Tucker in 1987 was probably at his best,Michael Spinks avoided him, he beat buster Douglas, he won the IBF heavyweight title, fought mike tyson, lost but gave him a very tough fight, retired for 2 years, came back rusty, washed and was never the same after that. Short period at his highest level, just like Tyson or Bowe, his enormous talent and promise would go forever unfulfilled. Thanks to drugs
Curry was a 147 lb champion for almost four years. I wouldn't really put him near the top of the list. He entered his prime at 21 years old.
He'd fought 5 minutes in three years because the champion **** himself and literally froze. It doesn't take a lot to beat somebody who already lost mentally. In any case, 5 minutes in 3 rounds is hardly good preparation for the GOAT. None of the men in Liston's post-Ali career were on the level of Williams, Patterson, Folley, and Machen. He fought the odd fringe contender here and there. Nothing more. Liston was blacked-balled from the championship scene after the Maine fiasco, which is why he didn't get any fights with the top men. No, this is a myth. Frazier did not avoid Liston. The earliest, a match with Liston would've made remote sense was 1968, but even there Frazier was fighting guys rated above Liston (with the exception of Ziggy). Liston's KO loss to Martin ended any chance of a Frazier bout. He tried to. He went to the Florida boxing commission, requested a postponement of the bout and was subsequently denied. Very surprised you didn't know this, as it is rather common knowledge. No argument. Not really. Liston was one of those guys who was built to become a champion not STAY champion. Liston's alcohol problems were well documented, particularly around the time of the Patterson rematch. He was likely not at his absolute best against Patterson either, but as I said, it doesn't take a whole lot to overcome a frozen opponent. A late 60s Liston would likely have beaten Patterson as well. None of these are excuses. All of this is well documented and well-known history. I'd like to ask you a question. Forget Liston's substance abuse issues, overall lifestyle, rust, and injuries. He was at the minimum 34 years old. Can you name me multiple ATGs (particularly those from around Liston's era or earlier) who were in their prime at 34? Ali? Louis? Dempsey? Frazier? Tyson? Marciano? Why is Liston the exception?
Everyone you mentioned started their careers earlier. Exactly when can you point to film that shows decline in Liston? Lots of fighters have consumed alcohol — show me the documentation that he was a fall-down drunk in no condition to fight during the time he was champ. If he’s fighting tough fights and taking damage, you’d argue that those fights declined him. He had no wear and tear when he was knocking Floyd out quickly, just a couple of training camps. For an older fighter (and you seem to be claiming he was practically an AARP member) less activity would be in his favor. You also know full well that training camps are designed to get a fighter peak to fight regardless of activity — if he didn’t train, you’d have a point. Heck, Ali had only fought 5 rounds in roughly a year when they met. Imagine how much sharper he’d have been if he’d have worked in a few more tuneups, lol. Tell me more about the shoulder — who performed the surgery after the first Ali fight?
Not true. Liston started (if you take his 1930 birthday) at 23. Frazier started at 22, Marciano actually started later than Liston but was long retired at the age of 34, sipping on coconuts, and eating his father's delicious Italian foods. Again, their is very little film to go on considering he'd fought 5 minutes in 3 years as I stated. And those five minutes basically consisted of the same efforts used to hit the speed and heavy bag, or for pad work. You're exaggerating my words. I never said he was a "fall-down drunk in no condition to fight". I said he had increasing substance abuse issues. I think McGrain put it best here. Wear and tear is not the only thing that causes a fighter's decline. Other factors could be lack of ring action, aging, etc. For example, Ali had clearly declined when he came back in '70. Was that because of wear and tear? Weren't you just making the argument that Liston wasn't old and using the (false) claim that all those fighters I listed started earlier than him, to back it up? That's a little disingenuous, and a double standard of fairly large proportions. You can't just change the argument to where it suits you. Also I disagree, that less activity would be favorable to an older fighter. I think you have to stay active, to remain sharp. This is just ridiculous. "regardless of activity". Let me go back to my other example, Ali. He had an excellent training camp upon his return (much better than Liston could ever dream of). Do you think that got him back to his '67 peak? Do you honestly think that if someone was preparing for a match against a high profile fighter (let alone the GOAT) they'd reassure themselves by saying "Well I fought 5 minutes in 3 years, so I'm a little short on rounds but hey I have a decent training camp so that more or less evens things up". Moreso, do you think any boxer in history, having fought but 5 minutes in 3 years at the age of 34, could defeat Muhammad Ali? Such errant non-sense. It's starting to sound like an agenda may be in play here. I've already stated that he seldom trained for Ali for the following reasons. 1. Ali was not very well-known nor regarded at the time. 2. In his last fight, he was dropped by Henry Cooper, a puncher of nowhere near Liston's caliber, and that he'd struggled with Doug Jones and arguably received a gift decision. 3. Liston had the mentality to become champion not STAY champion. He'd already climbed his Mount Everest. He'd already accomplished everything he'd wanted to do, and their was nowhere to go but down at that point, and his lifestyle, as well as training followed accordingly. You've ironically proved my point. Ali in about 8 months had nearly 3X as much ring action as Liston did in 3 years! I don't know about the surgery but here's the Doctor's report "We came to the conclusion that Sonny Liston suffered an injury to the long head to the biceps tendon of the left shoulder, with the result there is separation and tear of muscle fibers with some hemorrhage into the belly. This condition would be sufficient to incapacitate him and prevent him from defending himself." Source: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/75457879/arizona-daily-star/
