Rate the quality of Sonny Liston's resume

Regarding Harold Johnson, the fact that a light heavyweight champion could move up for a fight, beat the then #2 heavyweight contender Machen on points, and then move back down and defend his light heavyweight title shows how weak the early 1960s heavyweight era was compared to today.

Light heavyweight champs haven't moved up and beat heavyweight contenders and then gone back down to light heavyweight to defend at 175 in a VERY long time.

This century is 25 years on, and one guy (Roy Jones) has done it. And he wasn't any good when he went back down, because he had to get juiced to the gills to pull of the heavyweight win.

The gap between the top heavys and the top light heavys is too extreme these days.

For the life of me, I don't even recall the last time someone weighing in the 180s knocked off a top heavyweight contender. And I've been watching boxing live since the mid 70s. (Roy Jones even weighed in the 190s. He wasn't 181, like Johnson was against Machen.)

It's been a really long time.

 

Good point .Beterbiev was asked if he would fight Usyk now ,he said definitely not,Usyk is much too big for him now.

 

Understanding? Certainly not.

 

What relevance has this to anything we are we talking about?
The average weight of the champion and his ten contenders at the end of 1962 was 198lbs,that is the main reason nobody does what Harold Johnson did,not the quality of the respective contenders .
The quality of most of the 62 top ten is superior to todays imo
Patterson.Liston,Machen ,Folley,Johansson,Williams and a young Ali.
That isn't to say they would all beat todays heavies,just that, by and large they were more talented skill wise.
Those that deny size matters, if all other things are equal,do so for one reason.
They deny the laws of physics ,to advance their case for a small heavyweight of bygone days,in doing so they are deluded and blinded by hero worship.
You don't drive a Red Audi okay,a Grey Mercedes is currently parked outside my house,are you in it?

 

And the point?

Other than the obvious one that men have gotten a lot bigger in the last couple of generations,

and so what exactly does a size comparison across time mean?

Machen was much closer to Johnson in size than, let's say, Joshua is to Usyk. This doesn't tell us anything about the skills or greatness of the fighters. Only that modern guys are so much bigger they probably could win without being very good. Except no active fighter is going to beat Harold Johnson or Eddie Machen. The world of those men is gone and no modern man can go back to it.

It is like arguing that some modern second or third tier army would dominate World War II armies because of modern weaponry. True, but what is the point? That doesn't mean they have accomplished or will accomplish what a given World War II army did.

 

This is a solid take, don’t expect many to agree.

 

It was stated and I am obviously correct- those who use size as a metric do so for the Marcianos of the history, and not the Listons. Liston IS the small heavyweight of the past, as were the guys he beat...but no one brings that up with Sonny.

 

Marciano was sub 190 pounds, Liston was 210 plus, like Holmes and Ali. Tyson was just over 215 when he beat Holmes. Usyk is the small heavyweight of today. He's come from being an in ring 206-208 pound cruiserweight.

 

People often bring up that he was Holyfield / Usyk sized (maybe in weight) but neglect that Holyfield etc fought a totally different way for that reason - Williams and Valdez are not “passes” to compete with Lennox, Tyson and Vitali etc he was a lumbering oversized and slow guy, one who fought like a big guy and didn’t look like he carried the weight well he was tight as hell.

 

On que to my post woah

 

Your post is rot, like virtually all of them. You're a one trick pony with no substance, all angst.

 

Liston was said to look bigger in person than his weight would suggest, and although his legs weren't particularly heavy his upper body was massive and he resembled a football player or a weightlifter. I remember seeing a story in The Denver Post in which 250-pound football star Cookie Gilchrist and Liston were in the same room looking comparable in size. There's a moment in the Leotis Martin fight where he's facing away from the camera and you can see the unusual breadth, definition and musculature of his back. As someone who grew up in his era, it's a little strange to hear him described now as a small heavyweight.

 

And abuse!

 

Yes, but the point is that the guys that he beat do not size up with today's "super-heavies," a point which is CONSTANTLY brought up with Marciano, NEVER with Liston.

So how you rate his competition depends largely on which sets of standards you are applying. If you are comfortable with a heavyweight champion's four bets wins being over a guy that is 189, 194, 196 and 198, then well and good.

By the way, I am good with is, as I have said. It's just that there is this kind of size fetish thing out there, and Liston would definitely be on the wrong side of it with the real quality guys that he beat being diminutive.

 

And at 6'3", he wasn't even a "modern super heavy."