Ali-Liston I, II - fixed?

BS. liston coulda went down in round 3 easy as ali had hammered him with many combos of punches up to the ropes but he fought back great after that beating. he goes down to a fix from a so-called nothing punch. none of it makes any sense at all.

 

well believe whatever you want cuz that is not the truth. ali was a great fighter and he proved it. the bigger the fight the better he was. he was smart & tough. beating liston or foreman was no fluke unless you believe the conspiraters. most picture ali as a runner and a light puncher. how could he beat those monsters. well easy as it happened if you know anything about fighting. liston ploddered until he found the oppening which never happened and foreman gave all until he had nothing left.

 

haha good one. ok will give you benefit of doubt. any proof of big money being won on liston retiring after 6th or being ko'd in 1?

 

From the footage alone, I would say the first fight was not fixed. Ali's style was just the perfect foil to an attacking puncher like Liston. Watch Liston against Whitehurst and Machen, then imagine a guy with much faster feet, much faster hands, head movement, lean backs and clinches, and woila, you have Liston in a world of trouble, as anyone would be with a guy of that speed and talent level. Ali was the Corbett to Sullivan and the Tunney to Dempsey - just had that style that gives the attackers fits.

Second fight - maybe, maybe not. What is clear is that Ali landed really nice rights on Liston in both fights that seemed to stun him, and if I'm not mistaken, Leotis Martin took Liston out with a right, and maybe Marty Marshall dropped him with the same, though I'm not sure. Ali had blazing hand speed and awesome timing. Watch his counter right over the jab of Wililams and Foley - similar shots that dropped Liston. Liston lunges forward with his jab, exposing his jaw with forward momentum (which increases the power of impact if you understand physics), and Ali brings his right up and down over the top of Liston's arm directly onto his chin. Sonny's head buckles from the blow. From the frontal view it doesn't look like much, but there is a side angle view that I have seen that really does show that Ali indeed got his shoulder and body into the punch at the moment of impact. Also, the blazing speed of it caused more of a shock - the old adage that the punch you don't see doing the most damage. Liston did not lay on the canvas out cold, nor did he take the count. He got up and was willing to continue. So, he could simply have been momentarily shocked and dazed and could possibly have recovered. Unfortunately, referee Walcott deprived us of that because he stopped the fight without ever giving Liston a count.

The flip side of this is Ali never had another 1st round KO, and I"m not recalling another fight where he dropped a guy in the 1st round. Also, the way LIston tried to get up and then fell back down did have a bit of a funny appearance about it. Was it an act? Can't know for certain.

Other question is whether he really was dropped, but momentarily decided to quit - not as a pre-fight fix, but rather in the sense that he said to himself 'Oh ****, here we go again,' and decided that he really didn't care anymore. I kind of think this is exactly what happened to Walcott when Marciano dropped him in their rematch. He could have got up, but realized he was in for a tough night, didn't want to go through the long grueling war of the first fight, and decided to get up right when the ref got to ten so he could try to act like he beat the count and stir up some controversy. I also think Carl Williams did the same with Tyson - not immediately responding when the ref asked him if he was okay, closing his eyes and giving that subtle nod 'no' (watch it in slo mo) and then immediately going berserk saying he was okay only after the ref stopped it.

 

Thing is, Liston did get up and he and Ali began fighting again while Fleisher was telling ref Walcott that Liston had been KO'd. That tells me that in Sonny's mind at that moment the fight was still on. If there was indeed a fix, would Liston simply have gone down again at the first opportunity? Of course we'll never know...

Walcott should have let the fight go on, ruling that even though Liston had been down for more than 10 seconds, he (Walcott) chose not to begin the count because Ali hadn't gone to a neutral corner. As it happened, Liston did not get the benefit of an audible count.

 

Everything about the second fight seems fishy. Sonny sure looked like he was tanking when he was rolling around on the canvas. Given the confusion after the knockdown Liston had to get up: it was obvious that he wasn't knocked cold, so what was he going to do? Had he stayed down, the dive would have been even more obvious. Just as damning is Liston's reaction to the stoppage: he should have been going nuts. He hadn't been counted out, and he looked fully "recovered"; yet when Walcott stopped the fight Sonny just walked away. For whatever reason, Liston did not come to fight that night, and he tanked at the first opportunity. Well, the second, actually: Clay hit him with an overhand right earlier in the round that looked much harder than the "Anchor Punch."

The first fight was legitimate. Clay beat Sonny up, pure and simple.

 

Sincerely, I marvel at your appraisal of the Phantom Punch as the "Nothing Punch". You have already confessed that nothing under the heavens will dislodge you from this belief. But please indulge me a bit.

Power is the rate at which work is done. At 6'3", 206 lbs., Ali had the fastest hands of any fighter of such heavyweight dimensions. Thus, he was powerful; plus, young, practiced, and blessed with pinpoint timing. And he caught Liston at the fullest extension of his left, thus like a veritable sitting duck. An onrushing Big Cat fell just as Liston did from another "nothing" "tap" from a backpedaling Ali: forward on all fours like an armadillo. In any example in the physical world, two clashing forces will create a proportional impact.

And from my own humble experience with the gloves on, watching Ali's body behind the fist and its visible impact on Sonny's head, I know the punch was a good one.

Truth is, no one really knows what, if anything, went on in backrooms prior to the first bell. Without evidence, speculation is all that can be offered, and here one fantasy is as good as another. I personally don't care very much but for the athletic aspect of the matter, on film. My position is Ali was good enough to legitimately floor Liston and give him the chance to do what he had to do.

Whoa. As I have quoted above, Liston himself is on record, not poor Dundee, saying exactly that he didn't want to rise because Walcott couldn't control Ali and he was afraid Ali the nut would sucker-punch him on the way up. Watching the film, this is feasible, as Liston never ceases to peek around for Ali when he should have been trying to get up.
Again, without evidence, theories are a dime a dozen. To me the film matches pretty well with the historical record.

No less a sane source than José Torres is on record as follows: "The room was empty. Liston was embarrassed and very depressed. My first question was, 'Did you see the punch?' And he told me, 'Yes, but I saw it too late.' That was it. In boxing, the punch that knocks you out is not the hard punch. It's the punch you don't see coming. And Ali was a master at that. He punched so fast, he didn't give you a chance to prepare for the blow. If Ali had gone to a neutral corner, I don't know if Sonny could have gotten up by ten or not. He never got a proper count, but he was hurt, and I'm not sure he wanted to face Ali. Sonny was afraid of crazy people, and he thought Ali was crazy. Before the fight, he'd told me about his experiences in jail. I'd heard about what happens to prisoners with **** and sodomya, so I'd asked Liston if he'd had problems like that. And he told me no one had done anything like that to him because everyone in prison was afraid of him, but he had been afraid of the crazy prisoners."

The trap is on film, friend, for all to see. Ali threw no jabs and was clearly deploying the tactic of the right hand, nine years before Zaire. And Sonny fell for it.

Without evidence, your dismissal of Ali's serious assertion that he learned a punch used by Jack Johnson cannot carry weight. You say Ali was full of it, but you are saying this about a fighter famous for backing up his words. And here he even only spoke after having definitively declawed the Bear.

 

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tell that to stonehands