Why Does This Forum Love Sonny Liston

You are joking?

 

Seldon 2-1 in title fights. Liston 2-2.

 

I mean the Liston tank can't really be proven but I have my thoughts on that. I agree with your general point about the Ali Liston fights those were big important chances for Liston.

 

No. We live in a bubble here in Classic. Sonny Liston died 55 years ago. That is ancient history. your regular guy that watched Usyk vs Fury doesn´t know anything about Sonny Liston.

 

Liston got up and kept fighting. I never saw that in a thrown fight.

 

I am one of the people that tend to defend Liston, but not because he's the best. I defend just because people tend to underrate him saying he was a bum. I think he lacked heart and isn't even close to my top 10, but Mike Tyson is in my top 10. I like Liston more than Tyson but I couldn't rate him above Tyson. Liston is still a solid fighter though and some people just get a little too obsessed with the idea of Liston if he wasn't mob controlled.

 

It's possible Ali just caught him and he didn't recover.

 

Maybe it has to do with all the ridiculous overblown Tyson worshipping carried by casuals.

Check some threads from a few years ago and you will see plenty of "Tyson would kill Ali, Joe, George, Louis, etc. with a single hand!". So maybe there is a natural counter reaction against the whole Tyson worshipping.

On the other side, there is an overall impression that Liston was somehow wronged. Man got dealt a bad hand inside and outside the ring. He was constantly harassed and criticized, justly or unjustly.

He wasn't the brutal criminal portrayed by the media. He was a poor kid with a harsh upbringing, trying to survive and get a better life.

Maybe he tanked versus Ali; but being ostracized just on suspicions, feels wrong.

 

Because this forum is called Classic and Sonny is a legend. Many of us also like mysteries. We also look through the sentiments and Liston at one point was highly regarded by modern experts, highly. The words of appreciation directed at him are impressive. His ring performances are also impressive. And the average boxing fan who knows something more, remembers Sonny mainly from the strange and horrible fights with Ali. So Sonny gets a lot of unfair marks.

In my opinion, both Tyson and Liston are very underrated champions. For three reasons - they had the most painful falls in the history of boxing, their personality meant that they were not the favorites of publicists who loved to criticize them, especially when they were at the bottom and their CV is much weaker than they were. There are at least a few weaker than them with better CVs, but many fans on this forum look deeper.

 

This thread is incomplete until @RockyJim weighs in.

 

They either love him, or hate him.

No in-between with our sonny..

 

He got up and started to fight because Walcott didn't do what he was supposed to do: Count to freakin 10. And Sonny was flopping on the canvas like a beached whale waiting for Jersey Joe to count him out. ALI hadn't been told anything but knew it was a dive when Liston went down from that light punch. Ali freaked out at the realization that he was involved in a fixed fight that would be seen around the world. So then Walcott had to corral Ali to a neutral corner while Sonny, who had never studied the Stanislavsky Method at Actors Studio, was left with the task of improvising. It proved too much for him.

 

This.

 

Hes proven to have power against modern sized heavys. As in anyone can feel it. Not in terms of being one of the hardest hitters ever. If Tyson was one of the hardest hitting ever he would not have needed to weigh 215 pounds+ at 5 ft 10. His weight limited him more than any ATG HW ever and if that weight wasn't neccessary for him to fight the way he did he wouldn't have had it. The small guys who hit the hardest don't have to worry about that.

Langford is the best example of an ATG hitter bulking up and theres several differences. He was much shorter than Tyson, only had to come up to about 200 and could still go 20 rounds easy. Langford won his first HW title at 158 pounds and at his most dominant was still under 170. Langford had to come up to 200 specifically to fight guys like Wills and Fulton. Tyson was 214 in his boxing debut and 221 at 20 when he fought for his first title. That weight was an absolute neccessity for Tyson to have HW power.

Most of Listons proof is anecdotes and the "eye test" but when you're Floyd Patterson running around with Tyson Furys arms you don't have to prove nearly as much as someone who doesn't have the measurables. Reach isn't everything and some power can't be measured but theres no proof Tyson had that sort of power and if he did have it he'd have been able to weight much less. When someone claims Liston hits the hardest and they look at him they go "sounds about right". Liston in his final fight at 40 knocked out his largest opponent in Wepner. Who was also prime Foremans largest opponent. Wepner won his American title over Terrell who was the best superheavyweight Liston could have put on his resume during the 60s. I think Listons power is fairly proven so far as it being enough to prove he could hit potentially the hardest. If by proof you mean counting knockouts of large fighters Tyson is more proven. But thats not what that means.

Tyson is in Foremans and Listons class as one of the most consistant quick finishers ever but that is not the same as having the most power neccessarily. Like I said in prior post no ATG HW was as dependent on the early success as Tyson was and this skews his results more to early round knockouts regardless of how hard he hit. He stands out more historically as a speed boxer than a power one even if these things have overlap. Foreman and Liston could handle not dominating the early part of a fight against people not named Muhammad Ali it just never happened people speculated. With Tyson no speculation is needed.


Also Tyson did have more difficulty knocking out modern sized HWs. Fighters with huge reach advantages in Tucker and James Smith were able to hold Tyson off and go the distance and Tucker might have beaten Tyson if there fight was a 15 rounder. Then theres Buster Douglas, Ruddock, Holyfield and Lewis etc. Several of Tysons victims probably hit harder than him he was just a better fighter and that difference couldn't swing it their way. Bowe and Foreman who Tyson didn't fight were the only elite HWs who could hit harder. Tyson was more the best guy with power than the guy with the most power.