This is going nowhere. Your source for Liston being a boozer to the point of turning him from the most fearsome heavyweight not only of his day but in decades is ... someone on this forum? Show me contemporary evidence that Liston was drinking so heavily that it would lead to such immediate decline, please. The idea that Sonny thought he was going to be the darling of the public and greeted with ticker-tape parades and become a beloved figure by winning the title, then lost all interest when it didn’t happen is laughable. While it is no leap to suppose he desired such things, that doesn’t mean he felt so rejected that he crawled into a bottle and suddenly became an ordinary heavyweight (or less than ordinary) because of it. We see the same revisionist tales of LaMotta — he only wanted to win the title, see, not actually hold it, so the fact that his title reign was a major flop shouldn’t count against him. And Sonny? Well Sonny wasn’t all that interested in staying champion, he just thought it would make him popular if he won and when that didn’t happen ... he didn’t care. Bull hockey. The shoulder? The clip you provided was from after the fight. The doctors said it was damaged. They didn’t say he was injured going into the fight, if anything it’s far more likely that he injured it during the fight or they used that as an excuse for him quitting and it’s possible and even probable that in the aftermath of the fight the commission doctors (the same ones that, you surely know, gave him passing grades in the preflight physical) decided to back the injury excuse because there was already the rumblings of an uproar that he threw the fight and that’s a problem nobody wanted to give the official seal of approval to as it would hurt the commission, the fight game in general and boxing in Miami/Florida to have a stain on the bout. You can buy the idea that the Sonny Liston who ran roughshod through the heavyweight ranks and twice destroyed the champion was somehow on his last legs when he fought Ali but it doesn’t hold water.
For once, I agree. You continue tp regurgitate the same false claims, ignore my rebuttal, and refuse to answer my questions. It makes you seem dishonest, and like you have an agenda. I never listed him as my source. you're simply rambling at this point. I exact words were "I think McGrain put it best here" I am a bit short on time right now. So here's a couple. Will find more later if you'd like "we had to duck Liston the night before the fight when he showed up at the box office obviously drinking and demanded six ringside tickets... who is going argue with a guy like him in that condition" "Bill MacDonald says Sonny Liston was drinking the night before the fight in which he lost his world heavyweight title last February" Source: Clipping from The Miami News - Newspapers.com "Boxer Sonny Liston said he was house-hunting Tuesday night when a police-man arrested him for speeding 76 miles an hour in a 30-mile zone with a pistol in his pocket. The policeman, James Synder, said that Liston threatened to "whip" him when he stopped the former world heavyweight champion and a girl friend. He also said Liston admitted he had been drinking" Clipping from The Daily Oklahoman - Newspapers.com "Miami Beach Sportsman, Bill MacDonald, the fight's promoter had charged Saturday that the ex-heavyweight champion was "obviously drinking" the night before the fight" Source: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/75517805/ " Now that moment had arrived. During the flight home, McKinney says, Liston practiced the speech he was going to give when the crowds greeted him at the airport. Says McKinney, who took notes during the flight, ''He used me as sort of a test auditor, dry-running his ideas by me.'' Liston was excited, emotional, eager to begin his reign. ''There's a lot of things I'm gonna do,'' he told McKinney. ''But one thing's very important: I want to reach my people. I want to reach them and tell them, 'You don't have to worry about me disgracin' you. You won't have to worry about me stoppin' your progress.' I want to go to colored churches and colored neighborhoods. I know it was in the papers that the better class of colored people were hopin' I'd lose, even prayin' I'd lose, because they was afraid I wouldn't know how to act. . . . I remember one thing so clear about listening to Joe Louis fight on the radio when I was a kid. I never remember a fight the announcer didn't say about Louis, 'A great fighter and a credit to his race.' Remember? That used to make me feel real proud inside. ''I don't mean to be sayin' I'm just gonna be the champion of my own people,'' Liston continued. ''It says now I'm the world's champion, and that's just the way it's gonna be. I want to go to a lot of places -- like orphan homes and reform schools. I'll be able to say, 'Kid, I know it's tough for you and it might even get tougher. But don't give up on the world. Good things can happen if you let them.' '' Liston was ready. As the plane rolled to a stop, he rose and walked to the door. McKinney was next to him. The staircase was wheeled to the door. Liston straightened his tie and his fedora. The door opened, and he stepped outside. There was no one there except for airline workers, a few reporters and photographers and a handful of p.r. men. ''Other than those, no one,'' recalls McKinney. ''I watched Sonny. His eyes swept the whole scene. He was extremely intelligent, and