Clay v liston in 63: any difference?

Always.

 

Liston was still a while away from having a competative fight even in 1963. Sonny would also have less respect for clay in 63 than he had for him in 64. I have not worked out yet if clay would have of had the jones fight by then, but if he had of done by that point that would be enough hard competative rounds to prepare him for liston than the lame resistance of patterson, king and westphal were for sonny.

 

In '63, Liston was in the midst of being "fat and happy"..feasting off 1 and 3 round blowouts..not since Machen in 1960 had Liston done any real work...and that was partly a track meet.

 

The fight happened at the right time, if Ali would of fought like this against Liston he would of had his head knocked off


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLe1F4jC4Ag[/ame]

 

Then again this is how he treated Henry Cooper before the fight:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtzDhGlQexQ[/ame]

 

Ali would have beaten Liston up a year earlier. It wouldn't have made a difference.

 

no difference, the empirical evidence we have doesn't suggest the fight will ever be close and that's all that we can go off if we're going to strive to be objective.

 

Liston's prime was over by about 1960, he was 5 years older than he said so well past it when he and Ali fought in 1964 and 65.

 

Well I certainly wouldn't use that way of thinking and I think it's pretty stupid personally, not saying you're stupid because you're a fine poster, but I expect better of you than to suggest something like that mate.

For one, Patterson and Ali are nothing alike.

And for two we have hindsight, we know now by looking back that a ranking means **** all because Ali was only rated below Floyd at that time for the sole reason that Floyd had done more than him at that time, it had nothing to do with him being a better heavyweight than Ali, because he definitely wasn't. A ranking means **** all in the light of the empirical evidence we have, which blatantly proves to us that the styles advantage was heavily in favour of Ali.

If the styles advantage was in favour of Liston but Ali beat him simply because he was better then I would say yes, in 63 Liston could do it, because Ali wouldn't be at the same level lilely as he was then the fight actually happened, that coupled with Liston matching up well stylistically gives him a great chance. But that is definitely not the case so it's a stupid argument to be put forth imo.

Liston never wins for me against Ali, I'm just being objective, no agenda