Liston should get A lot more stick for being a cheat

Putting liniment on gloves is an old trick and Liston isn't the only one to do it.

 

You kind of gave the game away with that response.

I said there was no evidence Liston intentionally did anything. Your reply was: “The evidence is the man running around blind for a round.”

That directly contradicts the whole “I don’t really have an opinion either way” posture. Someone who was genuinely neutral would treat Ali’s temporary blindness as an unexplained event requiring evidence to connect it to intentional cheating — not as evidence of the cheating itself.

You keep rhetorically distancing yourself from a conclusion while consistently reasoning as though Liston’s guilt is the default assumption.

Aside from that, Ali having vision issues isn’t evidence of cheating — it’s evidence that Ali’s eyes were irritated. The entire dispute is over what caused it. Treating the symptom itself as proof of foul play is already assuming the conclusion you claim not to hold.

That’s not neutrality. That’s framing the incident from the outset as evidence against Liston while downplaying every contemporaneous indication that no foreign substance was found.

Something unusual happening does not automatically point to cheating. That’s the leap you keep making.

Ali having impaired vision for a round is evidence that his eyes were irritated — not evidence of how they were irritated. You’re treating the symptom itself as proof of foul play while dismissing the complete lack of supporting physical evidence for the cheating theory.

And the “there’s no benign explanation unless Ali was hysterical” framing is false. Fighters get sweat, ointment, debris, glove residue, cut compounds, and other irritants in their eyes all the time to varying degrees. The fact that this instance was dramatic doesn’t suddenly override the referee inspection, the lack of odor or stains, Dundee initially saying he didn’t think anything improper happened, and Ali himself admitting he wasn’t sure.

But yes keep playing the neutral card, while simultaneously interpreting every uncertainty in the direction of “maybe Liston cheated,” while every contemporaneous finding against that theory gets minimized.

My apologies — those were your exact words: “I don’t claim to know what actually happened that night, or to really have an opinion either way.”

But that stance doesn’t line up with the way you’re analyzing the evidence. You repeatedly interpret uncertainty in the direction of possible cheating while downplaying or rationalizing away the contemporaneous evidence against it.

When no foreign substance is found, the referee “might’ve missed it.” When Dundee initially says he doesn’t think anything improper happened, that gets brushed aside. When Ali himself admits he doesn’t know whether anything was on the gloves, that uncertainty gets minimized. Yet Ali temporarily losing vision is treated as inherently suspicious and almost self-evidently indicative of foul play.

That isn’t “having no opinion either way.” It’s clearly leaning toward one explanation while avoiding fully committing to it outright. If someone consistently bends every ambiguity in favor of one theory, it’s fair to say they’re not actually neutral on the subject.

And that double standard is really the core issue here.

Every piece of contemporaneous evidence that cuts against the cheating theory gets treated as weak, incomplete, or potentially flawed. The referee inspection? Maybe he missed it. No smell? Maybe it was cleaned off. No stain? Maybe it somehow didn’t leave one. Dundee initially dismissing foul play? Just “spitballing.” Ali admitting uncertainty? Doesn’t matter.

But then a decades-later story attributed to a dead cornerman through multiple layers of retelling suddenly gets treated with immense deference because “well, maybe the writer waited until he died to protect him.” Notice how the burden of proof completely changes depending on which direction the evidence points.

You’re effectively demanding near-perfect certainty from the evidence against cheating while accepting speculation and untestable hearsay as sufficient to keep the accusation alive indefinitely.

And again, the Pollino connection makes this even worse. We’re not talking about some source with a spotless record of sober, verifiable disclosures. This is the same orbit of storytelling tied to bizarre myths like the “Liston’s brother was the real Charles Liston” rumor — another claim supposedly linked back to Pollino only after he was dead and unable to confirm or deny it himself.

At some point, you have to ask whether these are genuine revelations or simply the kind of legendary boxing folklore that grows more dramatic, conspiratorial, and impossible to verify as the decades pass.

