Frazier's wins over contenders: 1. Ali I 2. Quarry I 3. Quarry II (both old) 4. Bonavena I (frazier down twice, many think bonavena won) 5. Bonavena II 6. Chuvalo 7. Ellis I- coming off 2 year layoff 8. Ellis II (both old) 9. Foster- Lightheavyweight 10.Ramos Ali, Quarry, Bonavena and Ellis were all #1 (besides Frazier) contenders or champions when he defeated them. Frazier's main losses: 1. Ali II (close) 2. Ali III (close) 3. Foreman I (embarrassing) 4. Foreman II (a game effort, making it into the 5th despite being far past it) This content is protected Liston's wins over contenders: 1. Patterson I 2. Patterson II 3. Machen 4. Folley 5. Williams I - 6. Williams II- 7. Valdez 8. DeJohn 9. Harris 10. Bethea Patterson I & II was against the #1 (outside of Liston) contender or champion. Machen, Folley, Valdez were either # 2 or # 3 heading into the year they fought liston. Liston's losses: 1. Marshall I ( controversial decision, Liston was green) 2. Clay I (Liston was old, embarrassing) 3. Clay II (fixed, quit or knocked out) 4. Martin (one punch KO, Liston was very old) This content is protected Sidenotes: Liston lost early in his career to Marshall on a controversial split decision but avenged that loss twice in devastating dominating fashion. Even though this was early in his career, Marty was the # 7th ranked lightheavyweight contender in the world. Fighting such opposition at such an early stage of a fighters career is virtually unheard of. . Frazier had a very close fight with Bonavena early in his career, but frazier had far more amatuer experience than liston heading into the pros. Sonny Liston Beat bigger and better punchers than frazier did. Liston had 4 dominating wins over big top punchers 6'4 215lb Williams 2x, 6'3 211lb Valdez, and 6'5 207lb Mike Dejohn. Frazier did not have one win over a big top puncher. Liston also had very close fights with Very talented 19-1 Johnny Summerlin, in which Summerlin and liston were seen as the rising prospects; In very close Chess Match type boxing clinics Liston got the verdict(though some scored it for summerlin). The second fight was another close barn burner. Again, Liston was very green here(5 pro fights) and Summerlin within the year would be ranked in the top 10 so beating a fighter of this calibre TWICE is very impressive. Despite Frazier being a swarmer, he actually had a longer career at the top than Liston did. It should be noted that Liston was in prison for two years during 1956 and 1958, though which drastically effected him because he would have been cleaning out all the top challengers in 1956-1958 and may have been champion 4-5 years earlier than he was. If we include those years with Liston in the top10, Liston and Frazier are dead even in being ranked the same amount of years. Frazier is seen as having the weaker jaw because he never beat a top puncher like liston did. Liston fought, took flush punches without blinking then went on to dominate top punchers like 6'4 215lb Cleveland Williams 2x, 6'3 211lb Nino Valdez, and 6'5 207lb Mike Dejohn sporting a 4-0 record against these men. Though Liston who got knocked out cold by a single punch against ranked contenderLeotis Martin ranked in the Rings Top 100 punchers of all time, he was 40 years old and winning the fight handily on the cards at the time of the knockout...... The only puncher with size that frazier fought, Frazier made it into the 5th round and got up everytime against one of the hardest punchers of all time (Foreman). p.s. how Yank Durham and Eddie Futch managed to steer Frazier clear of facing all those punchers( Martin, Macfoster, shavers, lyle, old liston) may have been a smart move considering the foreman fight but did he really think frazier couldnt beat these guys? did he know something about frazier we dont?
