Taking stock of sonny liston

You don't know for sure.

To be fair to Liston, his shoulder was probably injured and he was getting cut up a bit by Clay's punches, but it's still hard to say that he tried his best. He surrendered the title without putting up any sort of epic struggle.

Do people accept Duran's "No mas" ?
That fight stinks as well. Duran just quit, without any satisfactory reason.

There was more money to be made from Clay as champion. More money for everyone.
The interests of "mobsters" and "legitimate businessmen" and "the boxing establishment" all converge when profits can be increased, and the lines between those groups are blurred anyway.
It's all the same business.

 

why was there more money in clay as a champion? The mob posibly had 80% share of Liston plus all the money "partners" in the promotions, tv etc always brought in. with clay they would have less of his purse. Clay was also a black muslim who after the patterson fight was forced to fight in canada, england and germany because he was not that popular. clay was out of the mobs reach for those promotions.

Liston as a champ could have fought anywhere. They could "lease him out". The mob had the lion share of his purse and could dictate to where sonny fought, places where they had larger shares and more control. Anyone stageing liston fights paid them rent.

exactly, the mob never realy went away. Even now its all sewn up with money borowed from the old strong arm guys.

 

Sonny liston.

Over the last few months i've gone from extreme to extreme with him.

I've settled on the following analysis of him.

He looks good on film, he has a very good resume. He took out folley and patterson in impressive fashion. He got absolutely dominated by ali.

He has a very fundamentally sound boxer.

All that is true and fact.

That alone isn't enough to stand him out from a lot of great heavyweight.

The way liston gets ranked highly is due to subjectivity and extrapolation. We imagine him to be a h2h nightmare for a lot of people and imagine he'd have been hugely successful in any era.

Ranking purely on resume within an era liston is way down any list.

Factoring in subjective issues he shoots up any respectable list.

I'd put to the forum that the majority of people who rate him so highly do so because they were around during his prime and were taken in by his aura of destruction (a lot like tyson, foreman, dempsey)

Honestly I think a lot depends on your criteria.

If you view each era as equal because a man can only fight who's infront of him, then there is no way liston can rank highly.

If you view all styles as equal and aren't impressed by knockouts or personality, again i'm not sure how he can rate highly.

However, if you weigh era's separately i.e. A win over patterson is better than a win over hart (altho both were lineal champs who picked up a vacant lineage) then it is entirely plausible especially if you factor in h2h subjectivity.

All in all, depending on criteria I think it is entirely plausible for liston to rank between 4 and 34.

Personally I have him number 5 but i'm not gonna argue with someone saying charles, jeanette and langford are greater heavyweights.

 

Who are your 14 great heavyweights?