[CLIP] Cus D'Amato reacts to Ali-Liston 2 during Post-Fight Interviews "Not Listons Fault!"

Don't think I have.

 

I never saw this but I agree with cus.

I always said Ali, Walcott and Fleicsher were more responsible for the resulting farce than Sonny ever was.

Bad officiating. Not Sonnys fault. He was not obliged to get up until he received a count. The time keepers count is not the official count. The referee takes up the count from the time keeper only once the the fighter is in the neutral corner. That is what the neutral corner rule was supposed to mean. It’s the fighter scoring the knockdown own fault if he won’t go to the corner. He holds up the count.

A light punch on the button will deck a good fighter. It was a genuine “flash knockdown” and with Ali acting the goat like that, whooping, jumping and running back and forth, Sonny was not obliged to get up.

He could have got up in an instant but Ali was stood over him. Walcott lost control. Nat should have kept out of it.

 

Agree ... has nothing to do with how hard Ali threw it, etc, never mind how he never knocked anyone else out like that. I've always likened it to a jeweler cutting a diamond; it just takes the right amount of force delivered at the precise spot. It was a perfect circumstance of timing, and it may never happen again. Ali hit the exact right spot at the exact right moment; Liston lunging forward, Muhammad does that quick pivot-and-snap, and collision of fist on temple. I think he was as surprised as anyone that it connected so well, and that prompted his crazed reaction ...

This will probably be debated until the end of time, but that's my take on it -

spt

 

Floyd just being the gracious, class act he always was - even when speaking of an opponent who beat him twice. True gentleman of the sport -

 

Are we actually trying to say that punch, that punch, hurt Liston that bad? Ali, having boxed hours after hours certainly knows what a fighter should look like when stunned, and what a punch from him should feel like to stun someone. Look at his reaction after the blow and what he says to Liston. He says he said, get up, nobody is going to believe this. I'l take that over anybody else commenting on a punch they see on the tv

 

Ali was still very much an over excited man-child at the time. His behaviour at the first Liston fight was equally as immature. Both The weigh in of the first fight (where he over excited himself into a complete frenzy) and the end of the fight (where he screamed himself hoarse in the interview after doing a gig and running around) was the uncontrollable puerile behaviour of a spoiled child. Alis jumping and whooping after decking Liston was completely in character for where he was at during that time.

People tend to give the winner a pass for this sort of criticism. But Ali and his boastful exuberance was unprecedented until then. Champions were expected to show restraint and dignity. It was the norm rather than the exception. Ali changed all of that.

 

Sorry, but Ali’s reaction isn’t the reaction of a man who's convinced he’s just landed a punch that should knock a man like Liston down.
It’s the reaction of a man who’s completely shocked and reckon’s Sonny is taking a dive.
Even Sonny’s attempt at impersonating a fighter who is hurt when he’s on the floor is pretty pathetic.
What the reasons were for this we’ll probably never know, but Ali obviously wasn’t in on it.
Maybe Sonny simply didn’t fancy it and bailed out.

 

This is what colors me extremely dubious. It looks extremely fake to me.

 

Once he was down Sonny could have gotten up but Ali stood over him. So he could not get up. Sonny was conscious. By the time Sonny made it to a knee Ali was still being restrained by Walcott but he broke lose and was running around again. Sonny rolled over at that point. It could be that Sonny decided he no longer fancied it there and then but equally He could have been dizzy enough to topple over. Or he could have decided (like he said at the time) that he stayed down in case Ali might have hit him when he was down. There was no count because Walcott could not control Ali.

Sonny took quite a shellacking in the first fight with Ali. Having trained harder this time perhaps Sonny was hoping he could revenge his last defeat but after the first few moments Ali looked really sharp. He nailed Sonny with a good right beforehand that Liston reacted to in a way that showed he did not know where it came from.

By the time he found himself on the canvas after that point it is reasonable to suggest even (if he was not that hurt) that Sonny remembered the frustration of the previous fight, the beating and decided tonight was going to be even harder. If he did, Sonny did eventually resume fighting once he got up. And he was not looking to go over as soon as Ali began firing at him.

Nat fleischer ruined any chance of anyone finding out how serious Sonny was about continuing with the fight..

Like I say. Ali’s behaviour, Walcott and Fliescher ruined the fight. Not Sonny.

 

I agree to a certain extent, and it's possible that Sonny was hurt by the punch but to me what should have been no more than a flash knockdown.
I mean look at Sonny on the canvas, it's just not convincing, and when he tries to rise and goes down again it just looks fake, and Ali's reaction to me says it all.

 

This is how I see it as well. It definitely seems legitimate when Liston goes down to me, but that rolling around stuff...

My take is that it was a legitimate flash knock down, but that Liston then chose to stay down. There were several contemporary accounts on how crap he looked in training, while Ali looked in great shape and had matured since the first fight whereas Liston had aged. Sonny probably knew he stood close to no chance and chose to go out as soon as possible. Or it was a fix and he chose to stay down for that reason.