1. Who are the "many" who think Frazier lost the first Bonavena fight? I defy you to find two sportswriters of that viewpoint. Having seen it myself, I think Frazier won very decisively in the rounds system the fight was scored under. Out of a fair number of newspaper/magazine accounts I've seen, not one expressed the viewpoint that Bonavena had deserved the win in that fight. In fact, the New York Times scorecard had it 7-3 Frazier! 2. This whole post is obviously biased and goes out of its way to point out positive aspects of Liston's performances and negative aspects of Frazier's. 3. The thing about Frazier's management being to let him fight punchers is utter baloney. The fighters brought up as opponents Frazier's management "dodged" are simply fighters who: A. were not near the top of the division at the same time Frazier was, B. were at the top at a time Frazier was alternating fights with Muhammad Ali and George Foreman (or was he ducking those guys to fight them?), or C. were not at the right place at the right time. If Frazier's management were afraid to let him fight punchers, they would NEVER have OPTED- note that Foreman was NOT a #1 contender or pressing mandatory in any way- to put him in with a young Olympic medalist with a 37-0 (34 KO's) record who had won over 20 consecutive knockouts. They could just as easily have gone straight to a much more lucrative fight in a rematch against Ali, but they CHOSE to have their man fight Foreman. Moreover, after the third Ali fight, they ONCE AGAIN chose to have their man fight Foreman without being forced to accept the fight by outside pressure. And although history does not necessarily view them that way now, Bonavena and Ramos both had widespread reputations as power punchers prior to fighting Frazier. In fact, there are multiple accounts referring to the upcoming fight between "two young knockout punchers" or the like in Bonavena and Frazier. Frazier also never fought Ernie Terrell, Zora Folley, Gregorio Peralta, Thad Spencer, or Karl Mildenberger. Maybe his management was afraid of... whatever all of those guys have in common. Or maybe you just don't fight absolutely everyone, particularly in a 37-fight career.
Kind of Like Chris Pontius Biased thread that goes out of its way to point out the positive aspects of fraziers performances and negative aspects of liston's. Do two wrongs make a right? No but I decided to do it anyway out of pride. I mean come on MF, He listed C Level Roy Harris as one of listons best wins over C Williams, Folley?? LOL Even listing Dejohn over C Williams, Folley, Valdez(who beat dejohn)??? I will personally score it myself, but it was not a Quartey-lopez fight where lopez scored 2 knockdowns and lost the rest of the rounds, Bonavena won rounds it was very very close. I did see one NY newspaper article that had Bonavena winning. Let me find it. Agree Mac Foster, Sonny Listons camps challenged Frazier. Futch and Durham denied them. Frazier gets alot of credit for taking on foreman, but he did get blown out pretty badly. It may be george foreman, but when foreman slugged it out with lyle, lyle floored him twice and outslugged him most of the time so clearly george was not undentable, this makes you wonder if lyle would blow away frazier. Even though frazier was past his prime in the early-mid 1970s there was some top young punchers that frazier did not take on. Frazier gets alot of credit for taking on foreman. but did foreman exactly deserve the shot? he was 37-0(34) but had only beaten one ranked fighter chuvalo, and the past 2 years had taken on a bunch of clubfighters and tomato cans to pad his record. Frazier was a heavy favorite, you think fraziers camp took the fight because foremans olympic gold status would make it a high drawing fan favorite fight, but that foreman was not a huge risk? Ramos was a very hard puncher, but he completley lacked boxing skills unlike williams and valdez. So even though its a win over a puncher, Ramos was certianly not a skilled puncher and didnt possess a big threat to a champion like a williams, shavers, lyle. Bonavena could punch, but he didnt possess one punch knockout power, more of an attrition puncher. Who knows......outside of Terell, Spencer the other names you listed were either lightheavyweights, washed up or fighting in europe all the time.