he understood immediately what it meant. His Adam's apple moved slightly. You could feel the deflation, see the look of hurt in his eyes. It was almost like a silent shudder went through him. He'd been deliberately snubbed. ''Philadelphia wanted nothing to do with him. Sonny felt, after he won the title, that the past was forgiven. It was going to be a whole new world. What happened in Philadelphia that day was a turning point in his life. He was still the bad guy. He was the personification of evil. And that's the way it was going to remain. He was devastated. I knew from that point on that the world would never get to know the Sonny that I knew.'' NOBODY said he was an "ordinary heavyweight" that night. He was undeniably short on rounds having fought FIVE minutes in 3 years, had a known injury going into the bout, suffered from bursitis, asked for a postponement of the bout and was subsequently denied. All of this is documented history. The fact that you don't think this would not have any effect on his condition is laughable, and reeks of an agenda. Yes, you asked for information regarding the shoulder after the fight remember. This is not "probable" at all, unless you have an inkling of proof for such a bold claim. If you can please produce it. I see no reason why the doctors would lie about it. 8 Doctors from ST. Francis hospital confirmed he had a severe shoulder injury that would've impaired his ability to defend himself. "Those findings were confirmed in a formal investigation immediately after the fight by Florida State Attorney Richard Gerstein, who also noted that there was little doubt that Liston went into the fight with a sore or lame shoulder" What's The Florida State Attorney's agenda to lie? Where's his foot in the race? Again I look forward to your evidence, that 8 doctors as well as The Florida State Attorney concocted a conspiracy, to mask Liston's shoulder injury but I doubt I'll see a response as was the case with my numerous challenges that have gone unanswered.
Let’s agree to disagree. None of what you posted means anything. “Sonny was drinking.” Show me evidence that he wasn’t drinking when he was tearing through the heavyweight division. Him drinking in the lead-up to Ali doesn’t mean he was doing anything different than before. That he was let down that he didn’t get a hero’s welcome after winning the title means nothing. It doesn’t mean he became less of a fighter. Only Ali — the greatest of all time — defeated him after he won the title up until the very end. If he was so devastated that he couldn’t perform after that, we’d have seen it in the second Patterson flight — instead he punched holes in Floyd (again). You literally cite as evidence that Sonny immediately became a shell of himself after winning the title an account that says ‘his Adam’s apple twitched’ and ‘you could tell by the look in his eyes.’ That’s your evidence that this letdown was somehow a complete shock to his psyche that mentally destroyed him. Heck, there were actually reporters and PR people there ... just no ticker-tape parade. Show me something on film that shows he was slipping before Ali. It’s just not there. That became a retro-fitted narrative for people who wanted to (a) discredit Ali and not accept this brash, black, Muslim and (b) wanted to somehow preserve what they thought Sonny was — so he had to have lost it all overnight. That became the narrative because it was pushed as the narrative. Sonny was a bully. Ali didn’t back down and Sonny didn’t know how to deal with it. Simple as that. The same commission doctors that passed him on the physical to fight Ali said AFTER the fight that he had a shoulder injury. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. But I don’t see a certified doctor’s report saying ‘this man is injured and should not fight.’ I see an attorney who doesn’t want to pursue an investigation saying ‘probably’ with no citation of medical evidence whatsoever. You ask ‘would an attorney general lie?’ Do we live in the same world? Presidents lie. Governors lie. Attorneys general lie. EVERYONE in the government lies. It’s a job requirement. You choose your course of action and then you cite lies, false statistics or anything else you want to back it up and you move on. Sonny got beat not because he was a faded ghost of himself but because he faced a superior fighter. And guess what? They had a rematch so if there was a shoulder problem or he didn’t train properly then he had every opportunity to show what he was really made of. And he was completely outclassed again (with the help of an incompetent referee). But after that he then went on a winning streak and beat some good fighters, proving he still had gas in the tank. I don’t think the Liston that Ali fought was appreciably different than the Liston Floyd Patterson fought. Nobody goes from that dominant to feeble in that short a span. Pay attention to this part: Sonny fought less than one round in the 18 months before he fought Patterson the first time ... in fact, he fought 8 minutes and 51 seconds in the TWO YEARS before facing Patterson, yet in this case you don’t see any rust. It’s insane to say ‘guy’s a monster puncher, he beats people quickly ... therefore he must depreciate massively between fights for not getting rounds when in actuality he is avoiding punishment. But enough of this. We disagree. There’s no more to say.
It depends what is meant by prime. People have different definitions and thus timeframes. For instance Honeyghan is mentioned. And I guess this is because it is suggested his prime was from Curry to Mad Dog. But I would argue Honeyghan dipped out of his prime after Curry, but his prime was longer because it actually began from the shut out of Brazier, which was three years before The Cobra.
I recently watched Curry's fight with Terry Norris when Curry was 29 yrs old at 154 pounds. I was amazed at how far Curry had slipped at such a young age. He looked like a guy in his mid to late thirties .
