Why Does This Forum Love Sonny Liston

No proof of such thing happening whatsoever.

 

Billy Miske wasn't knocked down until his 3rd encounter with Jack Dempsey and he was an elite HW when terminally ill. Hes 2-0-1 against Fulton and Morris who were superheavyweights with a 9-1 and a first round knockout. Before Dempsey hit the scene those 2 were Miskes main rivals for #1 HW and Miske gave Dempsey more resistance then either of them.

Give a modern LHW Miske adjacent feats and people would be losing their minds if Usyk is any indication.

If Willard had defended his title against Miske I'd bet everything I owned Miske beats him.

 

Tyson is seen by many casuals as TBE, that's what's seen as overrated. Hardly anyone says that about Liston, hence no similar backlash.

I rate Tyson above Liston. The reason not to would be that he didn't lose to anyone like Douglas in his prime, I guess, and that's a valid point. But I think Tyson has more good wins and performances, and that's the decider for me.

As for the eye test, both look really good to me. Tyson's speed was something else, though.

 

Kind of ironic that Leonard is excoriated for not wanting to fight Duran at his best … yet Duran isn’t questioned for doing everything he could to lure Leonard into a dogfight. Why didn’t Duran say (before the first fight), I want you using your boxing skills, up on your toes and moving, making the very best use of your tools so if I win, I know I beat the best Leonard.

There’s so much wrong about the narrative of the second fight:

1) Leonard was the one who went on a run in the French Quarter (witnessed by tons of people) the morning of the fight to shed a little weight before the weigh-in. Not Duran.

2) Leonard, as is also well chronicled, went to Hawaii after the first fight and was thinking about quitting. After stewing for a couple weeks, he picked up the phone and called Mike Trainer, his attorney, and said he wanted a rematch and to get it made asap — give up whatever money, whatever, just make the fight. Trainer, by all accounts, immediately reached out to try to get the fight made.

3) The second fight was 5 months after the first. Duran’s training account by media reports from where he was training make it clear he was in camp at least 2 months before the second fight. Maybe longer as we don’t have specific dates afaik about him doing some training in the Catskills before relocating to Miami for the bulk of his camp, but he and others spoke of it.

4) The book on Duran was ALWAYS he needed to get back in the ring as soon as possible after every fight. The quicker you get him into the ring, the better chance he’ll be in shape. Yet in this one case, suddenly the argument became ‘no, he needs more time … he needs a LONGER layoff.’ As if he’d have jumped right into camp if they had made the fight for say the next March instead of November, rather than continue to party even more.

5) He was off five months in a day when champions fought multiple times a year (look at his own lightweight reign). He was absolutely going to have to defend his title soon, if not in November, or be stripped. Had they skipped Leonard and scheduled for the next year against some nobody he wouldn’t get up for, there’s every reason to believe Roberto would have waddled into the ring and gotten flustered by a Randy Shields or someone like that a la Kirkland Laing. And missed out on the biggest non-heavyweight purse to that point in history.

6) If Duran had turned down the rematch, Leonard was going to fight Pipino Cuevas instead. Which would have left Roberto with one possible big payday (not nearly as big) … against a guy named Thomas Hearns. We saw how that turned out.

7) Since when is quitting because you’re getting outpointed and maybe not at your sharpest or because you’re having trouble with the guy’s movement a thing? Not because he was injured. Not because he was getting severely beaten up. Because he couldn’t land big shots cleanly. If that was the norm, more than half the fights in boxing history would have been quit jobs.

 

Did you see Berbick flopping around against Tyson? Nobody questions that.

Imagine guys from the mob have huge wagers on a first round ko and you get up and keep fighting so as to not look suspicious. He could've just claimed a knee injury or something if he were actually under that kind of pressure.

 

I suppose in my case I find Liston one of the most--(if not THE most)--fascinating AND mysterious fighters of all time. We'll never know his true age--and honestly, we'll never know how great he might have been IF he had a more stable upbringing. He was an incredibly imposing figure with amazing power and strength. To this day nobody was more intimidating than Sonny! Yet he had a very warm side to him that was sadly obscured by his public image as a menace and a brute. His death was under mysterious circumstances-and we'll probably never have the full truth about what really happened.

Harold Conrad said it so poignantly: "Sonny Liston died the day he was born."

His story is a Shakespearean tragedy--it really is!!

 

It's funny the guy who accuses everyone here of being Foreman groupies, is the only person who continuously brings him up in threads that have nothing to do with him. Are you sure you're not projecting?

 

I’m projecting that Foreman had worse stamina than Tyson. Are we going to start saying Foreman was faster than Tyson next?

 

His resume is fantastic. He plowed through a generation of athletic, big, highly skilled heavies in emphatic fashion.

 

Usually when they have no achievement to speak of and their resume is ass on toast this is the sort of response you get out of those odd diehard fans. But him weren't KD'd and Fulton and Morris, though ****, were large for their era.

No dude, what Usyk did is way, way, way better than Miske ever even came close to. You and a lot of people here are delusional.

 

He also hits the sweet spot of being just far enough out of the mainstream that his fans can feel like part of an exclusive club, but not so far that talking about him would require original historical research.

And he fought at the mystical 210 pound mark, at which point a heavyweight becomes the same size as any modern opponent.

 

Sonny Liston is a primeval monster from a bygone era.

A lot of us still remember Tyson's prime.

Give it time, and Tyson will be subject to the same sort of counter revisionism.

 

Liston from the Patterson fights was like the most monstrously effective fighting machine. H2h it's hard to top him. He was a scary puncher who had a freaked out great jab and could box when needed.

He only places just outside my top 10 ATG.

 

The funny thing is the mob backed IBC did run boxing. But they got shut down in 1959. This was years later. Wikipedia says all the mob guys involved were in jail by then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Boxing_Club_of_New_York

 

The guy who was winning 12 round decisions in his late 40s is the one with the cardio issues. Not the 5 ft 10 guy who weighed over 220 pounds.

Theres this thing called BMI.