Do you think sonny listons camp knew they had a formidable challange in cassius clay

[Capaedia]

No, Liston thought he would KO him in one or two rounds, and after the famous weigh in, Joe Louis amoungst others went and placed a massive bet on liston to win early. Everybody especially Sunny thought it would be an easy fight for him.

His training for the fight was as a result medicore ... kinda going through the motions but not pushing himself that hard. The real balls of the Liston Clay fights is that we missed what could have been a truly epic rematch. Liston got himself into perhaps the best shape of his career for the rematch (well the best shape he possibly could at his age) but then Ali got a stomach ulcer (or something similiar) and had to be rushed to hospital the fight was postponed and Liston went into depression. He started drinking again and his training went to pot. He was even getting beat up in sparring before the rematch so much so that they had to switch out sparring partners cause they were giving him too rough a time and bring in complete bums for him to beat up on. (I know Dempsy used to bring in bums for his last few days of sparring so he could beat the crap out of them and knock them all over the place to boost his confidence - but this was different, they had to bring them in cause Sunny was in such crap condition)

Fascinating. I never knew that.

[Daddy T]

What about the rumors of Liston taking a dive in the second fight and possibly betting against himself and losing to stick it to the mob, who owned his contract? Any truth to any of that?

No I don't think he took a dive. A reporter (and friend) of his asked him about it shortly before he died. He asked him what was the reason he lost. Liston said "because fleicher can count to ten quicker than walcott" or something similiar (memory is hazy) his wife also insisted there was no dive. Fact is he was in crap shape. He did get visited by the nation of islam durning the training camp and there were rumours that it was after that that his training really went down hill and there are other rumours too but meh fact is he was in pants shape, got caught with a shot he didn't see that hurt him and the following confusion meant the fight was stopped when he should imo have been allowed to continue. He said he was looking to the ref and listening for the count and got up before walcott reached ten - which he did. Walcott messed up bad - not helped by ali refusing to go to a neutral corner.

[Anthony342]

Heard about that and that the rule is that if a fighter won't go to a neutral corner, a ref is supposed to send him outside the ring?