Why did Liston take a dive in his rematch with Ali?

Gallendar's book is very fanciful, to say the least.

 

I have also heard this, it could be true.

 

Very good post.

 

nobody.

 

All conspiracies are so much harder to believe than the film of the fight.

With our own eyes we can see a bungled handling of a knockdown, Ali acting the goat, the fight restarts, the ref walks away from the fighters to listen to a ringsider who tells him “Sonny was on the floor for longer than ten seconds while Ali was refusing to go to a neutral corner so stop the fight and give it to Ali”. And there was no count!

 

Yeah, Gallenders sources were supposedly messages from the ghost of Sonny Liston.

 

Believe he said his source for that particular theory was Joe Louis' wife.

 

Its pretty clear he dived. The indications are he was ordered to by the mob. Liston did a very poor acting job in the dive.

I am not saying he would have won the fight, as he was post prime at this point. But he had a chance of beating Ali in the rematch for sure.

There is another thread on this topic in classic, and there is a quote from someone in boxing confirming he took a dive.

 

I at least think it is clear Sonny did not want to be there.

There isn’t enough evidence that he dived because the knockdown was legit. Sonny did fake going back down again but Why did he get up at all?

And where was the money he would have made from betting against himself?

To believe in a dive you have to convince yourself of something that has no evidence to support it. By comparison, The explanation of the film is satisfactory.

 

Whatever was going on around the fight if anything, the Mob, Nation of Islam etc that punch shouldn’t have kept Sonny Liston down for 10 seconds.
I’ve said it before on previous threads on this, the most surprised person in the hall on seeing Liston go down was Ali!
He immediately gestures for Sonny to get up, words to the effect of “Get up ya bum” he simply didn’t know what was happening.
Now it may well be that the punch with Sonny moving forward and not seeing it caused a flash knockdown, but the reaction of Sonny on the canvas? Come on, it was the worst example of acting since Dick Van Dyke’s attempted rendition of a Cockney accent in Mary Poppins.
Sonny took a dive, for what reason, we’ll probably never know.

 

Money wasn't the motivation for diving, self preservation was !

 

I agree the punch shouldn’t have kept him down for 10 seconds, but without a count, it wasn’t necessary to get up, especially with Ali running around like that. He had no way of knowing how long he was down.

The punch was right on the button. Had Ali went to a neutral corner and behaved himself..and Sonny immediately received a count, Liston should have realistically been up at four. And probably would have since the fight had resumed at the point of it being halted. Sonny was on his feet at the end after all. Sonny was not knocked out.

However, If sonny had got a count and he still decided to stay down for the whole count then it would have been more fishy, but no more fishy than Buster Douglas staying down against Holyfield. He had been clipped. He decided against continuing.

 

Where is the proof?

 

Lol. Good one!

 

The FBi investigated it and their founding revealed it was a fix.