Sonny Liston 1959 vs Muhammad Ali 1964

59 Liston? I'll take Sonny

 

It’s typical for fighters to stop sparring around a week before the fight, but not several weeks out, maybe 2 weeks in more rare cases of fighters who put emphasis on recovery, but if it’s true, I concede this point.
Liston seemed to be throwing punches fine in the fight, he just had trouble landing clean, so if the injury is true, he must have either recovered a bit or he was on a load of painkillers.
As for the substance on the gloves, a simple inspection from a referee isn’t enough to determine if a liquid substance has been rubbed on the gloves, especially since he’d been throwing and landing punches after they supposedly put it on there, they’d need science equipment to rule it out, and Ali seemed bothered and kind of blind as if he couldn’t see properly, he kept rubbing his eye, and standing more stationary, and sticking his arms out, clinching and not taking anywhere near as many risks, and not moving side to side because he didn’t want to move into a punch without seeing it, there was something very clearly off with Ali in that round.
Edit: Niggles=small, but irritating injuries, maybe a bit of wrist pain, shoulder joint discomfort etc.
Boxes was a typo for Boxrec.

 

64-67 Clay beats every version of Liston that ever existed.

 

In their actual fight, there's a few things that lend to the stylistic framework that would dictate any match up between these, whether '59, '61 or '64 Liston or '64, '65, '66 or '67 Ali.

Liston makes Ali's jab miss much more than anyone really admits in the first fight. Liston has success to the body with the straight right and left hook but ... The big but is that Ali makes Liston lunge and follow him and throw off balance. Ali does jab his head off - Liston's headmovement was excellent but Ali's jab is too fast and he threw it in a corkscrew upward trajectory that slashes and ripped at the skin. Ali's also brilliant at tracking Liston's headmovement, using the jab and double jab to set up and land the chopping right.

Ali also shows he can handle Liston in the clinch, using underhooks and occupying him, turning and pushing him backwards and even when Liston does land to the body, Ali showed that his ability to endure body shots is second to none and Liston has an ATG left hook!

Ali also showed that he could come off his toes, stop the exaggerated bouncing around the ring and exaggerated head movement to slip/avoid headshots and box off the jab and pivot, keeping Sonny having to reset and every time Sonny is pivoting or resetting his feet, he's got a jab to deal.

Most importantly, Ali took away Sonny's jab and his jab set up his best work.

A faster Sonny would definitely make it closer and would make Ali work, but I don't think that there's anything Sonny can do to stop Ali's hand, head and foot feints leaving him vulnerable to a flurry that puts him in a shell; not sure what he's going to do to negate Ali's height, strength and balance in the clinch; not sure that he's going to start magically cutting off the ring better as opposed to following the man when he can't get his jab off.

 

A much closer fight.
Ali has to ride out some rough moments, getting buzzed a few times.
It's a possible decision fight with clay/Ali winning.

 

Liston came back to boxing in 1958 after a couple of years away. At this time he was still green and improving all through the rest of the '50s imo. He looked clearly better against Williams in '60 than in '59.

So if you want to pick the best Liston it would probably from some time in the early '60's. His two destructions of Patterson are his best outings imo.

 

Excellent post!

 

I agree.