Rate the quality of Sonny Liston's resume

This and other posts in this thread are really spot on L, Liston was absolutely always dwarfing his best opponents. Machen, Folley, Patterson are his top 3 wins… he was always in the territory of 15-20lbs higher then them, as you point out Harold Johnson beat Machen lol whilst Machen was still using his right hand (he was injured for Liston) Williams wasn’t overly good but he almost had Liston out of there according to SL and he was the only viable guy he fought to match him physically - if he could box better and take it better… Valdez is deflection, don’t bother with that rabbit hole everybody else knows he was shot and only ever decent lol.

 

I did some research one Cleveland Williams I would like to share. Here are the ever rated by the NBA fighters Williams fought with the date and the result:

5-12-1953 Omelio Agramonte--UD--unrated
10-15-1957 John Holman--KO 7--unrated
12-3-1957 Frankie Daniels--UD--unrated
3-25-1958 Dick Richardson--WDQ 4--unrated
8-3-1958 Frankie Daniels--UD--unrated
2-7-1961 Wayne Bethea--UD--unrated
5-15-1961 Alex Miteff--KO 5--#9 heavyweight
4-3-1962 Ernie Terrell--KO 7--unrated
5-15-1962 Alonzo Johnson--KO 1--unrated
7-10-1962 Eddie Machen--Draw--#2 heavyweight
3-9-1963 Billy Daniels--UD--#6 heavyweight
4-2-1963 Young Jack Johnson--KO 10--unrated
10-7-1963 Roger Rischer--KO 3--unrated
9-30-1964 Billy Daniels--UD--#8 heavyweight
6-11-1972 Terry Daniels--UD--unrated

Frankie Daniels rating was at light-heavyweight. So Williams defeated 12 ever rated fighters and drew with 1. He had 3 wins over 2 fighters rated when he fought them.

*my take--not awful, but nothing to get excited about. Two men, Holman and Terrell, were or would be, top five fighters. Holman had lost five of his last six. He retired after the Williams fight. Miteff had lost three of his last four and would drop from the rankings with the Williams loss and never return. Terrell would go on to become the #1 contender.

For me, Williams is an enigma. Why such an exciting and potential top box office fighter spent his career in the southern and Texas boondocks is a head-scratcher. His only appearance in New York was in a 4 round preliminary at the Polo Grounds on the undercard of the Marciano- LaStarza card against Sylvester Jones. He was knocked down twice and lost a four round decision. He never fought at Madison Square Garden. He never fought in the Chicago Stadium or in Chicago at all. He never fought at the Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium or in LA at all. He never fought at the Detroit Olympia. Why did he not appear at the major venues?

Williams had a strong statistical record against largely so-so opposition. He managed a draw with Machen, but was blown out by both Satterfield and Liston.

Draw your own conclusions.

*just an aside. The Ernie Terrell-Gerhard Zech fight from 1964 is currently on you tube.

**Williams had his first fight the same month Joe Louis announced his retirement as heavyweight champion. His last fight was two months before Foreman won the championship.

 

If size is the factor that is being implied, then Usyk has flipped that belief on its head, correct?

Moving Usyk back in weight when he was younger and prime or closer to prime, it’s arguable that he had some tougher fights against smaller, more comparably sized opposition.

Based on his CW days and some fight night weights, Olek was closer to natural at about 215 lbs.

Several of the heights you’ve listed are clearly inflated (eg - Fury, Dubois and Parker) - including the height listing for Usyk himself.

Liston did hit like a truck but he also sported an 84” reach which would also stand him in far better stead than other fighters of the same heigh (= 6’1”) but of much lesser reach.

Also, Liston could only fight the best available to him (and there were a few who pointedly avoided Liston) and the complexions and outcomes also count, somewhat separate to the question of the size of the opposition -

Say, Patterson was relatively smaller but could Liston do any more to Floyd than he did in 2 fights? - he destroyed Floyd as well as anyone could imagine any SHW could - if they could actually replicate same.

As to 6’3” 215 lb, young and durable Clark, a much older, slower and well past prime Liston saw him off in dominant fashion.

