Did Cus cheat Liston out of a higher all-time ranking?

At the end of the day the quantity stats are posted for Pattersons title defenses including and not including Ingo. With return fight clauses written in it's fair IMO to divide by 9 and Add Ingo's defense as part of Floyds reign i think but the stats are also there disregarding Ingo's defense if preferred. Ali's and Marciano's are up as well.

Lewis was champ 8 years before any dealings with Rahman and Rahman was actually the 10th defense of his second reign. The two situations are chalk and cheese. Incidentally Lewis' second reign was 1535 days for 10 defenses so 153.5 days per defense vs Pattersons 220 days.

 

There were reports out of Las Vegas that Liston was engaging in lots of extracurricular activities while training for the Patterson rematch and that he wasn't training very hard. What didn't get any publicity was the looming end of Patterson's first marriage. Floyd alluded to this later by saying he went into the fight troubled by family problems.

 

Yeah they have to deal with a lot beside people trying to pole axe them.

 

As posted before, Floyd Patterson while champion was invited to the White House in 1962 by then President John F. Kennedy. The President told Patterson of the importance of victory over Sonny Liston, as it would adversely affect the youth of America, as Liston was tied up into Organized Crime, judging by the company that he kept. President Kennedy and then US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had been battling organized crime throughout the 1950's. A Liston victory would make it appear that organized crime held the upper hand in America. Yes, Cud D Amato did affect Liston's chances of having a higher all time ranking. Patterson fought the likes of Tommy Hurricane Jackson, Roy Cut N Shoot Harris, Pete Rademacher, Tom Mc Neeley and Brian London in title defenses, coupled with interim reigns during the Ingemar Johansson wars between 1959 and 1961. All with the exception of Ingo were safe time consuming title defenses to avoid Liston as long as possible until the night of Sept 26 1962 when Liston easily dethroned Patterson at Comiskey Park in round 1.

 

This thread is focused on how Cus tried to stop Patterson vs Liston as long as he could.
However, with a proper perspective, we need to consider how Liston was not the only one apparently being ducked.

You can make a case Cus avoided Marciano, Baker, Carter, Pastrano, Valdes, Foley, even Machen was avoided while Patterson was champ.
The list of dangerous contenders ducked reads like a dang phonebook.

It is a proven fact Patterson had to dump Cus in order to face Liston.
That was a very corageous and (predictabily) disastrous decision, but that proved Patterson had heart and cemented his place as an ATG.

 

While it's true that Cus wanted to protect Floyd from
Liston, his enmity with the thugs who controlled boxing and Liston played a large role, too. Cus didn't want to fight Machen, either, ostensibly because Eddie's manager Sid Flaherty was a close Frank Carbo and Blinky Palermo associate.

 

Johansson was the legit #1 contender in 1959.

The real issue is considering how badly he lost to Ingo, should Patterson have gotten an automatic rematch, or should he have had to fight Liston in an elimination.

In that case Liston would have gotten his shot in 1960 and would probably have been champion from that point. This might have helped his rating some, but who knows how much.

The problems are that Patterson did win the rematch, and Liston was not the #1 contender in early 1960. Zora Folley was.

 

Patterson did fight Eddie Machen much later on July 5 1964 in Stockholm, Sweden, winning a lopsided 12 round decision, by then Machen was well spent mentally and physically.

 

This is nonsense.

Show me when any of the highlighted were nr. 1 during Patterson's reign. I actually think only Valdes cracked the top 5 and only briefly.

 

Yeah I admittedly did a double take as well. Particularly at Marciano's mention. Rocky was retired.... Patterson literally won the tournament to crown the title vacated by Marciano when he retired.

 

Liston wasn't even boxing when Patterson faced Jackson and Rademacher, so kind of tricky to see how they jumped ahead of Liston. And he had just made his comeback and wasn't even ranked when Patterson faced Harris. And London was actually higher ranked at the time.

So scratch everyone but McNeely.

 

Yes. Rocky was considering coming back to face Patterson, but ultimately decided against it.

I'm just waiting to hear how Patterson ducked Louis. This just gets more and more looney.

 

I watched some of that fight again this week. Machen's reflexes looked a little slow, as if he was on psychiatric drugs.

 

This is what I meant by there were a whole lot of people besides Cus D’Amato who didn’t want Charles Liston within a million miles of the heavyweight championship, regardless of whether he deserved a shot because of his boxing skills and especially regardless of whether boxing fans wanted to see it or not.

And when you have the damn president of the United States telling you “you’ve got to win,” it’s what I meant by so much pressure on Patterson that he was mentally discombobulated.

 

Yeah, I agree that the rematch clause seems a bit surprising.

It might seem as if Machen took Ingo more seriously than many think.

But then Machen had already and unjustly been put on the back burner - so perhaps he was safeguarding against any possibility of future set backs or any possible angles (including bad decisions) to reason him out of a title shot.

It can often happen that when a fighter is held off from a title shot for too long, that fighter may well eventually incur a loss. The odds of same might be seen to increase the longer a fighter is held off.

Anyway, aside from the rematch clause, Eddie did still appear to take Ingo far too lightly, severely underestimating his punch.

Eddie said if the rematch clause had been honoured, it would’ve allowed him to right the ship and stay on track for atitle shot.

Despite the Machen upset, it’s surprising that Patterson (by his own admission) still took Ingo too lightly himself. Patterson viewed Ingo as a soft defence.