No one thinks the “phantom punch” is real…right?

I think the punch was absolutely real, there’s one slow motion video out there where you can literally see the muscles in Sonny’s neck ripple and quiver from the force of it. If you want to define a dive as unconvincingly rolling around on the canvas acting like you can’t get up ….

 

I think it was the sharpness rather than the brute force, plus Sonny was off balance.

 

Let me come at it this way, and you may disagree and that’s fine as long as we’re not disagreeable. My .02 has always been that the punch was legit but the man quit more than he jumped into water that night. I don’t think there were any payoffs, conspiracies, threats, etc. Peak Liston was a hellacious prize fighter but he also was a bully and had no moral compass, he’d seen in the space of 120 seconds or so that he wasn’t going to lay a glove on Ali, he was probably embarrassed as crap by the knockdown, he saw Ali jumping around and showing his arse and he said F this and tried clumsily to make it look good.

 

He said he could have got up but chose not to because you have to put one hand on the canvas to get up and he was afraid Ali would wallop him as he was defenseless. He said Ali was a nut and you never know what a nut will do.

 

Why is there so much mystery about Lewiston when Sonny Liston tells exactly what happened? | Boxing News 24 Forum (boxingforum24.com)


Liston explains the 2nd Ali fight | Boxing News 24 Forum (boxingforum24.com)

 

OK, tapping out of the discussion.

 

its real but what i question as you say is the damage...

 

The ref lost control of the fight. No need to slander Ali. And you really should apologize for questioning my veracity.

 

https://vault.si.com/vault/1965/06/07/muhammad-ali-sonny-liston-second-fight

 

I will tap back into the conversation briefly and say that everything … everything … connected with the events of May 25, 1965, in Lewiston, Maine, was a complete and total s**t show. Including the National Anthem. The end.