Liston's resume and ranking

you're right about liston looking bad.ali made liston look old beyond his years.

they also looked like they were from different eras.i've never noticed that before or since

 

Machen came back well considering that he had been counted out by everybody much like Cleveland Williams was after being shot but as a fighter he was diminished and didn't truly achieve any notable victories outside of the 1966 run when he defeated unbeaten Jerry Quarry and Joey Orbillo.

 

This line just made me laugh out hard, my collegues gave me a wonderful "wtf" look

 

Ten heavyweights clearly better than Liston? Do Foreman, Marciano, Frazier, Dempsey, Tyson and Johnson have clearly better resume's? Really? Patterson not an ATG worth mentioning? I call all sorts of bull-**** on this.

 

This is from Tex Maule's Sports Illustrated piece on the Clay-Liston fight .......... (published March 9, 1964)

"In the fourth round, jabbing at Liston with his snake's tongue left hand, he had coated his glove with the caustic that had been applied to Liston's cut. When Clay brushed perspiration from his forehead midway in the round, he left a thin skin of the caustic on his forehead. It washed down into his eyes between rounds when his trainer, Angelo Dundee, swabbed him with a wet sponge. "I can't see, I can't see," he cried out, blinking his eyes and ducking away from the mouthpiece as the bell rang for the fifth."

.......

The reason I brought it up was because ChrisPontius used SI articles as an authority in his argument that Clay's temporary blindness was caused by a cheating Liston.
If SI articles have any authority on the subject, this one needs to be digested too, surely.

The whole article is here :

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1075717/1/index.htm

 

I concur. I can even see him at No. 3. Though after the top two my list constantly fluctuates, I don't think there's any heavyweight that has a ****-load more of a right to be there than Liston.

 

I think he's arguably top 5, but, like I said before, I think sometimes the depth of his quality wins gets exaggerated ...... and the losses to Ali get alibi'd too much.

I wish someone would post some film of him against Zora Folley. I've heard it wasn't televised or filmed, but I dont know.
As I said before, Patterson, Folley and Machen are his three best opponents. The Patterson wins are impressive, but Machen not so much. The Folley fight (KO3) is a great result, and apparently Folley really came to fight. A shame it's not readily viewable.

 

I'd probably say that about 10 or 15 other heavyweights too though.

 

Without the mob and fixed fight stuff, Marciano vs Walcott.

 

Marciano never cried about it. Weil did.

 

My views are similar. He was in his prime quite a few years before he won the title.