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

You didn't prove anything. The facts are: Wlad COULDN'T fight for the WBC belt between 2013 and 2015. Firstly, he wasn't allowed to fight for the vacant belt as he wasn't ranked by the WBC which is a bull**** policy. After that, Wilder blocked his proposed unification with Stiverne. After that, Wilder ducked him. This is pretty simple. Acting like Wlad is to blame for this is bonkers.

 

Devil's advocate:

Harry Wills had very excusable reasons for why he never got to fight for the title. These do not, however, make him a heavyweight champion.

On the other other hand: since the heavyweight title seems to work more by acclamation than anything else, and unification at best seems to correlate with that, I doubt it matters much. Wlad was the champion in some fuzzy period, and beat a lot of contenders, so that's that.

 

You're fixated on a bureaucratic technicality while ignoring actual dominance. Wlad didn't "avoid" half the division—he systematically crushed nearly every relevant heavyweight for a decade. The only reason he never held the WBC belt was because his brother had it, and they weren’t going to fight each other. That’s not an "excuse," that’s context. It’s not like he ducked a line of killers holding the WBC strap—most of the best contenders Wlad beat were rated across all sanctioning bodies, including the WBC.

You bring up Primo Carnera as if he was some standard of legitimacy, but his reign was historically weak, built on questionable matchmaking and mob influence. He was a paper champion who got exposed the moment he faced a real threat in Max Baer. The idea that Carnera was "actually dominant" just because he held one belt in an era with fewer titles is laughable.

Championships don’t define dominance—who you beat and how long you stay on top does. Wlad had 23 title defenses (18 consecutive) over a nine-year reign, during which he defeated nearly every top-rated opponent available, including multiple world champions. If your argument is that "true dominance" is just about holding a singular belt rather than actually ruling the division, then by your logic, Leon Spinks was more dominant than Wlad because he briefly held the undisputed title. That’s the absurdity of your argument.

Dominance isn’t about playing belt collector—it’s about proving, fight after fight, that you're the best in the world. Wlad did that for nearly a decade. If the way you view greatness results in you ranking Primo Carnera higher than Wlad, then I’m sorry, but your entire perspective is utterly worthless.

 

Also, think about this, since Lewis gave up the IBF belt in 2002 until Wlad lost to Fury in 2015, there was only one UNIFIED heavyweight champion. It was Wlad of course from 2008. A slew of the alphabet title holders from 2002 to 2015 couldn't even unify even 2 belts, let alone 3 for these 13 years. That's including Vitali. After that, it was only AJ and Usyk who unified the titles. Wilder and Fury (up until 2024) didn't bother.

But that's just it - sanctioning body titles. I don't care about all of this crap. I'm all about champion beating top contedners. Wlad had the WBC lineage as early as 2008 and WBA lineage as early as 2009, while having 2 other belts at the time.

When Vitali retired in December 2005, Wladimir and Ruslan Chagaev emerged as Top 2 heavyweights. They beat most of the the top fighers among each other. Wlad beat Chris Byrd, Samuel Peter, Hasim Rahman, Sultan Ibragimov & Lamon Brewster while Chagaev beat Nikolay Valuev and John Ruiz. If you look this in terms of sort of a unofficial tournament, other top heavyweights Oleg Maskaev and James Toney were beat by Peter (whom Wlad defeated), Siarhei Liakhovich was beat by Nikolay Valuev (whom Chagaev beat) and Shannon Briggs got beat by Sultan Ibragimov (who was beat by Wlad). Even Monte Barret lost to Hasim Rahman who lost to Wlad. No matter how you slice it, all roads led to Wlad and Chagaev as Top 2 heavyweights of 05-08 era before Vitali came back.

After Chagaev, Wlad defeated 2 number 3s (Haye & Povetkin) and 1 number 2 (Pulev) while Povetkin and Haye were the best heavyweights around not named Vitali Klitschko, who Wlad wouldn't fight for obious reasons. Claiming that Wladimir ever duck somebody or wasn't dominating the division is crazy talk. He basically beat everybody until Fury took his crown.

 

The hypocrisy argument falls flat because there’s a difference between using size strategically and outright relying on bullying smaller fighters. Wlad used his height, reach, and jab to control distance and break opponents down—he wasn’t just walking through guys with brute force like Liston did against smaller, weaker opposition. Wlad also fought plenty of big heavyweights—Pulev, Fury, Joshua, Thompson, Wach, and even guys like Peter and Brock were bulkier than most of Liston's competition. Liston, on the other hand, feasted on light heavyweights and cruiserweights, looking dominant against guys who were naturally 190 pounds or less. The idea that Wlad’s success was just "size" is lazy—his technique, discipline, and control of range were what made him dominant.

As for intimidation, scaring opponents before a fight doesn’t mean much if you get exposed in the ring. Ali didn't just break Liston's aura—he made him quit, something Wlad never did in over 20 years as a pro. And let’s not pretend Liston was some unshakable force—he looked utterly lost and demoralized when things didn’t go his way. Wlad, for all the talk of ‘panicking,’ adjusted his style after his early losses and went on a decade-long reign of dominance. He didn’t fold when things got tough against Peters, Pulev, or even when he got dropped by Joshua—he kept fighting.

