Stonehands has weighed in on the "Birthday for Sonny Liston" argument

Interesting article. Thanks for posting.

 

Wow awesome. So Liston was born in July of 1930....which folks makes him 34 years old when he took on Muhammad Ali

 

Mmmm..... not that old at all, excellent win for the young greatest to be

 

That makes sense as the older son Curtis was born 15 October 1929 according to the Social Security Death Index. So, Sonny indeed could have been born July 22, 1930.

By the way,my error with the marriage certificate post. It was for a "Charles Lyston" I thought it was just misspelled because the wife was named Geraldine but wrong last name for her so it was not Sonny's. But "Lyston" was born in Arkansas same as Sonny and the year of 1929 seemed right. Sorry for the error to all who commented or read my post.

 

No Suzie.

Assuming you mean their first fight, if July of 1930 is correct, that would make his age 33 when he took on Clay.

 

good article

 

Great read. That age makes sense with the timeline of his career also.

Mystery has been put to rest :good

 

Excatly.

This piece is 'merely' an excellent and much appreciated writing, on a fascinating subject.

 

Well it depends what you mean by put to rest. There's easily enough evidence to class this as a realistic birthdate.

People might doubt it but there's gotta be a point when you accept something as a truth until contradicting evidence is produced.

 

That would only happen in a court case, if it were needed. Thus speculation and hearsay will be mixed with well researched and more feasible evidence (like this piece) in the debate.

 

I've read plenty of alternatives and in cases like that you just go for the simplest answer.

He weren't on the 1930 census. He was on the 1940 as a 10 year old. The specific july date might be wrong but it seems to me he war born sometime after the census in 1930 and that date fits.

Nothing else presented comes as close as an official census.

 

Noone is saying anyone has to believe anything officially.

I'm saying that the data we have on the two censi make this the most feasible theory and thus the one i'd accept as true unless an alternate could be proved.