49 years ago today...

[MRBOOMER]

I agree with ray on the knock down it was a clean flash knockdown he never saw that coming I think he quit tho after getting nailed with that in the first round Prbly took any confidence he had and like another poster said if he was in great shape for this fight and still couldn't manage to keep him self from getting dropped in the first then that really f\/cked him up. he just knew who the all around better man was. But the ingredients for a fix are there too. Could be a little bit of both.

[BattlingNelson]

The best heavyweight body of all time! Weight to height to reach and conditioning. Perfect proportions with outstanding athletic ability for any sport!
Possibly the greatest athlete in any weight class, definitely the greatest in the heavy division. Tremendous physical attributes!
Ray.

Indeed. One of the funny quotes from Ali along those lines, was from the camp for Foreman:

"I remember my critiques saying that I couldn't win because I was fat. Look at me now (raises arms and turns around). The perfect specimen of a man!"

[MisterHardtop]

That picture may as well define boxing because it really has defined Ali for a century. Was it a fix? I really don't think so. I just think that flash KD, beautiful right hand, stunned Liston, he went down hard and felt like he didn't want this for another 7 or 8 rounds. Liston, like many bullish punchers was a bully, he didn't like being pushed back or stood up to, the kid from Louisville did both.

[Humean]

I don't think it was a dive either. At the time most people didn't see the punch and with everything else surrounding Liston it seemed plausible that he dived but the good footage there is of the punch, such as in the footage already posted in this thread, you can see it not only landed but landed well and Liston really didn't see the punch. I also don't think he was acting when he fell back down after getting to a knee, seems perfectly normal for when a fighter is out of equilibrium.

It is also not mutually exclusive to say that the knockout was legit and that the fight was 'fixed', or would have been fixed.

[billeau2]

Come on Ray, It was an arm punch. He was moving backwards, his feet weren't planted, they weren't in the right position to generate power and he had next to no weight on his back foot so there's no grip on the canvas.

Your comments about the punch are true to a degree. Its implausable that such a punch would generate such force. But it can be done because of two equaizers. The first is speed. Ali was fast enough to make that happen with hand speed...Ed Parker used to have that kind if boom with hand speed for example, Bruce Lee ti a degree as well.

The other thing is what we call in martial arts land the "hidden Hand." When a punch has some juice and is virtually unseen it can drop AnyONE real quick because chin does not matter, its more the shock and angle of the punch. I think that the angle on that blow (if its legit) was such that it caught Liston just as Ali was backstepping into some leverage, it caught him on a small area of the face thus intsnsifiying the force of the blow....concentrated area of force = greater force....and it probably was concussive because at a certain angle the brain has very little area to rock back into in the skull.

This last point is the whiplash effect..... if you hit me square in the middle of my face the blow will make my head rock back courtesy of my neck, the brain will have plenty of skull casing to rock into and even have time to rock foward again and the angle of force, especially with glove is sufficiently blunt that you might have to really work for that KO Billeau deserves so much! Now with Liston if you look at the position of his head and neck, he is crouched, his head is at a slight angle to Ali, just sufficient enougn to make it so is neck was not able to absorb any recoil. If Ali does the punch so it is unseen he would hit Liston straight coming at a slight angle and hitting Liston right around the chin...

But Liston's chin would be locked because of the position of his head. This position means that Ali's punch would drive Liston's brain back hard directly into the back of the skull with absolutely no recoil. This being exactly how a one inch punch and how an anatomically correct punch that lines the body force up properly is supposed to work...with the caveat that Ali used speed instead of form.

So in essence...Ali caught Liston right on the side of the button, Sonny never saw the punch coming, could not roll or recoil the punch with his neck muscles, his brain was short circuited by slamming into the back area of his skull casing. This process is exactly how a concussion happens....many times it is not the force of the blow but the recoil. You can see Liston's head after the impact, it has nowhere to go as the punch hits the side of his jaw.

[Panamaniac]

Arguably the single most shocking and controversial KO in the history of boxing... Indisputably the single most iconic photograph in the history of boxing (the photographer might still be receiving royalties).