How many does Liston win vs...

The answer in short is that he could beat them individualy but nobody could beat all of them.

Johnson,
Hard to say really based on the available data. I can imagine scenarios where either man wins.

At the end of the day we do not have the minutia of Johnsons style.

Dempsey,
50/50 fight simple as that. Both these guys are wrecking machines and would play into eachothers hands.

Louis,
I favour Louis here. He basicaly dose everything Liston dose a bit better and much faster.

A Liston win is certainly not out of the question though.

Marciano,
I favour Liston here for stylistic reasons.

If Marciano somehow wins it will be like the Leotis Martin fight with a batered Marciano coming from behind to win.

Ali,
I do not think that it is out of the question that a focused Liston beats the greatest but I do not expect it.

Frazier,
Liston wins for the same reason that a young Joe Frazier was steered clear of an old Sonny Liston.

Foreman,
Liston wins this. He has the right tools to exploit all Foremans technical weakneses.

Tyson,
Liston for stylistic reasons.

Holyfield,
Holyfield puts up a brave fight but dose not have the tools to win.

Lewis
I favour Liston but a Lewis win is not particularly improbable.

So Liston in my opinion is 6-2-2 vs this group. If you want to know more about my reasoning behind any pick ask me and I will give you the rundown

 

Dempsey, Frazier, and Marciano will all fight him out of a crouch and get inside. Who did Liston fight who fought anything like that style?
He would have to jab downward and that might leave him vulnerable to a right cross from Dempsey or Marciano who had big rights.

Interestingly, I remember an article written in the early 1960's in Sport Magazine by Dempsey in which he predicted that Liston would not hold the championship a long time as many expected. Dempsey felt that Liston was very vulnerable to overhand rights and his chin was somewhat overrated.

 

Floyd Patterson, who got annihilated twice.

Of course, Marciano, Dempsey and Frazier are clearly a class above Patterson in durability as well as power, but i still think they would be looking at a bad matchup in which i would not favor them. If would give Marciano the best chance of them, 40/60.


By the way, what lead Dempsey to believe Liston's chin was overrated in the 60's? And who landed many overhand rights on him or why did he conclude that?

 

I would favor Dempsey, Louis, Marciano, Ali, and Lewis, Ali for obvious reasons and the others because of their big overhand rights.
I favor Holyfield because of a superior chin and mobility.
Tyson is interesting, but at his peak he was much faster and had more proven heavy guns. I think he slips that long jab and gets in an overhand right.
Johnson--I see him as much quicker, and styles have changed, but Johnson wins because of superior stamina. Under Johnson's rules, I strongly pick Johnson as I think he would drag this one into the later rounds.
Foreman--I take Liston here, because of much greater skill. Foreman impresses me as being too wide open.
Frazier--I would rate this one about even. Frazier would be the favorite if he had a good right. Liston fought no one with close to this style, but Frazier looked too vulnerable against the heavy hitting Foreman.

 

Liston is stunned on film by Whitehurst. The fight Dempsey referred to was a Howard King fight in Miami. Dempsey describes King as crossing a right over Liston's jab and sending Liston reeling across the ring against the ropes. Dempsey, who was at ringside, thought Liston was badly hurt and could have been finished, but King was so surprised he did nothing. Dempsey went on to predict Liston would go suddenly from a right cross and everyone would be shocked. This did happen in the second Ali fight.

By the way, I don't see Patterson's style as being much like Dempsey, Marciano, or Frazier,
respectively. I don't remember seeing him use a deep crouch.

 

I have him over 7 - Johnson, Dempsey, Marciano, Foreman, Frazier, Tyson, and Holyfield. He could even be as high as 8 or 9.

 

The second Ali fight was most likely a fight thrown by Liston, for reasons we will never know. It's one of the worst acting jobs you'll see and i don't think many people here besides you thought it was a legit KO.


Patterson came forward going low and trying to land the hook often. He's not a carbon copy of Dempsey/Marciano/Frazier, but still. I mean, even Dempsey and Frazier have very different styles if you go deep enough. But they all came forward and went low.

 

Well, in that case, neither did Frazier.:good

 

Liston painted a lovely picture during his prime, one that has given his fans a super strong belief in his ability against men he would have no bearing for, the very best that is.

It's easy to assume and ultimately a popular decision that Liston would take out Frazier, for instance, but think about how this opinion is being formed. Was Liston anything like Foreman and how would Liston handle Frazier's heat?

Frazier faced big punchers and he took big punches - Foreman beat him with a style that ensured he was hung, drawn and quartered. The scrappy, chance taking, clutch, push and uppercut operation was the perfect antidote to Frazier’s marauding ways - Liston does not have the same program, at all.

