In the past i have been very critical of liston https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/school-me-on-sonny-liston.644027/ I am a marciano fan myself and maybe just maybe i could be overating marciano and underating liston. I really don't see liston great at all. So lets compare resumes, skills, abilities , competition opponents etc etc . By the way i don't mind you being super blunt in an argument so if you have to be super honest then just go for it . Tell me why liston( who i dont rate highly )is greater than marciano (who i rate highly)
Rocky is overrated for some people and underrated sometimes by some people too. Overall would say that Liston is more overrated
Idk depends who you talk too but both are drastically underrated at times...Liston more so then Marciano simpler for his disastrous Ali showings. Neither can possibly be over rated because of what they were which was KO monsters in their respective eras
Mr. Dance84, maybe you didn't notice but there are FOUR Marciano threads on the first page and you created TWO of them! Can you please calm down? Lol.
Both are great, neither belongs in the top 2. Nothing much else to say. They’re heavyweights, and people who are primarily into heavyweights struggle badly with ranking fighters, differing points of view etc.
@ h2h, all top HW ATGs are basically overrated. Taking weightclass and official resume into context, both Liston and Rocky are even more overrated. The thing is: Liston did not have the opposition to show better, while Rockys limititations are on tape, fighting aging past-it fighters. Rocky was an overachiever at his limit, while Liston was an underachiever with potential upwardly open.
There's another thread where people are saying that Marciano beats Wlad, Bowe and will f**k Bruno up. Those type of comments damages his greatest.
In what way was Liston an underachiever? He knocked out mostly everyone he faced at an extremely quick rate. Given his opponents were generally smaller. He lost to Ali who just about anyone can be expected to. Maybe he could have done better against Ali but other then that had a stellar career against good opposition.
Its a propagated syndrome. Denying and cutting out that HW boxing changed. I call it Rockista Brain Virus (RBV). And you are right, Marciano did everything he had to do successful, its his wonderland warriors creating a 185lb Superman. In the way people expected an aging man to continue, having title fights too late. Yes, everyone could have had problems with that Ali, but I also think he could have showed more against him (1st fight, dunno about 2nd). But he was too late into his career, prob. getting too old and living the middle-aged mans life. What I also meant is that he faced too little resistance, often having a weight advantage, not getting challanged, until the GOAT appeared. There was not much between. Too many small fellows, a champ who could not take a punch and the GOAT. What Liston missed were more fellows his size that could test him, but no Cassius.
Marciano is the arch overachiever, while Liston is the arch underachiever. This is always going to make them both tricky to evaluate. I don't think that either of them is over rated, except by a few enthusiasts.
Liston. His record is simply not impressive. Yeah, he destroyed Patterson twice--a chinny LHW whose "title reign" was a disgrace of ducking. As for Machon, Foley, Williams, Valdez...they were very beatable fighters. Add in the accusations of cheating with the linament in the eyes, the two losses/dives to Ali...it just isn't an impressive record. People get down of Marciano because his opponents were smallish, but he was 5'10" and 185 himself. Does this somehow make him less than Liston who held a significant weight advantage over most of his opponents? Sure thing. No hate on Liston. He was a mid-level great. Not down the list as far as Patterson, Norton, Bowe...but certainly not in the top-ten or anything.
