Sonny Liston would dominate if he fought today!

[Elroy1]

I think the current version of wlad would probably handle him, especially if wlad has the usual wlad refs that allow him to hug and clinch all day long. Liston beats everybody else pretty handily.

You mean THIS Liston?



Against THIS sort of opponent...



Or THIS sort?



Yeah right!

Believable stuff!

And I'll be challenging for HW title next month too, check it out!

The only place where a diminutive slugger like Liston would have any relevance in pugilism today is in jail!

[sleazyfellow]

Liston would definitely dominate if he were prime today, he could take a punch, box good and hit very hard. I'm not going to entertain the troll but listons best performance wasn't against patterson, the two cleveland williams fights showed how good he was.

[Ray Corso]

I watched a few minutes of Vitali vs Lewis and I was surprised at how slow both were! I know Lennox at 37 years old didn't have the skill level he once had but Vitali at 31 years old was sooooooooooo slow! He is wide open for counters and without his height his skill level simply isn't enough to sustain him against high caliber competition.
Honestly I can't watch round after round of that garbage, no body punching at all, no combinations the best punches were a hard jab by Lennox that hurt Vitali and an upper cut that caught Vitali other than that they looked like "suma wrestlers"! Any of the great heavies would KO both of them that night.
I give an excuse to Lewis because of age and his arrogance not to train hard
but Vitali is a second tear opponent against the ATG's! An A for effort but the
skill level is extremely low.
Ray

[Elroy1]

I watched a few minutes of Vitali vs Lewis and I was surprised at how slow both were! I know Lennox at 37 years old didn't have the skill level he once had but Vitali at 31 years old was sooooooooooo slow! He is wide open for counters and without his height his skill level simply isn't enough to sustain him against high caliber competition.
Honestly I can't watch round after round of that garbage, no body punching at all, no combinations the best punches were a hard jab by Lennox that hurt Vitali and an upper cut that caught Vitali other than that they looked like "suma wrestlers"! Any of the great heavies would KO both of them that night.
I give an excuse to Lewis because of age and his arrogance not to train hard
but Vitali is a second tear opponent against the ATG's! An A for effort but the
skill level is extremely low.
Ray

Well I may not have the credentials that YOU have Ray. But I am a quick learner, and so I'm going to point out that for 250lb men like Lewis and Vitali, they are pretty bloody fast.

Of COURSE your barely 200lb heroes SHOULD be quicker than 250lb 6'5"+ guys. How foolish to wonder otherwise!

The problem is, this thread is regarding Sonny Liston. You grab any unedited tape of Liston, TIME his punches, do the same for ANY other boxer of any sort of contender status and you have conclusive proof.

Sonny Liston is among the SLOWEST HW champions of ALL TIME! He is approximately as slow as 320lb, 7'2" Valuev. Unassailable, evidence based fact!

For Liston, being approximately the same size as a modern Cruiserweight, this is shocking! Liston a SMALL HW. He looks small, even compared to little Clay! He started out sub200 and was only 220 at max, which at that weight, was a SOFT 220! Not the same as a 220lber we see today. When you see a ripped to shreds 226lber like Jennings who is considered a SMALL HW, and then compare to the fluid filled, chubby, shoulderless 220lbs of Liston, it becomes clear how silly the comparison really is!

So before you go throwing you garbage around ripping on fighters you dislike in the service of ones that you do.. PLEASE try to remain objective and stick to the facts.

[Ray Corso]

Your pretty slow too.......tooooool! I guess Also would be better than too..tool.

Sonny they weren't fast, they were slow! They stepped one step at a time and if you look at Vitali back foot its pointed straight out to the side (10 o'clock on a clock face) that means he has no power with that hand because the hip turn is minimal to none at best. Sonny you don't know what I know so why converse with you. You are a complete novice at evaluations you don't see what I see because your not "trained" to do it!
Both Lennox and Vitali are so wide with their stances when they throw their actually off balanced. Both are wide open for counter left hooks and with their balance so poor they have a good chance of falling even if their not hurt.

These men have success today because their careers are filled with opponents who don't give 100% in training or their fights.
You could say the same thing about men like Ali and Listen but Ali and Listen have better skills than these other fellows. They punch in combination and when they hurt their opponents they try to finish them.

