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

People paid money to see it. Jersey Joe should have sent them to their neutral corners and sorted things out. IMO that's the last thing Liston wanted. Like No Mas Duran Liston knew he had no answer. All he would have got for his efforts was an ass whuppin.

 

I don’t disagree with you. Sonny was not going to touch Ali that night. A competent referee instead of a publicity stunt might have done that. The whole deal was just a cluster frick beginning not with the national anthem like I said, but upon reflection with the place they wound up having to hold it.

 

Yeah, it’s a bit like watching a stream of YT vids, one after another - each successive vid sharing something slightly in common with the previous vid - ultimately, you arrive at the point of asking “How the hell did I find myself here, watching this?”

So it went with discussion re Sonny’s dong. Rest easy, no more.

 

I just watched that fight again for the nine jillionth time. Lord, young Ali was so good. Liston wasn’t touching him that night. No way. Period. The end.

Here’s one guy’s perspective on the knockdown. I agree with that perspective. I concede that some of you never will. C’est la vie.

But what happened after the knockdown, again we will never know for sure. The only man who did has been dead for 53 years and that status isn’t likely to change. (But he sure looked foolish flopping around.)

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The only difference between Lewiston and the No Mas fight is that Duran would have just ended up embarrassed. Liston would have ended up lumped up.

 

Yeah I had forgotten that Ali came right out and popped Liston hard to set the tone of “I can do this whenever I want to.”

 

Remember the mouse that Clay/Ali opened up ender his eye in the first fight. Can you imagine fifteen rounds of that?

 

People forget Big George was pretty lumped up in Kinshasha. Ali was virtually unmarked, save for a red eye from an errant thumb. Some people say Ali-Norton lll was a robbery. I know going by the look of a fighter after a fight isn't the best way to judge it but it was Norton who was lumped up after it and wearing sunglasses to cover the black eyes and not Ali. Something landed and landed enough.

 

Liston took a dive, plain and simple, it's out there for all to see.