manager takes percentage cut on purse. Promoter take " gate receipts ' . Gambler & bookmaker takes each other depend on result. criminal gangster takes of whatever he wants. lol
imagining prime Liston with Leotis Martin! would kill him or chase out of ring! this is unfair to Martin. or Liston with Jerry Quarry!!! mismatch. plain simple no chance for Quarry. this would be death of quarry! Liston & Chuvalo! Hahahaha funny this guys only chance can be with shot washed Liston. hold on to this hope of feeding like vulture scavenge. these fighter = bums to Liston prime. yes Liston finished in 1967 done. but in prime kills Quarry & Chuvalo & Martin & Ellis in less of 3 round each
Here’s an informative, contemporaneous, Boxing Illustrated article re the Liston vs Martin fight. https://archive.org/details/boxing-illustrated-march-1970/page/26/mode/2up I can’t see any reason to suggest that Liston panicked due to a mere bloodied nose. Nor any justification to draw any conclusion that a prime Liston was a bully who’d fold like a cheap tent under duress. Officially Liston was already 37, with good evidence to suggest he could well have been quite a bit older. He was already beginning to tire badly in the last few rounds - reasonably viewed as distressing enough in its own right. That was no garden variety nose bleed either. The blood was pouring heavily, into an already fast tiring Liston’s mouth - impairing his breathing, compounding his fatigue issues. The article states (representing the author/staff opinion) that “we” consider Leotis Martin as good as any other HW going around. In his younger days we of course have Sonny fighting through with a broken jaw and having his nose broken and bloodied only to come back with a vengeance.
yes lot garbage to make it as Liston just another '''bully ' . funny think that quarry or Chuvalo put fear in Liston. must be joke.
The problem is that you guys are comparing how a prime Liston reacted to adversity. We arent talking about a prime Liston. We are talking about Liston a decade later who had his confidence shattered by Ali and was no longer interested in taking on tough fights. You can argue all you want but the proof is in the pudding. It was Liston turning down those fights and those fights were bigger money, higher profile, and for higher rankings than anybody he fought after Ali. And thats just the problem with Liston apologists. The facts dont matter because they will always fall back on unproven and unproveable conspiracy theories. "He ducked Quarry and Ellis because the mob made him." Really? Whats the upside for the mob to keep Liston fighting nobodies in Phoenix and Jaurez??? You can watch Liston's career trajectory and see exactly what he was doing. It doesnt take a genius. He was facing the least risky opposition to order to keep making regular purses. The only way to get the big money was to fight bigger name fighters. Fighting bigger name fighters comes with greater risk and he wasnt doing that. Whenever he stepped up it was against the least threatening opponent he could face who was rated and he only did that twice post Ali and was brutally stopped in one of those. There is zero upside to having Liston tread water fighting bums as hes getting older and if you truly believe the asinine theories that he was pushing 50 at this point then there is even less upside. But the fact that the goal post keeps getting moved is enough for me to know this argument is more about mythologizing Liston than really dwelling on the facts. First it was "he could have beaten them all but he wasnt allowed to get the opportunities due to politics." When this was shown to be untrue it was "he had the opportunities but for some reason the mob wouldnt let him." When shown that there was no upside to the mob keeping Liston from big fights its just "A prime Liston would have never worried about these guys." Again, we arent talking about a prime Liston and with the clock running out on his athletic career and a totally new generation of talent running around out there you explain to me how it benefitted this supposedly ancient fighter to turn down post-championship career high purses, TV dates, higher ratings, and title shots in order to fight guys down in Jaurez, Mexico if he wasnt simply trying to pick up the best purses he could without getting exposed?
this is true. but even old washed Liston would not worry too much for Chuvalo or Patterson! quarry lose to washed shot Machen & close with Patterson decision very close so can't bet much on such fighter to do exposing of Liston can we? even Leotis had tough fight. Chuvalo struggle against with washed Cleveland Cat big William! so maybe Liston in 1966-67 even beat this guys! who can knows.
There were mutliple titles lying around, weren't there? After Ali beat Liston and signed for a rematch, and the WBA stripped him, the heavyweight title was only unified for a handful of months in 1967 (after Ali decisioned Terrell) when Ali was stripped for refusing Military service in the summer of 1967. Terrell didn't defend the WBA belt against him. When the WBA belt was vacated, Liston wasn't invited to join the tournament. When Ellis won the WBA title, he didn't defend against Liston, he defended against Patterson instead. Which was strange, since Liston had knocked out the WBA's fifth-rated heavyweight Henry Clark on ABC in the summer of 68. And Ellis was making a WBA title defense on ABC that fall and Jimmy's manager Angelo Dundee called the Liston fight with Howard Cosell. Then again, once Angelo sat ringside and saw Liston KO Clark, Patterson (who was coming off back-to-back losses) probably seemed the safer bet. When Frazier became the champion of FIVE STATES after beating Mathis, he didn't fight Liston, either. Manuel Ramos and Dave Zyglewicz got a title shot, but not Liston.
