likely outcome.

Literally every post of his in a Rocky thread gives zero credit to the opponent, ignoring all positive qualities, and saying Rocky finds a way to win.

 

There seems to be a double standard in terms of wins over guys of similar size when it comes to classical heavyweights.

The top contenders Liston beat by and large were not much bigger than today's light heavyweights with the exception of Williams but people think he can beat the Klitschkos when in reality they were not much bigger than the guys Beterbiev is beating. Nobody is picking Beterbiev over Lewis or Wladimir despite beating Machen and Patterson sized opponents

 

This is a more dangerous fight for Wilder than it is for Frazier.

At least Frazier demonstrated a dominance over the world. He beat Ali and he also beat a proper tournament winner to achieve this.

Wilder couldn’t do it then and he didn’t do it now.

All Wilder did was defend a spot in the ratings since the basis of his title claim was beating the winner of Stiverene and Arreola. Two guys who never represented anything close to the best in the World when they fought for a vacant title.

The whole time Joshua was making waves with the other half of the title And They never fought. Then Wilder lost a series of fights to linear champ Fury.

so the best in the world was never quite resolved in anyway.

Wilder doesn’t qualify in the way Frazier does in his own time.

 

Yeah, I think we broadly agree. I believe being 10ish pounds below the minimum weight raises a "caution" flag, warning us to be careful about being too confident in their chances in our modern division. But it doesn't automatically disqualify them based on weight. Somebody Patterson-sized warrants more drastic skepticism. Fitzsimmons, Burns, Langford, and Corbett are way out.

In 20 years, I expect it'll reach the point of no return for Ali and Louis, sadly. And that's assuming present trends continue, rather than intensify further.

On the bigger-Boomer issue...I've speculated on this before, and throw it out for you to mull over. I wonder sometimes whether Sonny isn't really a 70s-style Boomer heavyweight akin to Ali, Holmes, Foreman, and Norton. Instead, perhaps he's something we already saw in the division: a guy like Nino Valdez, Max Baer, or Harry Wills. Guys who are 70s-sized, yes, but who don't come from a talent pool with a lot of big men. Consequently, not as impressive in talent as the Boomer heavies who came after. On this reading, Liston would be the last of an old type of heavyweight from the days when high-190 pound guys represented the optimal mixture of abilities.

 

Great post!

 

Your entitled to think so

 

The last part of your post is hard to answer because Liston's age is a mystery. Maybe he was just a genetic standout similar to Baer and Valdez, but we don't know exactly which generation he belongs to.

I suspect (and I am by no means some sort of geneticist), that Liston's physical development may have had something to do with his traumatic upbringing doing grueling work/slavery for his dad. According to Liston himself, he was already 200 pounds as a teenager around 13-14 and it wasn't just fat, he was extremely strong for a kid that age. Foreman also commented on how absurdly strong Liston was when they sparred or he witnessed him doing training drills. Maybe the trauma and overworking somehow triggered something in his physiological development causing him to sprout up quickly. Many teenagers the last couple decades have also sprouted up at alarming rates for whatever reason so maybe there's something there to look into.