Liston was strong, well educated; a specimen, but much like Tyson fans do, you’ll gaze too far into his armoury without double checking his wiring.

Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, and Lennox Lewis were unique and elite fighters. They would each offer Liston a bunch of questions, many of which he would simply not know the answer for and it'd be game over somewhere along the line.

Ted Spoon finds that predicted Liston victories are often off of the basis of his physical stature and neat destructive resume - it says he had tremendous ability, not the power to steam roll equally potent, unknown quantities. Too suggest that any of these ‘smaller’ men are simply out-gunned is a bland and illogical stance. A Jack Johnson clinch, a whipping Dempsey hook on the jaw, Louis’ huge speed advantage, Lewis’ combination of strength speed, and fundamentals...What is the result?

Much of what sums up Liston would not apply here. He is not going to tee-off combinations on a weaving Dempsey like he did Williams, nor would he bully a lively Holyfield like he did Machen.

Now lets slow things down; Liston would come away with some scalps as he was a true force in the history’s division, but he’d have to fight for most and he’d lose a good share.

 

Yes. That is true. I just watched the complete second fight with Johansson. Patterson never used a deep crouch or a deep bob--I mean bobbing so his head is at waist level.
Marciano stayed in the crouch quite a bit, and also now and then did a deep bob.
Dempsey did the deep bob. I think in the case of Dempsey and Frazier, if you had a computer do a graphic in which all the viewer saw was the lines of the body moving up and down, it would probably be rather hard to tell the two apart. Marciano would also bog deep some, but would tend to move more side to side in a crouch.
Patterson, I think, is different. He stands much straighter, uses only a modified bob, and I don't remember him ever going into a deep crouch.
He also relied on the left jab. None of the other three threw it very much. Against Johansson, Patterson seemed willing to accept the jab or at least block it with the gloves. He used his own jab on Ingo much more than I remember Dempsey, Marciano, or Frazier even trying.

I'm going to try to view the two Liston fights as soon as I get time.

Bottom line--off what I saw against Johansson, Patterson has less head movement than the other three.

 

If the St Louis police records of 1950 are correct, Liston was 38 years old at the time of this fight. He got caught with a quick right which he never saw.

There are simularities, but Patterson tends to be much more upright and to box more. I guess the question with Patterson is whether he had the chin to really be effective against big hitters. Charles and Walcott were much better at moving side to side and at quick retreats than Patterson.

 

How does he do against larry holmes?

 

At the film of Williams-Liston, Liston is said to be 26; at the fight film of Liston-Clay I he is said to be 29. According to most encyclopedia's, he is born in 1932 making him 32 for the Clay fight, which seems accurate to me.


But aside from that, don't you think it looks like a high school grade acting job when he rolls over ?

 

Ok--that is because he needed a birth certificate to box. So he went to the records office and got one, testifying to his own birth date. His gave his birthyear as 1932. There were many poor and backward areas of the United States back in the 1920's and even later where births were at home and unattended by a physician.

In January, 1950, Sonny was arrested and booked by the St Louis police. His age on the booking sheet was given as 22, making his probable birth year 1927.

That Sonny was much older than his official listed age was widely believed in boxing circles at the time. Jersey Jones, in the Ring Magazine obituary of Liston in the April, 1971, issue, wrote:
"Whether he was 38, or 44, as most boxing authorities believe him to be, . . ."

In his autobiography, THE DEVIL AND SONNY LISTON, author Nick Tosches devotes several pages to Liston's age, including testimony from Foneda Cox, his closest friend, who believed Liston was older than himself. Cox was born in 1929. Liston listed May 8 as his birthday and Pine Bluff as his place of birth. His mother publicly disputed both. She said he was born on a very cold day in January and she was never in Pine Bluff in her life. One problem with the birth certificate year is Sonny did not stick to it himself. In 1960, he claimed to have been born in 1933. Later the year was moved to 1934.
Howard Cosell and Liston joke on a newsreel about his growing younger, mentioning Jack Benny, a famous comedian of the day who had a running joke of claiming because of vanity as always being 39 even when he was in his seventies.

The HBO documentary SONNY LISTON: THE MYSTERIOUS LIFE AND DEATH OF A CHAMPION, also concludes he was born sometime in the late 1920's.

Let me say that you must remember that many areas of the United States back then, especially rural areas, were extremely poor and backward. Liston himself could not read. I don't know, but probably his mother couldn't. If you can not and do not read the newspaper and do not have a radio or anything else you can be pretty cut off from the world and I am not certain you would need to keep track of what year it is. I remember a white man from the Ozarks who was interviewed on television back in the late fifties by the comedian Groucho Marx. He did not know what year it was nor who the president was. He was not, by the way, mentally defective and could express himself well. He just lived so far out in the sticks he was cut off.