You’re being pretty disingenuous here by flattening Ali’s position into “Ali thought they cheated” while completely ignoring the evidence I already provided showing that Ali himself admitted uncertainty afterward about what actually caused the eye issue. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-beaumont-enterprise/198224434/

That uncertainty matters. You can’t cite Ali as though he definitively confirmed foul play while brushing aside the fact that he also acknowledged he didn’t know whether anything was actually on the gloves. You’re selectively presenting the parts that support suspicion while omitting the parts that contradict it.

And the “maybe they washed it away” explanation honestly borders on absurd once you actually look at the substances being alleged. Liniment has an extremely strong, unmistakable odor. You don’t secretly smear it on a fighter’s gloves, have it affect someone badly enough to allegedly blind them, then casually “wash it away” in the middle of a heavyweight title fight without the referee, commission, ringside officials, or Ali’s own corner noticing anything.

Monsel’s solution is even worse for the theory because it leaves visible staining. These aren’t invisible, odorless substances from a spy movie. The idea that they could’ve been heavily applied, caused dramatic symptoms, and then vanished without a trace stretches credibility past the breaking point.

So yes, the referee not finding anything matters — and it matters even more when the alleged substances would’ve left obvious signs behind.

 

Liston cheated against multiple opponents with that trick, Ali was not the only one who claimed it happened to him, it was Liston last chance to win against Ali but that trick failed.

Same happened to Marciano in his first fight with Walcott.

 

Liston never did

 

Liston cheated against no one.

 

Which others besides Machen?

 

Dempsey cheated like a mug and no one cares.

 

That's not really what I meant by that. What I meant is that extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary explanations. Yes, boxers get sweat and grime in their eyes all the time. Has any of them ever run around blinded for as long as Ali? It strikes me as much more likely that it was something out of the ordinary that got in his eye. That's the part that needs to be explained.

You seem to be saying that even entertaining the idea that Liston could have cheated is a sign of bias and tunnel vision. I am entertaining that idea, but I'm not arguing that he did. There's not enough evidence. I also don't think that there's enough evidence to determine that he couldn't possibly have cheated. You'd need, for example, some kind of explanation for what happened to Ali.

It's one. It's one piece of evidence.

Yes. Because I'm arguing that we don't know. You're arguing that we do. The burden of proof is a lot higher for what you're trying to argue.

I'm not gonna call this disingenuous, but that's a very charitable reading of that section of that article. All Ali says is that he doesn't know from where on Liston's person the substance originated. He's not saying that maybe it got there innocently. Machen claimed that Liston put it on his shoulders rather than his gloves. I realize that you've disqualified Machen's opinion, but it is out there.

It's a smoke-filled arena with thousands of fans in it. I don't trust anyone to pick out a single smell among all of those aromas wafting together. That said, the referee's judgment is still good evidence that Liston's gloves were clean. Not undeniable proof, but there's more evidence that they were than that they weren't.

Monsel's and liniment are just two substances. Liston-Ali was a long time ago, but not so long ago that all we had was those two and water.

As opposed to what? The implication here is that the only way to be neutral is to agree with you. I stand by the two things I've argued in this thread: we don't know what happened, and these Liston threads are damn tedious. I double down on that last one, actually.

 

It was not only Machen and Alii, try better.

 

So you have no other names to proffer?

 

Based on what? He was definitely dirty in every aspect of the game but from what I know of the loaded gloves theory was debunked years ago

 

Truer words were never spoken.

 

There was nothing on Liston’s gloves. I’m convinced he threw the fight so it makes no sense that he would cheat. It’s all be proven he never cheated anyway. Unlike Dundee who tore open Ali’s glove and slowed him precious time to recover against Cooper. Or Ali’s flagrant pushing down on Fraziers head that went unpunished

 

Yeah, it doesn't make sense in this case, but that's only a scenario in your head, so has no barring on reality.