Could Lyle Have Taken Title From Patterson?

@klompton2 I do greatly appreciate and am honestly grateful for the info, but I still don't see the guy who knocked the crap out of George Foreman and starched Shavers not hurting and stopping Patterson, even in his prime.

Patterson was no joke as champ, absolutely. But Lyle was too tough imo.

 

styles, styles!

 

Well, though Lyle wasn't the boxer or jabber Liston was, he was not far from as powerful and could be just as mean and intimidating. Did Patterson do well against fighters like that? I'm asking non-facetiously.

 

Peralta...

 

Young,Ali,Peralta all boxers survived Ron while Floyd beat Bonavena, Chuvalo, Ingo, drew with Quarry, all agressive punchers. As stated by others, only liston and Ingo(once in three) ko'ed Patterson in his long career, fought mainly at the top level. Lyle was good but a poor man's Liston, he did best against macho, big punchers, IMO Floyd too fast, if Quarry could outbox Lyle, Patrson should. However, I'm not bullish about this, Lyle could win, i just think it is unlikely.

 

Chuvalo knocked out Doug Jones and Jerry Quarry when both were highly rated. That’s two better knockouts than Lyle has on his resume.

 

You would be shocked how highly ranked many of Lyle's opponents were when he beat them. Garcia, Rondon, Middleton, and several others were all top 10s. I may be wrong about Rondon though.

 

I am surprised they were rated at all. Garcia had lost his last two fights by hard knockout. Ten fight novice joe Alexander had just flattened him in one round right after a comeback version of Ernie Terrell had just demolished Garcia one fight earlier. Middleton (who Lyle fought twice)had just been outpointed by Jerry Quarry the first time (without ever having beaten a good fighter himself) and the second time Larry had not fought since the first time they fought. So middleton was 0-3 against good fighters when Lyle was done with him. Rondon had never fought at heavyweight before and was coming off a bad knockout as well to Bob Foster.

 

I'm probably making a mistake by not reading the whole thread here; just the heading and first post.

Patterson got, and still gets, a lot of flack for fighting Pete Rademacher in Pete's first pro fight. Can you imagine if he'd fought a 21-year-old Ron Lyle in 1962 instead of Liston? He'd be ducking his number one contender to fight a guy who hadn't turned pro and possibly hadn't even had any amateur fights yet (I'm not sure when Lyle started boxing).

No, you don't put a guy with no pro fights in with the world champion just because he's big and may show some promise. We saw that with Rademacher, and at least he had world-level amateur experience and a gold medal in the olympics. Patterson vs. Lyle in 1962? Preposterous.

 

I agree. None were balls of fire, but they all were decent enough. Garcia had after all knocked out Spencer and Norton. Middleton had barely been beaten by Quarry, and I've heard some say that they thought he won that fight. Rondon, though as you say, had never fought a heavyweight, had beaten many great middlweights and light heavyweights.

 

Rondon and Ramos weren't ranked when they fought Lyle. Middleton, in the first bout, was lower top-10. Peralta was top-15. Bonavena, Ellis, and Shavers were lower top-10. Bugner was top-10. Ward was top-15.

So Lyle has four (edit: oops, five) wins against current top-10 opposition in his career, and two more against top-15.

And of course we can't forget that Buster Mathis was some organization's super-heavyweight champion when Lyle beat him, having won the title recently against Humphrey McBride.

 

Middleton looked a good fighter around the time he fought Bugner and Norton. He reminded me a lot of Tony Tucker. However, Middleton, no matter how close he took Quarry, had not scored a decent win at that time. Garcia beating Spencer back when Spencer was on real free fall should not count as a decent win. Spencer just was not winning fights at that time. Losing to Garcia was the sixth time in a row Spencer had not won. Ken Norton was unknown when Garcia beat him in 1970. Ken had not beat anyone of note by then either.

 

I knew some older guy would specify and/ or correct me on the rankings. Thnx @sweetsci. I was mostly talking about the guys that Lyle faced before Bonavena. The fact that Bonavena, Ellis, Shavers, and Bugner were top 10 fighters is really not that surprising.
That super heavyweight thing was a farse if I ever have heard of one. The tried something similar with Max Baer in 1940 I think. He fought for a new but meaningless title, and beat Pat Comiskey. All just to make Baer look like a champ again.

 

I will concede this argument to you, although I must say that even though Norton was unheard of, he was a young, powerful, undefeated heavyweight, and I guess the fact that Norton went on to become very famous is partially what produced the idea that this was a great win. Garcia gave him a real battering though. Wish that one was on film.

 

I entirely aggree.
Lyle may be an outstanding puncher.
But Liston could not only hit hard with both hands from any angle. He was also a severely underrated boxer. (However, you couldn't see any of that in the Ali fights) Before Floyd even got close to Liston, he had already slammed his head into Liston's iron jab for 3-4 times. Before he murdered Patterson, Liston didn't just outmuscled him, he also outboxed him. Let his attacks fizzle out, blocked, dodged and countered some fast hands of patterson. So this guy knew how to move, how to shift and made patterson look like an amateur. That was the short prequel of the brawl. But i didn't see Lyle's ability to do this...