The Brewster and Peter fights get overblown. Against Peter, Wlad got up every time and won every round besides the one he got knocked down in and only reason he got knocked down was because of illegal back of the head shots. Against Brewster, there were serious questions about what happened, given how extreme his fatigue was. Either way, those difficulties came before Wlad refined his style—when he did, nobody was able to capitalize on those so-called ‘openings’ for a decade. Liston never proved he could fight through adversity the way Wlad did. He lost to the first truly elite opponent he faced and never recovered. The idea that Liston, who never beat an elite super heavyweight and crumbled when faced with movement and resistance, would just walk through Wlad is fantasy. Wlad was bigger, smarter, more disciplined, and far harder to break mentally than Liston ever was.

 

The basic issue, IMO, is that Wlad is recognized by the boxing community as having been champion. Lots of the other details -- tracing the "lineal" title, sanctioning body politics, etc.-- are good to know, but it reminds me of people debating the fine points of arguments for/against Papal infallibility. Hyper focused on very narrow slivers of meaning or doctrine because the historical record is so messy. That sort of inquiry may be vital in religious questions -- where they matter -- but there's a point at which it's silly to transplant that level of rigor to who the heavyweight champion is. It's just not that precise of a category.

 

Yup. At the end of the day, Wladimir was universally recognized as the undisputed champion from when Vitali retired even without the WBC belt.

 

Not saying they are the same guy, but they both have the same tendency to take a warped view of the facts and run with some obscure factoid into the depths of hell if it serves to throw mud on the Klitschkos.

 

I think the domain of argument is broader than the Klitschkos in the latter's case. He's more like Heavyweight Blog Guy, in the sense of having a very particular alternative take on boxing.

 

As has been pointed out, he was unable to fight for the WBC when his brother left it. He tried to make the Wilder match but Wilder swerved him. Probably the rumours that Wlad set Wilder on fire in sparring are true.

 

I think he just loves sanctioning bodies (especially WBC) and views them as the only authority in boxing. It's ok to have that opinion, even tho I don't agree with it. But saying stuff like Wlad didn't dominate and ducked contenders is another story, pure BS.

 

I think I've demonstrated why such an approach leads to faulty conclusions in the end of the day its just a belt what's important is who you beat and how you beat them everything else is just window-dressing.

 

I'm not arguing about hypocrisy, simply pointing out. This isn't an argument. If Liston is a bully for using his size to his advantage, so is Wlad. It's literally that simple. To claim otherwise is hypocrisy.

Here's the thing about intimidation, which you just seem to not be getting. Wlad is not Muhammad Ali. He'd be scared, and expose his poor chin, and he'd lose because of it. The more he tries to jab and grab, the easier it'd be for Liston.

"ThE BrEwSteR aNd pEter FiGhTs aRe OvErbLoWn" lmao you sound ridiculous. Wlad got absolutely ****ing destroyed by Brewster and almost lost to one and only Sam Peter. He redefined his style coz he got his ass beat so bad. Really sounds like those fights were overblown...

 

The difference is Liston built his reputation beating up light heavyweights and small cruiserweights, guys who were barely cracking 200 pounds, if that. Meanwhile, Wlad spent his career dominating actual modern super heavyweights—big, strong, athletic men who were his size or bigger. The idea that Wlad is comparable to Liston in terms of ‘bullying smaller guys’ is absurd when their competition wasn’t even remotely the same.

And this whole ‘Wlad would be intimidated’ nonsense is pure vibes-based storytelling with zero connection to in-ring reality. Wlad wasn’t intimidated by actual super heavyweights like Sam Peter (who was stronger and more explosive than Liston), by 6’5 Tony Thompson, by 6’8 Mariusz Wach, or by 6’6 Joshua in his 40s. He walked through huge, dangerous punchers and controlled them. But somehow, you expect me to believe he’d mentally fold against a 6’1, 215-pound guy because he made faces at opponents in the 60s? Come on.

And yes, the Brewster and Peter fights are overblown because they don’t define his peak. Brewster win was a freak occurrence where Wlad was dominating before gassing out under bizarre circumstances (which even Brewster’s team acknowledged), and he beat Peter in their first fight winning and dominated him in their rematch without trouble. If you’re gonna use early losses to dismiss a fighter’s peak form, then Liston getting dropped by Marty Marshall—an actual light heavyweight—should disqualify him from this conversation entirely.

This is the problem with your argument—it has nothing to do with actual fight footage, results, or logic. It’s just ‘Liston was scary, Wlad was weak, therefore Liston wins.’ That’s not analysis, that’s wishful thinking dressed up as insight. If intimidation alone won fights, Liston wouldn’t have been dropped by Marty Marshall, quit against Ali, or had his aura shattered the moment someone didn’t buy into his act.

 

Some one else said Wlad had 15 ranked wins.