Evaluate the jab then right hand power! How do they finish after these punches are thrown? It goes on & on & on from there and what I see in the heavies today are a long jab and a right hand ala Big George, that's it!
Sorry but theres more to it than that, watch Joe Louis throw combinations, watch Ali move laterally, watch Dempsey stalk then use "both hands" when he throws.

Being 6'6" and 245 is an advantage and its a bigger advantage when your opponents are ordinary. A great fighter/boxer who gives up some height and weight will win over ordinary talents.
Get off the size thing, its how you use size that counts! When your old enough for a girlfriend she'll teach you that! From the way you relish size my guess is your a "lil' fellow"!
nite sonny clean the buckets, use bleach and vinegar.
Ray.

[billeau2]

Your pretty slow too.......tooooool! I guess Also would be better than too..tool.

Sonny they weren't fast, they were slow! They stepped one step at a time and if you look at Vitali back foot its pointed straight out to the side (10 o'clock on a clock face) that means he has no power with that hand because the hip turn is minimal to none at best. Sonny you don't know what I know so why converse with you. You are a complete novice at evaluations you don't see what I see because your not "trained" to do it!
Both Lennox and Vitali are so wide with their stances when they throw their actually off balanced. Both are wide open for counter left hooks and with their balance so poor they have a good chance of falling even if their not hurt.

These men have success today because their careers are filled with opponents who don't give 100% in training or their fights.
You could say the same thing about men like Ali and Listen but Ali and Listen have better skills than these other fellows. They punch in combination and when they hurt their opponents they try to finish them.

Evaluate the jab then right hand power! How do they finish after these punches are thrown? It goes on & on & on from there and what I see in the heavies today are a long jab and a right hand ala Big George, that's it!
Sorry but theres more to it than that, watch Joe Louis throw combinations, watch Ali move laterally, watch Dempsey stalk then use "both hands" when he throws.

Being 6'6" and 245 is an advantage and its a bigger advantage when your opponents are ordinary. A great fighter/boxer who gives up some height and weight will win over ordinary talents.
Get off the size thing, its how you use size that counts! When your old enough for a girlfriend she'll teach you that! From the way you relish size my guess is your a "lil' fellow"!
nite sonny clean the buckets, use bleach and vinegar.
Ray.

Elroy I tried to tell you not to stay up too late....Now youve done been spanked!

[Elroy1]

[/B]

Elroy I tried to tell you not to stay up too late....Now youve done been spanked!

Yeah except in all his rant all I got was modern opponents don't train hard and prior ones did, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Except any layman can see clearly how uncoordinated Liston and Ali were, Ali couldn't crack an egg, didn't even sit on his shots and was always off balance as part of his style. Whilst Liston threw his arms about like a flailing octopus and sometimes left his arm out there for ever and a day.

Conversely the sharpness of VK's and LL's shots is noted by every commentator how beautiful they are and for me it's plain to see too.

Basically I would counter that you don't have to be a professor of boxing to know **** from gold.

I had to laugh at his comment about VK's hips and the intricacies of balance. During a furious boxing match, the reality is many or most of the punches will be thrown without perfect balance because there's this thing called an opponent trying to knock you off of it and interrupting you. And Vitali is a well known arm puncher too, it's because he is an arm puncher though with sufficient power to hurt and ample range that he is able to **** dead straight shots in so quickly for a big man.

In Sonny we see none of this. We see JUST an unco slugger, who's resume is completely stacked with totally mismatched, undersized, underskilled, and mollusc-bodied opponents.

Delete all the cruisers, all the bums and all the losers, and there's nothing left.

[LacedUp]

Yeah except in all his rant all I got was modern opponents don't train hard and prior ones did, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary..

Interested in seeing this evidence? I mostly see evidence of too many stops at McDonalds in todays heavies.

[Weltschmerz]

Was the Sanders that Vlad could not handle and that folded his brother's legs in the first round...better than Liston Welty? Or how about Purity? Or the hard punching Lamont Brewster? Would Liston fall to these boxers of today?

That wasn't my argument. I said Liston isn't an all time top ten HW, so how would he dominate for ten years today?

I mean that's just rubbish to suggest.

[Anthony342]

Yeah, these heavies today are so well trained that most of them can't even last a 12 round distance, some not even 10, when those guys could usually go 15.