Logical to assume that the 1959/1960 Liston would have had a much and even easier time with that same Henry Clark.

 

That's pretty typical of Lou Viscusi's fighters, because Viscusi would want to be promoting their fights as well as managing them. You could say the same about Williams's stablemate Roy Harris, who also very seldom fought outside Texas. The difference being that the smaller, paler Harris had no difficulty attracting name opponents like Bob Baker and Willie Pastrano to his home state.

 

These are misleading stats too.. his opponents had 536 losses? Context? Marciano fought Moore, Walcott, Matthews & Charles.. just those 4 men alone had 514 fights in total.. it wouldn't take a detective to deduce that naturally they are going to have more losses on their record .. higher fight frequency would mean losses & underperformances were more likely.. what elite fighter on Listons record had a record the length of Charles or Moores? None.

Eight were at or under 180lbs? LMAO.. reaching much? Marciano was around 185lb himself.. proves nothing really.. & 5 under the LHW limit? Think you'll find its 3, not 5.. very early in his career & they were just under by 1-3lbs.. as you already got told, Liston outweighed 44 of his opponents, sometimes by as much as 30lbs.. so don't get smart with Marciano weight stats again in future.

Marciano crammed more into 8 years than Liston did over his entire 17. Cope with that.

 

Usyk is an exception smaller HW fighting good but not great HWs. Size matters, there would be no divisions otherwise. The old adage is a good big un beats a good little un.. in my time following the sport I've found that to be true more often than not. Patterson didn't even really try in those fights with Liston, he shat himself like Spinks. He was notoriously chinny too. A very small HW also.

 

You still haven't provided any evidence for your extremely dubious claim that Machen's right hand
was injured for the Liston fight.

 

Who the hell are you to say that Patterson '' didn't even really try '' in the Liston fights and that he '' shat ''
himself ? Floyd,as great as he was, simply lost to a superior fighter in Liston.This sort of thing does happen in
boxing.Perhaps you didn't know that.

 

So according to you Marciano achieved more in 8 years than Liston did in 17 years ? Yeah right. Marciano's
title defences included such legends as Don Cockell and Roland La Starza,while Liston wiped out all the
leading contenders before he got a chance to fight for the heavyweight-title.I suggest you take another look at
the resumes of these guys.

 

Ok , with regards to Joshua he was comprehensively between by the obese Andy Ruiz.Now nobody would
seriously suggest that Ruiz is remotely in the same league as Sonny Liston.Sonny would be perfectly capable
of stopping Joshua,despite AJ's superior size.
As for the comparative size of both Liston's and Marciano's opponents there is one additional factor.
Marciano's most notable victories came against fighters who were old and past their prime,whereas
Liston's best victories were against guys who were still in their prime.

 

Sure, size matters when all things otherwise are equal - yes, good big man beats…etc - an axiom that exactly specifies, hypothetically, that the only difference between two fighter is size, size being the deliberately isolated and defining advantage for the bigger man.

However, all things otherwise aren’t often equal in the real world when big meets small, skill, agility etc. often, and somewhat naturally, favouring the smaller man - and Usyk has enjoyed said discrepancies between he and the less skilful behemoths he has engaged at HW.

As to being exceptional, we are talking fighters of exceptional qualities at any rate - for another example there was 5’10”, 71” reached Tyson cutting a swathe through the new and early dawn of the SHWs.

Years before that, there was Joe Louis destroying the giant likes of Carnera, Baer and Simon. Not just beating those guys but destroying them.

We can debate their skill levels but again, it proved that size isn’t the be all, end all - with the smaller man often displaying that much more skill than his appreciably larger opposition.

For Patterson, chinny actually meant he could be KD’d but not necessarily so easily KO’d or stopped - and the proof in the pudding is that only Ingo, Liston and Ali turned the trick - no one else.

Save for the first Ingo fight (7 KDs suffered in just the one fight) the bulk of the KDs came earlier in Floyd’s career also. Jess Willard was very durable but he also had 7 KDs recorded against him in a fight that should’ve been stopped much sooner.

I wouldn’t dismiss Liston two, first round, “10” count KOs over Patterson so easily out of hand.

