I'm considering reading this. However, I've read a lot of negative reviews how Tosches is all over the place, uninformative, unreliable source, etc. , etc. .... Any reviews from others here??
I have the book, I read it a long time ago. It is all over the place, Tosches describes Liston as a man who died the day he was born, and lots of conflicting information from different sources. Liston is basically a cult figure, so much about him is unknown from the date of his birth til the date of his death. It's like the movie Phantom Punch, so much is fictitious, the only thing I liked about it was Ving Rhames as Sonny. One question that I have that I never posted, is that there has always been so much interest about him, and some things will never be truly known, why didn't anyone ever interview Geraldine his wife?
Read the book a few years ago. Seemed to have a lot of specific details on blinky palerma, frankie carbo, and other thugs connected to liston. He also goes over Listons death and even the Rocky vs Moore fight and how there might have been shady deals going on. Doesnt really talk about his youth, amateur career, prison sentence or even his early fights, it almost exclusively focuses on the older liston who spent his days drinking and fight c level fighters. It has info on leotis martin and the autopsy of liston as well. Interesting but not 100% concrete stuff. Not sure how much you could use for a factual historical study.
