Clay-Liston I / Was it fixed?

I thought the first fight was even on the score cards and neither fighter did much.
Liston lumbered along for a few rounds, and Clay only fought in spurts and he did a fair bit of backpedalling and holding.
Liston looked tired before the fight even started. Clay looked tired by the 5th and 6th rounds.
Then Liston quit.

The "fight" has been over-glamourized.
Glorified beyond any semblance of what actually occurred.
It was a terrible fight.
Luckily, Clay going nuts at the weigh-in and ranting in the post-fight scenes gave the press something to write about. A colourful character.
The fight itself was a non-event .... or maybe just an "event" and not much of a fight.
Hardly anyone went to see it. The closed-circuit theater audiences left disappointed. And there was no real interest in a rematch.

 

1st not sure. The 2nd was definatly a fix IMO . Sonny Liston knocked out by a tap like that? I doubt it. Even Ali couldn't believe that one.

What we do know is that Sonny Liston worked for the mafia, therefore there were fights in his career (probably the losses) where he had no say in it.

 

The bout in Miami Beach "Liston vs Clay I"

Was 'even-steven' on the scorecards, after 6-Rounds.

Referee, Barney Felix scored the bout 57-57 (Even)

Judge, Bernie Lovett scored the bout 58-56 (Sonny Liston)

Judge, Gus Jacobsen scored the bout 58-56 (Cassius Clay)
------------------------------------------------------------

Bernie Lovett scored 'Round 5' {10-8} for Sonny Liston. In Rounds, he had 3-2-1 for Sonny.

 

I thought Clay clearly won the 1st and 6th rounds.
I think he won the 3rd round too because he seemed to stun Sonny, but Liston came back and Clay just held on, so it ended up a really close round.

I thought Liston won the 2nd and 4th, close, uneventful. And the 5th round.


I'd say it was even, 3 rounds apiece.
Wasn't much of a fight though.
Maybe they should have been awarded minus points.

 

Legend X,

I do agree, the bout was somewhat 'uneventful'.

But the 'two actors' tried, in what could have been called a 'B-rated Film'.

I scored the bout 3-2-1 in Rounds, for Sonny Liston.

I had the 3rd Round Even, as Sonny came on strong over the last 40-seconds or so.

Cassius won the 1st and the 6th.
Sonny won the 2nd, 4th and the 5th.

 

so it was even or sonny ahead at the point he quit? what a load of bull****.

 

Your talking to the guy who created an alias here (Bill B) just in order to get himself a cheerleader when slating Alli.:yep Either that, or we have two guys here calling him Clay and spacing every sentence with a blank line in between the next.

 

yeah he's a bit of a weird un is our pepe

 

After fight interview with Eddie Machen,

'I flew in from San Francisco to see this. You'd think they would have
put on a better show. Sonny should get an Academy Award for Best Performance
in a Comedy.'

And Clay, he should get an Award for Best Impersonation of a ******. I've seen
enough nuts in the mental institute, so I should know one when I see one.'

 

I know i'm stepping into a hornets nest here, but I got to pull up this thread. I think the reasoning of the anti-fix crowd is shoddy.

There are three basic arguments made the by the anti-fixers and none of them stand up to critical examination.

Argument 1: Saying the Liston-Ali fights were fixed is a conspiracy theory. People who believe in conspiracy theories are nuts.

Counterargument A: Liston was controlled by members of the mafia. The mafia is by definition a criminal conspiracy. How likely is it that a member of the mafia would try to fix a fight?. I'd say pretty damn likely. So believing in an Ali-Liston fix is not exactly like believing that the moon landing was faked.

Counterargument B: What if Liston fixed the fight on his own? He could scratch $5-10 thousand together (maybe borrow it from a loan shark) and have friend place bets on Ali at 7-1. maybe he could get better odds by betting on a knock-out/TKO. Liston was getting screwed on the money front, and a nice tax free pay day might look pretty good.

This is a minimal conspiracy. Two people. And if the friend or Liston don't talk, you'll never have any direct evidence of it.

If you believe that Liston's corner deliberately put a blinding agent on Liston's gloves, this theory of the fight makes a lot of sense. Liston's connections would still be trying to win the fight.

Argument 2: You can't prove the fix in a court of law, so there was no fix.

Counterargument: This a completely illogical standard to set. How many fights can be proven to be fixed in a court of law? Maybe LaMotta-Fox. Even in this case you have to wonder how well LaMotta would hold up under cross examination. He had a very slimy past, and is not the most creditable witness. So if you accept the court-of-law standard, then you have to accept that in the entire history of boxing either zero or one fight were fixed. Do you really beleive that? If you don't, you have to reject the court-of-law standard.

I think the best way of looking at possible fix is apply a five part test:

Does the fight look strange? This is subjective, but both fights look very strange to me. In fight 1, Liston looks like he's trying to miss and also looks like he's pulling his punches. Fight 2 looks like a classic dive.

Did the losing fighter perform well below his established level of ability based on fights before and after the alleged fix?

Hell yes on this one. Liston never looked as bad as fight 1 either before or after. Liston never quit before or after the Ali fights. Liston never went down to a punch as light as the phantom punch before or after that fight.

Did many observers at the time believe that the fight was fixed?

Hell yes.

Was there a big change in the betting odds?

There was

Did the losing fighter and/or his connections have a past record of unethical and/or criminal activites?.

Hell Yes!

So that's 5 for 5. Outside of LaMotta-Fox, I don't think any alleged fix would score higher on this test than Ali-Liston 2. To be clear this test can't prove a fight is fixed, but it shows when there's a reasonable suspicion.

Argument 3: Ali was magic, he turned Liston into a pumpkin with his supernatural powers.

Counterargument: I find it hard to believe that George Chuvalo and Karl Middlenberger could find and hit Ali but Liston couldn't. Ali's magic seems strangely intermittent.


Look I have no heavy axe to grind here. Ali or Joe Louis have to rate as the greatest heavyweight ever and Ali seems a slight better choice. I think Liston was great fighter, but I don't rate him in the top ten heavyweights.

Ali probably could have beat Liston in a legitimate fight. He just never did.

 

didnt watch the fight but I heard that Liston put some chemical in Ali's eyes that blinded him temporarily.

 

I've seen no compelling evidence of a fix in either fight.

 

Yeah the thing is, you need to prove a fix, you don't need to prove the fix didn't happen.

First fight was close but Ali was getting the better of it before liston quit. No real issue.

in the rematch liston came out swinging, Ali caught him cold, jersey panicked and ****ed up, NC would be fair but again I don't really see an issue.

 

What I see on tape:

Fight 1: A champion is beat straight up. He's reaching, injures his shoulder, decides to pack it in. How injured he was vs he just gave up is subject for discussion.

Fight 2: A really strange fight. Ali lands a short, sharp punch that could very well put a man down, but the damage shouldn't be deep. Ali jumps around like a madman, Jersey Joe tries to usher him back to his corner, Liston stays down worried that Ali might hit him. Jersey Joe starts counting, is around four or five, and then suddenly stops the fight because someone tells him ten seconds have passed.

If this is the way professional mobsters plan to fix a fight, I don't know what to tell you. Some real freak occurances here that in my mind don't do anything but cast suspicion in the eyes of the public. They planned that? How do you even do that? No. Surely not.

Maybe there was a fix. Maybe there wasn't. In any case, we never got to see it. Something went real wrong before one or the other could happen.