Yes, you’re correct thanks CT. I am not very wordy or good with my grammar/spelling and I’m shocked I’m still in the job I have to be honest.
No one is calling him a kid off the street, you parade this feat off to the world but it’s just ridiculous. In this sparring Liston is a former HW champion, Foreman is a novice teenager these are facts- both guys are strong but as you’d expect shockingly to you for some reason, Sonny Liston backed him up in sparring because he was and I’m gonna repeat myself for you, a former HW champion and George Foreman was at the time a teenage novice.
The light heavy most likely isn't going to beat either Liston or Foreman by out punching them or by feats of strength. Foreman and Liston are poster boys for why the words big and dumb sound so poetic when used in combination. They are both known for their skills at cutting off the ring, even though neither of them ever demonstrated such skill in an actual fight. You can move all day on Liston and it is because of, not in spite of, his jab. I don't think that a smaller man could make a living fighting him up close but he needs to set to punch, so a guy that moves, steps in and lets go and then moves has a shot. Foreman...you have to understand how green a young Foreman really was. Twenty odd amateur fights, very few pro rounds by the time he fought Ali. "Prime" Foreman was a big strong stupid guy and, I imagine, George spent a decade ruminating upon how stupid he was in order to become the fighter he was when he came back. You could fight George a couple of ways, I think. He really neglected his jab as a young man and he didn't move well so he could be outboxed in that way and there were light heavies way better than Peralta. With a referee that enforced the rules and didn't let George push people away, you could get some mileage by getting inside his punching range. He punched top down. Again, you could get inside. land and get out. I think that Billy Conn would be a fair choice to beat them. His boxing IQ was sooooo far above either Liston or Foreman, even above Ali. Look at the people he fought at 18, 19, 20 with no amateur experience. They wouldn't be able to catch him- he was faster on his feet than Ali, if for no other reason than being 30 pounds lighter, not to mention being more educated and experienced. He would catch them turning and step in to land punches and move away. When you are smart enough to be able to figure out the other man's effective punching range in the first few seconds of a fight, and then are skillfull enough to stay beyond that range and, alternately, to step inside that range and escape again....
Prime Charles prob gives both a better fight than most would imagine. He had an excellent chin and the movement n smarts to get wins on both. Although I wouldn’t bet it.
Very interesting; thanks. You don't see Liston as being all that skilled in general? Also, can you elaborate a bit on why Sonny's jab contributed to his inability to cut the ring off? I suspect I know why, but may well have it wrong.
This is a photo of Liston shadow boxing Foreman. https://external-preview.redd.it/p5...bp&s=abaeba4bd95259ec22a9d34ceb791ff71ae88c56 Here is Foreman in the olympics. This content is protected This is Foreman in '73. Are you going to sit there and tell me there's a significant difference physique wise? https://boxrec.com/wiki/thumb.php?f=Foreman150584795.jpg&width=375 He was 219 when he debuted, at which point he was still sparring with Liston (he stopped sparring with him at 20-21 iirc, not 19). And when he defeated Frazier he was...... 217.
I give very little shot for anyone over a prime Liston and only the slightest bit better against Foreman and that would be the obvious boxers like a Tunney or a Charles ... either has a shot at heavyweight but at 175 coming up less ..
Utterly irrelevant to my comments. No 19/20 year old professional male athlete is fully physically developed. Foreman’s relative weight at 19 vs 24 is also irrelevant. His whole body composition would have changed significantly in those 5 years.
"They are both known for their skills at cutting off the ring, even though neither of them ever demonstrated such skill in an actual fight." This content is protected Billy Conn's ring IQ was certainly not better than Liston or Ali's. If it was he probably wouldn't have lost 1 in 7 times he stepped in the ring.
Untrue. Being an athlete doesn't magically prolong your development rate, and physical development stopping by that age isn't uncommon at all. Did his body composition change significantly in those 3 years between Liston-Martin and Foreman-Frazier? No. We have photographs and video footage that prove otherwise, regardless of age.
Sonny Liston tore through the heavyweight division from 1958 to 1962,becoming the most formidable threat to Floyd Patterson. Yet according to you Sonny Liston was a '' poster boy for being big and dumb ''. The same Sonny Liston who is acclaimed as being one of the finest boxer-punchers in heavyweigh history ? The same Sonny Liston whose formidable fighting abilities caused the great Emanuel Steward to rate him on a par with Muhammad Ali ? There is absolutely no way this ATG could be dismissed as being merely '' big and dumb ''. You claim that George Foreman never demonstrated an ability to cut off the ring.Please watch Foreman's fight with Ken Norton.As a bonus watch the first round of the famous Rumble in the Jungle.Foreman so successfully cut off the ring against Muhammad Ali that Ali admitted he was forced to adopt the rope-a-dope stategy in the second round. Ali said it was impossible to avoid Foreman by using his usual legendary footwork because of Big George's consummate use of ring-space.Hence Ali's rope-a-dope strategy.
Ali never intended to move all night. He was no fool and knew that he didn't have the legs to do it. He also knew that George had about 140 rounds of boxing, amatuer and pro, and that he would be able to out smart him, which he did. Being acclaimed by one of the finest by fans most of whom don't really understand boxing. And you can be one of the best at anything at heavyweight and still not be all that good at it. "Cutting off the ring" against Kenny Norton means absolutely zero. Stick and move was never an elements of Norton's game
You are trying to convince me that cutting off the ring on Kenny Norton means something? When did Kenny Norton ever establish any credentials as a guy that could move? Watch the video you posted and you can see that he is trying to do something that he doesn't do well and is uncomfortable with. Why didn't you post one of the Peralta fights? Of course Conn had a higher ring IQ. He fought guys like Kreiger, Zivic, Apostoli, Yarosz, Young Corbett 3. There is nobody that Liston fought that compares to that; the smartest guy he fought beat him pretty easily the first time and ridiculously easy the second time. Ali got smart when he got old.
So basically you are calling Ali a liar.The man himself stated he intended to use footwork against Foreman but had to abandon it because of reasons I've already given.Are you seriously suggesting that Ali intended to let Foreman continously batter his body by laying on the ropes ? Apparently Foreman's punches had Ali urinating blood after the fight. Ok,you claim that Foreman never successfully cut off the ring yet when given the empirical evidence of Foreman doing just that against Ken Norton you dismiss it because '' stick and move was never an element of Norton's game ''. Look, the fact is Foreman successfully cut the ring off against an outstanding fighter who gave Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes sheer hell.Foreman also did the same against Ali in the first round,forcing Ali to completely change his strategy.Case closed. What on earth do you mean '' you can be one of the best at anything at heavyweight and still not be all that good at it ''. Skill is skill,no matter what the weight-division is. It wasn't only fans ( who you regard as being mostly ignorant of the skills of boxing ) who admired Liston but such men as Eddie Futch and Emanuel Steward,two of the greatest trainers in boxing history.Also two of the greatest ever boxing-historians,Hank Kaplan and Herbert Goldman were passionate advocates of Liston's skills.Sonny Liston was a terrific technician but his skills are sometimes mistakenly overlooked because of his nuclear punching power.
