Sonny Liston or Wladimir Klitschko who rates higher as a all time heavyweight?

I would think you have to rank Wlad higher, his resume and reign speak for itself. You can say "yeah but who did he beat", but 9? years as the champion that speaks for itself.

 

Well fair enough, I guess you're entitled to be sceptical about Liston's
removal of Bethea's 7 teeth with one punch.It is a remarkable example
of punching power that very few men could match.

As far as I know no picture of Bethea sans 7 teeth exists.Vanity would
probably prevent him from posing for such a picture.

However,Ray Shoeninger,a sparring partner of Liston, said on film about
one sparring session in which he felt the full force of Liston's power :

'' He shattered my teeth .He knocked my shoulder out of place.Hey,I lost
three teeth when he hit me with a jab wearing 20 ounce gloves ''.

There is absolutely no reason to believe this man is lying.One could argue
that this feat descibed by Shoeninger even surpassed Liston knocking
out 7 of Bethea's teeth.

 

Fair enough Cross,of course there are many colourful myths in boxing folklore ( and dear old Bert Sugar loved
a good embellishment ! ) so perhaps it is not unreasonable to have doubts about the removal of Bethea's
teeth from one Sonny Liston punch.I happen to believe this did happen but obviously we are all entitled to our own opinion.

However there is another example of Liston's immense punching power which is confirmed by the victim himself.


Ray Shoeninger,a former sparring partner of Sonny Liston, described what happened during one of their sparring sessions ;

'' He shattered my teeth.He knocked my shoulder out of place.Hey,I lost three teeth when he hit
me with a jab wearing 20 ounce gloves.''

This incident certainly confirms that Sonny had the capability to remove seven of an opponent's teeth with a single punch whilst wearing standard boxing gloves.

 

Is the implication that KOs are less impressive if you're heavier than your opponents?

Because if you want to play that game, Wladmir was both taller and heavier than quite a few of his best opponents. That's not a game you want to play.

 

That's not enough. We need a recording of his statement, a photograph from his mouth, and a note from his dentist.

 

I'm not sure what is up with this weird narrow take you have on weight.

In a h2h matchup, you normally lay out what are the conditions of the fight: number of rounds, glove size, rules, ring size, what type of ref, etc. Every single one of those factors can affect the outcome even if the two fighters are levels apart.

When it comes to fighters from an older era to modern (at least 50+ years apart), you do have to actually ask the question: are you simply teleporting the old fighter in a time machine into a modern arena, or are they getting acclimated to the new rules and customs? Dempsey for instance was used to being able to stand over fallen opponents up until around halfway through his championship reign if I'm not mistaken. If you took Toledo Dempsey and then immediately teleported him to face Anthony Joshua for example, and you didn't bother telling Dempsey he had to go to a neutral corner, you'd have absolute chaos in the ring.

So you have two options: either take Liston as is, or you tell him "by the way, championship fights are now 12 rounds, not 15. And you might not want to boil yourself down and dehydrate". There isn't necessarily anything "wrong" with plucking Liston exactly as he was, but then you can't complain if hilarious x factors like Dempsey dropping Joshua again just as he stands creep up in a hypothetical fight.

Lastly, in regards to his comparison to Brewster, stating Brewster has about 10 lbs and 1 inch on Liston isn't any sort of gotcha moment as if they're worlds apart in overall strength, athleticism, frame, etc. As alluded to above, Liston was doing old school training to keep the fat off and was prepared to go 15 if necessary. Despite making every effort to keep himself relatively trim and stocky, and Brewster going out of his way to embrace modern nutrition, weights, keeping himself hydrated etc, Brewster is still only 10 lbs heavier. That's very telling. One guy is cutting and avoiding weights, the other bulking with modern equipment and it's that close...? It suggests they are basically the same size regardless of if you allowed Liston to adapt or not.

 

You're not even scratching the surface pal. We need poor Bethea's remains exhumed for starters. Lets see what teeth he had when he passed. We also need at least four of the missing ivories found, wherever they ended up. To then warrant further debate, a close up color photo of said missing teeth is required from with 2 hours of the fight.

 

Go for 40!

 

And that level of scrutiny still isn't as ridiculous as ranking Liston ahead of Wlad or picking him to beat Wlad.

 

Lost the post but I'll just open end it.

It's actually an insanely simple thing to measure.


1000 pounds moving 1 foot in 1 second = 1000ft/lbs


hunted it down to Boxing Illustrated December 1963 but surely there's a source for that too.

 

The article looks good and I'd love to read The Dreadful Power of The Human Punch by James Allan but this is the only source I have found so far:

This content is protected

That said, stop at 3:45 and look to the bottom right. The article clearly states UST not US Army. The testing co is a fair enough source but given everyone says Army, including myself, I think we've our first instance of miscommunication becoming myth. As best I can see it was UST using an army base to conduct the study.

Takes away from my war time propaganda theory a bit.

 

Marciano once hit a man who evaporated instantly then returned three seconds before he had been hit sporting a long white beard screaming 'Beware Trump....' The Rock was so powerful he'd created a hole in time. True story...