Sonny Liston vs. Vitali Klitschko

This I did not know. But I do think Liston's chin can be had, and by far lesser punchers than Klitschko's. Another case points to this. Good find Ed.

 

Liston by KO?

Oh please, the same guy that dominated Lewis and made him retire would get KO'd by a 6 foot cruiser-weight?

 

I am going by opponent testimony.

A lot of the heaviest punchers in history never knocked out a truly outstanding fighter.

For example, George Foreman named the three heaviest punchers he faced as Williams, Lyle, and C00ney, and none of them had a truly elite level knockout!

It just goes to show that power isn’t everything.

 

Let’s look at what you have got here.

The phantom punch knockout if genuine would strengthen your argument considerably, but most people here don’t think that it was.

That leaves you with the Leotis Martin knockout, where Liston was a washed up, whisky swilling ex-champion. At that age, and in those circumstances, a fighter’s durability can fall off a cliff. The conclusions that come from this fight are uncertain at best.

The Howard King article is very interesting, but again, very uncertain. You can bring this kind of anecdotal argument to bear against any fighter, including Vitally Klitschko.

But Vitali certainly might have fought to an older age, given that off the census Liston was probably born in the early 1930's.

Getting stopped twice, is being in serious trouble.

So are the men that Audley Harrison fought.

At some point you have to decide whether size is the sole unqualified arbitrator of a fighter’s opposition. I say this because Vitally Klitschko’s opponents really don’t have anything much other than size going for them.

None of the guys that Vitally Klitschko beat were ever champions, except for an ancient Shannon Biggs.

I think that this debate turn more on who was holding down a top five ranking at the time.

 

The same Lewis that arguably dropped a decision against an over the hill cruiserweight?

 

This thread was interesting ... let's not turn it into Lewis/Vitali pleasepleaseplease

 

This!

 

"you have to ask whether size is everything"

This is a straw man argument. No one is claiming size is everything. Otherwise Carnera and Willard would be rated as the top champions.

But other things being equal, size is very important.

"credit wins on good small heavyweights over big mediocre heavyweights"

But what we really disagree on is if guys like Machen, Folley, Williams, and Valdes were all that "good" small heavyweights and Vitali's best wins were over all that mediocre big heavyweights.

Why, for example, are Adamek and Gomez considered mediocre? Which one of Liston's victims has a more impressive win than Corrie Sanders' KO of Wlad?

I am also critical of the Vitali resume, but you carry it to an extreme I wouldn't go to.

 

on Foreman--I remember him being quoted as saying Liston was the hardest puncher he was ever in the ring with. Now it's Williams?

The problem with quotes from fighters is that they are often all over the place.

"Williams, Lyle, and C00ney, and none of them had a truly elite level knockout!"

I think this is true, but it might tell us more about Foreman's opposition than about Vitali's.

 

"the phantom punch if genuine . . . but most people here don't think it was."

I am not most people. I think it legit. In fairness to Liston, he was never given a count, but I think he was knocked down and hurt.

"This leaves you with the Leotis Martin knockout"

Yes, and the knockdowns by Marty Marshall and Willis Earls. Not a bad record, but not actually as impressive as Vitali's when you come down to it.

Vitali has a better winning percentage, a better KO percentage, and was not actually stopped as often. Considering that his opponents on the whole were much bigger, one really has to puff up Liston's victims to overcome that. The best of them other than Patterson, Machen and Folley, were known back in their time as guys who could be counted on to blow the big ones, which they did consistently.

"the men Audley Harrison fought"

There are mediocre 260 lb. fighters. There are also mediocre 210 lb. fighters and mediocre 190 lb. fighters. This is not a good argument.

"None of the guys that Vitali beat were ever champions"

Gomez was never champion? Adamek was never champion? I thought Sanders, Peter, Hide, as well as Briggs were recognized as champions.

If you criticize Gomez and Adamek for being champions of a lower weight class, they are still bigger than Patterson.

"I think this debate turns on who was holding down a top five ranking at the time."

Not to me. Saying a 160 lb. middleweight fought more top five men than a 190 lb. heavyweight fought means nothing about who would win if the two fought.

Vitali is six to seven inches taller and 30 to 40 lbs. heavier than Liston,

yet looking at boxrec, Liston was only outweighed six times in his career, while Vitali was outweighed twelve times.

My bottom line is one must recognize that it is a whole different world size-wise out there from the one Liston fought in.

Size isn't everything or the sole measure, but it matters which is why there are weight divisions,

and in the case of Liston and Vitali, Liston simply doesn't have the advantages record-wise against his smaller opposition that you are giving him. He lost more frequently than Vitali. He was stopped more often than Vitali. He was knocked down more often. He does not have the winning percentage Vitali has. He does not have the KO percentage Vitali has.

 

My point is that Vitally’s opponents don’t have anything going for them apart from size.

They were drawn from a weak era, and were not the best or brightest of that era.

They don’t appear to be anything special on film, and were often poorly conditioned.

You have to put size on a pretty high pedestal as a variable, to rate them over any all-time greats opposition.

 

I honestly don’t think that there is a category of heavyweight who hits significantly harder than guys like Williams, Lyle or C00ney. There are better punchers, and better finishers, but that is about the upper end of the envelope in terms of power. I would add that if I was looking for fighters who hit significantly harder than these guys , I would not start with Vitally Klitschko.

 

If you are going to assess Liston based on fights where he had only fought a handful of professional bouts, then you might as well throw in Vitally Klitschko’s amateur losses.

That is probably just a reflection of the fact that he didn’t fight many ranked fighters.

You can’t really factor in cruiserweight titles and alphabet titles when comparing somebody to fighters from the 50s. If these divisions and titles had existed I n Liston’s day, then some of his opponents would have held them.

But you are effectively treating size as being everything, because Vitally Klitschko’s opponents are literally weak in virtually everything except size, and that is still enough for you to favour them.

Again, that says more about the weakness of Vitally’s opposition than anything else.

These are all variable that get impacted when you start fighting guys in the top ten, which Vitally rarely did.

I would have more sympathy with a lot of your arguments, if we were talking about his brother.

 

"Vitally's opponents don't have anything going for them apart from size."

There are plenty of other guys just as big. They have enough going for them to be highly ranked and even champions in some cases.

"They were drawn from a weak era"

This is the stock criticism of heavyweights with a good record. But I lived through Liston's era and was an obsessive fight fan back then and I think that was on the whole a pretty weak era until Ali came along.

"they don't appear anything special on film"

How special does Roy Harris look on film? Nino Valdes? They were among the highest rated fighters Liston fought.

"often poorly conditioned"

How well conditioned was Liston for the first Ali fight?

More to the point, a 185 to 195 lb. better be in top condition when fighting 240 plus lb. opponents.

I agree with you on big men generally not having as much stamina as smaller men have. But when they do, like Willard or Vitali, it can start to be a problem for the much smaller men.