FBI Suspected 1964 Clay-Liston Fight Rigged By Mob

I think you have to trust what you see on film, it is the only solid proof there is of anything even if it is open to interpretations.

In my view the first Ali v Liston fight was straight, as straight as Walcott v Marciano because the same stuff got into Marcianos eyes. Liston got beat and he knew he was beat. He was tired and unprepared to continue and perhaps his shoulder was indeed bad.

By the second fight Liston had no appetite for fighting and there is a huge amount of theories why. But just look at the actual film. ALI started sharp and very very fast. He looked for all the world like he was going to put on a Cleveland Williams type performance. He caught Sonny with another right early on that registered and when the "phantom" punch landed I think it was a good enough blow to create a flash knockdown. The way Liston came in, the angle Ali was able to use, the direction sonny was coming in at was sufficient to stun an unfocused and disillusioned former champion. Once down Sonny showed reluctance to get up. He play acted. Whilst he did however Ali was running around hyper. ALI looked angry and out of control. Liston did not get a count. Perhaps he had seen enough of Ali for one day and would have stayed down for a count he could have got up from ....but is that throwing a fight or just quitting? A man knowing he is beat?

But because Sonny NEVER got a count we can't know. Sonny got up and when he did he wasn't play acting he could have done a drunken dance if he wanted or he could have hung his chin out. Instead he was covering up when Walcott waved it off. I think it's an open verdict. It's either a quit job or an officiating farce.

 

ALI did not stay in the neutral corner when he put bonavena down either. He was not used to knocking fighters down, he never knew what to do. Celebrate or save time...

 

Just watched the
Mildenburger fight and you're right! Ali floors Mildenburger and hovers over him, ready to go again. Now if THAT right hand had floored Liston I don't think there would be much controversy.

 

Yes and yet Ali still did it, he could not contain his excitement.

Alis right hand that put big cat Williams down for the first knockdown was a simular light but well placed fast punch that put Sonny over. Cleveland, like sonny, was also stunned because he did not see it. Ali's speed bamboozled fighters they went down unhurt but they were legitimate knock downs because they were hit before they could react.

 

Was the dinner at Alcatraz? Frankie Carbo was in prison in 1964.

 

The writer tanked this article. The "author" bases his premise that a shady guy from Texas wanted to get some a tip or rub elbows with a boxing big wig repeatedly calls Liston's, and is finally met with a "just go watch the fight" from Resnik. Based on this "tantalizing" tidbit everything falls into place?! This bolstered by the revelation......wait, sit down......people surrounding Sonny Liston were involved in organized crime! The only thing I could find out about the FBI source, which they didn't seem to value enough to follow up with, was that he was found guilty of committing forgery in an effort to defraud his parent out of some real estate.

I chalk this up to a KO of journalism.

 

Carbo was in prison in 1964 and had zero power in boxing.

 

If Ali fought a prime Liston, he would have a different nickname: Floyd Patterson II. No way he beats a prime Night Train with an '84 reach.

 

You think? Because a one handed Eddie Machen fought a prime Liston and gave him all kinds of problems. Something tells me that the bigger, more talented, faster, more durable, Ali would do better than a one handed Machen.

 

Interesting using the nickname Night Train for Liston.

Machen said he was like a train. Don't move and stay on the track and he would run over you. But move off the track and he would just rumble harmlessly past.

Ali wasn't ever going to stay on the track for Liston.

**Debating whether Liston tanked these fights reminds me of debates over whether the police planted evidence in the O. J. case. Either might be true, but it doesn't matter in a sense. O. J. did it, evidence planted or not. Liston wasn't going to win, tanking or not.

 

My apologies; I got the date wrong and part of the tale,too! This is the quote from the book:" The Dundees, it seems pertinent to point out, were both part of the Carbo connection. While on a special assignment in Washington DC in March 1958, District Attorney Frank Hogan,s spies spotted the czar sharing a meal at Goldie Ahearn's with, among others, Sam Margolis and Angelo Dundee. An innocent gathering? Perhaps. Far more guilty was Chris Dundee. According to Truman Gibson's testimony to a New York grand jury in April 1958, Chris had rung him earlier in the year to discuss closed-circuit TV rights for the forthcoming Sugar Ray Robinson-Carmen Basilio shindig, hoping to obtain a franchise for the telecasts in Florida and Georgia. Gibson resisted his entreaties, so Dundee handed the phone to...Carbo, a dab hand at friendly, and generally irresistable, persuasion. For once, however Frankie flunked. No dice. Even czars have to play by the book on occasions."

For what it's worth, I have seen both fights countless times and in the first I think Liston is trying to win. I think age, Ali's style and Sonny's lack of conditioning told on him. The second fight was just farcical, and I don't know what to make of it.