Liston wasnt invited to the WBA tournament because he wasnt rated. He wasnt rated because he hadnt fought a rated contender in years at that point. And as pointed out numerous times above, he was offerd $50,000 face Ellis and turned it down. In what was a clear attempt to continue avoiding the fight everyone wanted and that was Frazier-Ellis.
Which ranked contender had Mildenberger beaten? Who had Martin beaten to be included in the tournament?
Mildenberger was the EBU champion which has always been given deference, for better or worse, in the rankings and had beaten Amos Lincoln, who was in the top ten, had given a good showing against Ali (far better than Liston I might add), and had maintained his rating by going undefeated post-Ali. Martin had hovered just outside the top ten when Zora Folley's loss to Ali was so one sided that he was bumped from the ratings allowing Martin into the bottom spot based on his win record. Why should Liston have been rated above those guys? He had, in popular opinion, just blown two back to back title fights and had spent his time since then fighting nobodies. And frankly Martin got into the elimination because Frazier and Chuvalo decided to fight each other rather than take part in the tournament. The argument for Liston being kept out is less based on facts and more on "well, Im a fan of his so I wish he had gotten in." It doesnt work like that. Again, if Sonny wanted to make a serious run at the big names and the title he had those opportunities. By that point he was being viewed as a stepping stone for younger fighters and thats exactly what he was. He just wasnt going to do that because he knew a loss like what happened to him against Martin would have ended any serious consideration he was given as a challenger and thats exactly what happened. It was easier for him to talk tough, pretend he wanted another run at the title, while milking small, winnable fights.
Lincoln hadn't been ranked for over a year and had lost 2 of his last 4 fights, Lincoln hadnt been ranked for over a year and had lost 2 of his last 4 fights.I#m not saying Liston should have been in the tournament just questioning your rationale for Martin and Mildenberger being included over him.
As you know, Sonny Liston was the Heavyweight Champion in 1964. Sonny Liston fought Muhammad Ali for the World title in 1965, and the WBA recognized neither in its ratings. As you apparently don't know (but I'm sure you do), after that, Sonny Liston wrapped up a four-fight tour in Sweden for promoter Ingemar Johansson, which included Sonny knocking out the WBA #8 contender Amos Johnson in August 1966 and recent WBA #10 contender Elmer Rush, who had lost his ranking in 1966 when he lost back-to-back fights with #3 WBA contender Amos Lincoln. So, to say he hadn't fought a top 10 contender in years isn't exactly true. He knocked out the WBA's #8 contender Amos Johnson roughly 11 months before the first fight in the WBA tournament. At the end of 1966, with Liston having dispatched the #8 WBA contender - not to mention previously having stopped the WBA's current #2 contender was Zora Folley in three rounds, as well as the WBA's current #4 contender Floyd Patterson twice in one round in their previous two meetings -- there's a pretty good case to be made that Liston belonged in the WBA's top eight at year's end and should've received an invite to the tournament that began in August 67. Even then, the WBA's ratings weren't exactly a representative rating of who was actually the 10 best contenders, as you likely know. Liston was still ridiculously unrated by the WBA when he fought the WBA's #5 contender Henry Clark in 1968 and stopped Clark. Liston was also paid nearly double what Clark made, because he was the big name, Clark certainly was not. Liston was then rated #5 by the WBA, ahead of Floyd Patterson, who was at #6 and coming off a loss. Angelo Dundee called Liston-Clark with Cosell on ABC Television. Angelo was Jimmy's manager. Dundee picked Jimmy's opponents. Dundee picked Patterson. And ABC gave Liston $25,000 to fight Leotis Martin, the WBA's #3 contender. You seem to want to paint a picture that Liston hadn't fought any ranked fighters in years, when he fought ranked fighters in every year that decade, except in 1967, and that year he faced Elmer Rush, who had JUST LOST his ranking after losing two fights to the #3 contender Lincoln. And Sonny couldn't fight anyone else in the WBA top 10 after April 67 (when he beat Rush), because all the other top 10 WBA contenders were basically invited to the goddamned tournament. Hell, even if Liston was rated #9 by the WBA, he'd have gotten into the tournament because the highly rated Joe Frazier declined to participate. Just because the WBA doesn't rate you doesn't mean you aren't a top contender. They didn't recognize Ali or Liston at the end of 1964 and for most of 1965 in their top 10, and they were the two best fighters in the division.
My rationale?? Im not the WBA. If you arent saying Liston should have been in the tournament then why question why I dont THINK he should have been in? Why dont you think he should have been in?