Sure, Patterson held a fear of losing and the stigma he that felt surrounded same (see his precautionary post fight disguises).

However, he was legitimately and comprehensively destroyed by Liston twice - also I don’t know that Floyd didn’t try to chance his arm better in the rematch, I think he did give it a good try - and the obvious question would be - exactly what should or could Floyd have possibly done different for better outcomes in either fight?

I acknowledged Patterson’s smaller size but will repeat the musing, what more could be expected of Liston beyond what he displayed against Floyd?

The other 2 guys who stopped Patterson most certainly couldn’t keep Floyd down as Liston so empathically did.

No matter the size of HW and their skill that you choose to put before him, they’re going to be hard pressed to beat Liston’s 2 demolitions of Floyd, 2 mins 6 secs and 2 mins 10 secs respectively - hard to beat when either considered separately or even more so when viewed together as a package.

 

Thanks. Makes sense. But was it Viscusi or Benbow?

Anyway, Harris is interesting. Here are some of his opponents and their NBA rating when he fought them?

Bob Baker--4-30-1957--#5 (April 3, 1957) for March*
Willie Pastrano--6-11-1957--#4 (May, 1957)
Willi Besmanoff--10-29-1957--unrated
Donnie Fleeman--4-1-1959--#9 light-heavy (March, 1959)
Charley Powell--6-9-1959--#7 (May, 1959)

*Baker was rated #5 in March, 1957. He lost twice in April, to Besmanoff and Harris, and was not rated in May. He definitely would have been rated for Harris if he had not fought Besmanoff. Would he have fallen out of the ratings if he had not also lost to Harris? I don't know. Technically, he had been rated #5 in the last published NBA ratings.

During his rather brief career, Harris defeated 8 fighters who appeared in the NBA ratings--Charley Norkus, Baker, Pastrano, Besmanoff, Fleeman, Powell, Alejandro Lavorante, Henry Hall

Fleeman and Hall were rated at light-heavyweight. Lavorante was a 4 fight tyro.

On the positive side, there were several good trial horses like Buddy Turman and former British Empire champion Joe Bygraves, and Joe Rowan. (his obituary claimed Rowan was rated in 1955 & again in 1956 by The Ring. I haven't been able to substantiate that as I do not have access to The Ring's monthly ratings)

Bottom line--if Williams is an enigma and hard to rate, Harris on examination looks like a better scalp for Liston than most assume. He never lost to anyone who was not a champion or top five contender at some point. And defeated more rated and higher rated heavyweights than Williams. (unless one credits Williams for Terrell's later rating)

 

Liston's win against Patterson was a pair of great wins. But, like all fighters, one can disparage the win if they are determined to. One can say that Liston beat a "light heavyweight" in Floyd Patterson and if one really wants to hit below the belt, they can call Patterson a "super middleweight". Although if Patterson was fighting today, he likely would fight as a super middleweight and light heavyweight. Maybe as a cruiserweight at some point. But the way I see it, by the standards of 1962/63, Patterson was a HEAVYWEIGHT. The best the division had to offer. And Liston took him out.

 

State of this:

This content is protected

Was that even real? .. where did they drag these fellas from

 

Albert "The Bunny Hop Bomber" Westphal, widely feared as the Don Cockell of Germany.

Anyway, if I had to take a stab at it, Liston's resume gives me a little more confidence than Marciano's. The best guys Liston beat were some combo of younger, slightly bigger, or slightly better than the best Marciano victims. Of the young guys each fought, Patterson, Patterson, Folley, and Machen were better than Layne and LaStarza, for example. Moore and old Walcott were as good as Folley and Machen, probably, but not as good as Patterson, and were old.

Williams was the kind of guy Marciano didn't have on his record. Liston has a shootout with a near-peer 200+ pound puncher on his record. Marciano didn't, alas.

But the gap isn't huge. Liston is a step beyond Patterson and Marciano, but not a flying leap. You need to wait until Ali to really get a massive jump forward.

None of their reigns -- Marciano, Patterson, Walcott, Charles, Ingo, Liston -- were anything close to what Louis did to the division.