Ali-Liston 2

Knockdown was legit. You can see his body rattle and the ripples in his body from the punch. He didn't see it coming. Not only that, there is plenty of evidence he looked horrible in sparring, lacked motivation, and was caught by the same punch a few times. And to top it off, Dundee said he trained his fighters to go for that counter over the jab. Ali not only did it in several other fights, he even scored knockdowns with it. There was no fluke.

Was it enough to really hurt him or have him too stunned to gather his bearings and stand up? Probably not, it was the first minute of the first round and Liston was a durable guy. But a shot to the jaw you don't see coming due to blinding speed isn't going to drop you because of the sheer force behind the blow, but due to the accuracy and timing+the body being unable to brace itself.

What followed after the knockdown is completely open to interpretation. The only thing certain is that It was horrible officiating. Combine that with the possibility of Liston either choosing to stay down out of frustration, exaggerating the pain to sell the dive, or taking advantage of Ali's behavior to buy time.

 

The fix was in.

 

It's very doubtful we'll ever know what happened that night with Ali and Liston. Did Liston throw the fight, was it pre planned or spur of the moment?
Was Sonny genuine when he went down, like he'd been shot?
If Sonny threw the fight, why??

 

It was obvious a bad fix.
Ali clearly didn't believe the knockdown was legitimate.
he yelled at Liston to get up and fight, he was disgusted.

 

Totally agree on this one.

 

I agree with both you and JT. Very surprised nobody questions the legitimacy of the “knockdown”.

 

Liston even went down with his hands outstreched, reaching to soften his descent to the canvas. he kind of crawled down to the floor, and crawled along and turned over. Then he made a real bad job of acting when he got to his knee and flopped sideways.
I'm surprised how anyone is so gullible to believe that was all legit too.

 

Hard to say why, but he definitely threw the fight.

 

Bang on.

 

That did look pretty odd. But didn't he look all business, ready to fight before Walcott split them up? I could be wrong.

 

This.,,,,,,it was one of the worst acting jobs in history, wallowing around then falling back down. I don't believe a sole in attendance thought it was legit. Even Ali was screaming ,,ain't nobody gonna believe this.

 

Liston was down for about 16 seconds all up. He even did the old pretend to try and get up then collapse back down trick to make sure he went well over what should have been a 10+ count. He could hardly loll around on the floor any longer as it looked bad enough already. He even added some wobbly legs when he got up. When he got up he watched the sideshow with the referee as he was very likely expecting it to be stopped. Have a look however how superbly he slips and blocks the HARD blows Ali throws straight after the resumption. He was seeing them clear as a bell.

The flop back down is by far the worst of it. A stone could act better.