"The bigger the trees the harder they are to cut down"- Sonny Liston

Johnson did not quit against Klondike that is an established fact ,that leaves you with him retiring at age 49 in a fight , 20 years older than Vitali How about Larry Merchant was he a biased C**t with an antipathy towards Eastern European fighters? The only reason Byrd won was because Vitali quit simple.

 

I asked you a direct question. You're not answering.

 

Doesn't matter. Liston and Wlad are exceptions, not the rule.

 

Jennings and pulev are not talents, they are stand-ins.
povetkin so far has no delivered on his early promise.
wilder, well, he has a title at least.

People who write this, are usually trying to convince themselves. clearly you have a long way to go with that, good luck with it before you try to convince others.

 

This does not address the question of why Liston actually did better on the average against bigger men than the smaller men with the singular exception of Ali--a bigger man with small man speed and skills.

*the premise for this post is laid out in post #9 on this thread.

 

Because the big men he was fighting simply werent that good. Wepner and Zech were nothing. Williams is ridiculously overrated. Clark was the Quick Tillis of his day, decent skills but a nut and completely unreliable. Valdez was overrated and DeJohn was nothing special either.

As for the "smaller" "boxers" Patterson didnt use any of boxing ability against Liston. He stood right in front of him boxing out of a crouch and tried to trade. Ive never understood Patterson's strategy except that maybe he was trying to stay so close because he thought if he stayed inside of Liston's long reach Liston would be less effective. Folley didnt box Liston either. He went right after him and it turned into a shootout. Machen was the only one of those guys that boxed Liston and despite having an injured hand he did pretty good. Watch him fight Liston, Ali, Clark, and to a much lesser extent Rush, who tried to emulate Ali in the Liston fight. Liston was not comfortable at all with boxers who used lateral movement.

 

Patterson was just being Patterson, getting under his jab and looking for the Bolo Punch. Same strategy he used against Ingo.

Liston had it well scouted though, he would throw the jab, but instead of leaning or stepping back and falling into the trap like Ingo did he would just step forward and crowd Patterson before he could get the lunging left hook off, resulting in clinches that Liston was able to dominate with his power and ultimately score the knock out with.

Patterson really didn't start using lateral movement and whatnot until the later stages of his career.

 

"the big men he was fighting simply weren't that good"

In fairness to Liston, for the most part they were the best big men available.

But as they had no real choice but to match power for power, they played to Liston's strengths and to a man went out.

The littler guys didn't try to match power for power, but used speed and mobility and generally did better.

 

I recently watched the Maxim fight and the two Liston fights, and the thing that really stood out is how easy Patterson was to hit with what I would call an underhand right. Maxim couldn't miss with that punch. I noticed Maxim didn't necessarily land that well with straight or overhand rights, but that long underhand right went between Patterson's gloves time and again. Maxim did not have the power to hurt Floyd.

Liston started Patterson on the way out in both fights with a long underhand right which went right between Floyd's gloves.

I say an underhand right because neither Maxim nor Liston threw it on the inside like an uppercut but from the outside.

 

This is, in my mind, the weakness to the peekaboo style. You have to bob AND WEAVE to make it 100% effective. That takes a lot of concentration and you can get lazy and either ONLY bob or ONLY weave. Both Tyson and Patterson when they got lazy or had lapses in concentration stopped weaving and thus left themselves open to the uppercut.

 

It burns a ton of energy which is why it is primarily successful with younger fighters.

 

I didnt say ****ey looked GOOD I said he did well against a prime Holmes and I would favor him to beat Machen and Folley. The difference is that you have a very high opinion of Machen and Folley and so you equate that with me thinking ****ey looked good. I recognize Machen and Folley as good but flawed contenders, I see their flaws as giving ****ey a chance to shine. Its just like me saying that Liston had problems with movers and as such might have issues with Pastrano and since I didnt kiss Liston's ring and fawn all over him you equate that with me saying Liston would lose to Pastrano. Thats the difference between being blinded by hero worship and fanaticism for an era you dont even really understand that well and looking at the big picture objectively.

Your right, not everyone shares my opinion that big men today and big men then sucked. But HW boxing is at one of its lowest points because nobody gives a **** about watching lumbering fat ass giants hug each other through a fight. Just like in the era you are talking about, outside of the championship level it was a very weak era for HWs. Why do you think Cassius Clay always called himself the savior of boxing and yelled loud and long about how he had revived interest in the division? It wasnt because everyone was flocking to see people like Cleveland Williams, Gerhardt Zech, Chuck Wepner, et al. You really want to argue how good Zech, Wepner, Clark and those other guys were? I know you love Williams and Valdez but Im still waiting (and will be waiting until Im an old man) to have you explain with any logic what made them so special.

"Williams slipped a jab well" LOL. Its not easy to recall a more standup, straight up and down guy who used less head movement than Williams. His entire game was one dimensional built around using his height to walk people down. He was not fast. He did not have good defense. He did not have particularly good stamina. He was just big and could hit hard and even then he rarely produced KOs against top men.