Yes, I admit Chris' post also has an obvious slant to it (but in the opposite direction), although I imagine that the omission of Williams and Folley was some kind of temporary brain freeze- it's too obvious to be something you'd omit to sweep the wins under the table. Although Bonavena didn't lose all the rest of the rounds aside from the two knockdowns, scoring comparison with Quartey-Lopez is irrelevant, as this is a rounds-system fight and Bonavena gains no advantage whatsoever as a result of the two knockdowns unless you score it even in rounds. See categories A and C- I didn't say that every supposed example fell under all three categories, but that they all fell under A OR B OR C. Frazier not fighting a Foster or Liston is just not solid evidence that they were afraid of punchers; all kinds of guys in the top 20 obviously wanted fights with Frazier in the late '60s to early '70s, and some of them obviously didn't end up getting them, including plenty of guys who were obviously not wrecking-ball punchers- this whole illusion comes up when people sort of group together the ones who were punchers and think they've drawn out a strong trend where, in fact, none exists. As you note below, Foreman was not a tremendously eminent challenger at the time he received his shot at Frazier, and Frazier did not fight some "top young punchers," but all of the "top young punchers" you refer to were even far less qualified for title fights than Foreman was. Lyle and Foster were essentially like Foreman except with much smaller undefeated records against even lesser opposition and without the amateur gold medals. If Frazier's camp wasn't afraid of Foreman, I don't see why they would've been afraid of them. As to your proposition that Lyle might blow out Frazier, I want to point out here that Lyle actually wasn't a very fast starter. In fact, he never won a first-round knockout in his entire career of 51 professional fights!I don't believe that Foreman was quite himself the night he fought Lyle, either physically or mentally, as this was his first real pro fight in well over a year since the psychologically-damaging loss to Ali, and he was pretty strangely tentative at times in there. And Foreman still won the fight. Lyle was not the fast starter or the puncher or the finisher Foreman was. He didn't record anything like a blow-out win whatsoever in any of his fights with the likes of Quarry, Peralta, Bonavena, Ellis, Ali, Foreman, Young or Shavers, but he's going to be as destructive as Foreman and wipe out Smokin' Joe Frazier? Actually, Peralta was also ranked, and Kirkman was borderline. Perhaps they didn't think Foreman was a big risk, but it was obvious and indisputable that he was one of the hardest hitters alive and had one of the most impressive knockout records you were ever going to see. The point is, Frazier's management just plain picked him out of a list of a number of contenders who could've been given the shot instead who were, oh, let's say, not the biggest puncher in the division coming off over 20 consecutive knockouts. If you're a manager who is specifically afraid to let your man fight dangerous punchers, the last thing you're going to do at the end of 1972 is scan down a list of the top 10, see Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Jimmy Ellis, Ron Lyle, Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrell, Jose Roman, Joe Bugner, Ken Norton and Jose Luis Garcia, and pick Foreman! Lyle was also undefeated with a high knockout percentage at that stage, but with a much lower ranking, barely half as many fights and an even shallower resume. Foreman was the guy you would absolutely not pick if you were that guy in that position. You can rationalize out things like that looking at things in retrospect, but it is a fact that both Ramos and Bonavena were viewed by the media as rising power punchers when Frazier fought them, strongly suggesting that Frazier's management was not out to steer him clear of big hitters. Another name that should be added here is Bob Foster- although, looking back, we can point out that Foster never delivered the big knockout against a top heavyweight, at the time, Foster hadn't lost a fight of any kind in well over five years and was coming off 13 consecutive knockouts (including the freakish Dick Tiger KO!), most of them against heavyweights. You think they thought he wasn't a puncher??? Yes, but similar reasons are equally valid for the other fighters mentioned who Frazier didn't face. He had a fairly brief run at the absolute top, which he spent cleaning out the absolute top contenders (who happened to be boxers or boxer/punchers like Quarry and Ellis) with a handful of intermediary fights. The guys who were punchers who Frazier didn't fight were no more eminently deserving than the ones who weren't. Frazier did, in fact, fight multiple fighters who were at least viewed at the time as big punchers during his reign, and ultimately his management opted for him to fight the most imposing puncher alive, not once, but twice. The "Frazier's-management-ducked-punchers" theory just does not hold water.
