Vitali Klitschko vs Sonny Liston

I would imagine that everytime an opponent nails that arm though, its gotta hurt like hell. Typically what happens with shoulder injuries, is that its not always just the shoulder that hurts. The pain can be referred to other places, and you can actually feel it down the entire length of the arm. In a sport where you're holding your arms up constantly and getting hit by the other guy, that can be like agony I imagine.

Also, we don't know exactly when Vitali's arm started bothering him. For all we know, he could have injured it a few rounds earlier. I doubt that he quit immediately when his arm started talking to him. Afterall he showed great heart in the Lennox Lewis fight. He wanted to continue fighting, depite having half his face punched off.

 

Yeah, I kind of figured as much. Klitschko has a lot more heart than people give him credit for. In fact, I think he's damn tuff. People act like Vitali quit just as soon as his arm started aching. He fought for some 6 rounds with a rotator cuff injury, and I can tell you from personal experience that the guy had to be in agony. He also showed heart against Lennox Lewis when he sustained that huge cut and wanted to continue despite the fight being stopped.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that a healthy Vitali Klitschko could have been a real problem for a much smaller Sonny Liston. I know Suzy and a number of other posters are going to scream in outrage and repeat the same rhetoric " he fought B level fighters ", but I really don't care. Klitschko is not going to be intimidated nor is he going to just quit against Liston. Sonny will not enjoy his usual advantage of having an opponent walk in with cold feet. In fact, I'm almost wondering if Sonny might be a tad edgy in this fight himself. Vitali has a much better chin than most fighters in the game. He has my vote as one of the top 10 hardest punchers in history, and I don't care if people say " who did he knock out?" The man could jab and he knew how to box. I know that a great small fighter can certainly beat a much bigger fighter, but its not like Liston would be fighting some big **** head who couldn't fight. Vitali is a very good big fighter, and this is by no means an effort at me overrating him. It doesn't always take an all time great to beat an all time great. Legacied are established through what a fighter did in his own time, and they do not always represent what he would do in a cross era matchup, even against a lesser rated champion.

 

What is so unrealistic or delusional about a human being beating another human being in a boxin ring, especially one who is clearly the bigger, stronger and more durable of the two. And please don't try and tell me Liston was superior to Klitschko in any of those areas. Liston was 6'0" 215 Lb man who was used to beating on 190 Lb men, who now would be fighting a 6'"8, 240 Lb mountain of muscle. Big difference, when going from being a big fish in a small pond to being a minnow in lake Michigan. Klitschko will never have the all time great status that Liston has, but one does not necessarily need that to be an all time great. If Cleveland Williams was the biggest and hardest puncher Liston ever fought, he'd be in for a rude awakening here.

 

Chris Byrd was one of the very best fighters at the time and Vitali was kicking the **** out of him. No getting around that. His retirment in his corner had absolutely nothing to do with anything that Chris Byrd did to him, so your ascertion that Byrd made him quit is very incorrect. As for Lewis, he was getting his ass kicked for 4/5 strait rounds in that fight, before that nasty cut cought up to Klitschko, and it was the ringside doctor who stopped it, not Vitali. Sure Lewis was past his prime at age 38, I won't try to say that he wasn't. But even a 38 year old Lewis was still better than a lot of great fighters, and Klitschko was dominating that fight. Just because Lennox managed to pull a stoppage out of his ass doesn't guarantee that Liston would do anything to him. Lewis was a totally different type of fighter with better boxing ability, and larger size to back it up.

Where in the blue **** does all this nonsense come from about Vitali being a quitter?????

I agree that Liston could have beaten Vitali, but some here are acting like the possibility of the opposite occuring is something out of a fiction novel.