The Liston/Ali fights were fixed...

[JAB5239]

The first fight was not a fix because in 2 previous fights Liston was finding the fight hard so he used the eye irritation in both fights it done the trick & so in the first with Ali he tried it again when the well was dry but Angelo Dundee told him to run for round 5 & Ali licked him when recovered.

Fight 2 is 1 we will never no but why did Ali shout at Liston get up you bum nobody will believe this & lets not forget the Mob & the Nation Of Islam were controlling both fighter's

Ali was shouting at him because muchof the public still percieved the first fight as a fluke and thought Liston invincible. as far as who controlled who.....It wouldn't have been in Carbo orb Palermo's best interest to put Sonny in the tank. There is an old saying that goes "you can sheer a sheep over and over, but you can oly skin it once" or something to that effect. what it means is with Liston they controlled the biggest prize in sports and could continually make money from him because of it. Not to mention I find it very difficult to believe two wise guys would willingly give up there bead and butter to the black ******s which they would hold no control or influence over.

As far as Ali being controlled...I don't believe that for a minute. Never was there a person who was more their own man than Muhammed Ali. No way bhe takes part in a fixed fight and has any klnowledge of it.

Who knows but 1 thing can't be over looked is Liston got caught & would never have seen it coming but the only thing that can leave douth is Liston rolling a round on the ground it was dramatic to say the least

I agree it was dramatic. ?But was it any more dramatic than Berbick floundering around the ring after being hit by Tyson? Who's to say how one fighter is going to react to being dropped by another.

[The Jackal]

I agree it was dramatic. ?But was it any more dramatic than Berbick floundering around the ring after being hit by Tyson? Who's to say how one fighter is going to react to being dropped by another.

Good point about Berbick & Liston said in his dressing room after the fight in an inteerview he gave that he could have got up only for ali standing over him

















































& Jersey Joe's handling of it & Nat should haven't have told Walcott that liston was down for 12 or 17 seconds which ever it was aeter all Walcott was only trying to make a few dollars.

Ive an open mind on it Angelo Dundee said it was a simple move he my caught with a perfect right & the way ali turn his punches they must hurt ive seen the recreated on a doc called Closest Thing To Death it caught him on the timple & hit him flush all down his jaw enough to catch him & lets not forget the speed of the shot & liston never saw it coming.

[Squabbles94806]

Fixed fights

Yes, we've heard all the stories. Yes, we all know the surrounding evidence prior to the fight.

I would have to say that the 1st fight MAY have been fixed. The 2nd fight was definately fixed.

But all i have to say is one thing: Sonny Liston was owned by the Mob. And during the 60's the Mafia was at its highest power. For Sonny Liston to take a dive, think about the pay out.

[JAB5239]

Yes, we've heard all the stories. Yes, we all know the surrounding evidence prior to the fight.

I would have to say that the 1st fight MAY have been fixed. The 2nd fight was definately fixed.

But all i have to say is one thing: Sonny Liston was owned by the Mob. And during the 60's the Mafia was at its highest power. For Sonny Liston to take a dive, think about the pay out.

I hear you talking and making assumptions, but I don't see any proof. Do you have ANYTHING to offer us besides conjecture?

[The Jackal]

I hear you talking and making assumptions, but I don't see any proof. Do you have ANYTHING to offer us besides conjecture?

Point taken i made that point early that mob had a lot to gain out of it & with likes of Frank Carbo & Blinky Palermo a round controlling boxing a long with the IBC.

i have listen to sports writers say that the first fight was a fix it would have been a double bet with an Ali win & Liston to get ko'd in round 7 vast amounts of money to be made.

I haven't heard Burt Sugar's take on it do you know what he had to say?

[JAB5239]

Point taken i made that point early that mob had a lot to gain out of it & with likes of Frank Carbo & Blinky Palermo a round controlling boxing a long with the IBC.

i have listen to sports writers say that the first fight was a fix it would have been a double bet with an Ali win & Liston to get ko'd in round 7 vast amounts of money to be made.

I haven't heard Burt Sugar's take on it do you know what he had to say?

I have heard Sugar speak about this before on ESPN's "Ringside" series, but I'd be lying if I said I remembered what he said.

[StarshipTrooper]

The truth is we'll probably never know. As for the second Ali - Liston fight you watch it carefully. Liston had just badly missed with a left on was off balance and the punch pretty much PUSHED him over. After that Ali was standing over Liston screaming and gesticulating and wouldn't go to the neutral corner. No fighter is going to get up under those circumstances as it would leave him dangerously vulnerable if he tried. Once Ali finally went to the neutral corner Walcott began his count and Liston got up as per the refs count and the fight continued. THEN Nat Fleischer stuck his nose in where it didn't belong and told Walcott that Liston had been down for longer than 10 seconds and was therefore KOed. The biggest problem I have with that is a fighter is KOed when the ref counts 10 NOT when 10 seconds elapse. The count shouldn't rightly start UNTIL the fighter scoring the knockdown goes to the neutral corner. If he wants to jump around the ring and act the clown giving his downed opponent extra time that's HIS business; but he should NOT profit from his own malfeasence.

Poet

[tmoqsudz]

the fact that the thread started is an ali hater is total unfair.....

people dont understand how much power was in the ''phantom punch''..... if you look it up on youtube you will see, just by looking at his chest when ali throws the punch, how much power is behind it. When he throws the punch his chest tenses up like crazy which is proof that he put so much power behind it! your chest cannot tense up like that without a lot of power.

another thing is people say the second fight was definitely fixed, but if it was would people not make it more believeable by making liston 'dive' in the later rounds. i mean the first fight he didnt even get knocked out or really close to it, so why would they make liston dive in the first round?

[mspiegelo]

Sonny Liston was the baddest fighter in the history of Planet Earth - inside or outside the ring.

Sonny Liston's fists were a massive 14 inches around (or 15 inches, depending on whom you ask), and Sonny's wing span was a ridiculous 84 inches - the greatest wingspan (reach) of any heavyweight champion in boxing history, with the exception of Primo Carnera.

Sonny Liston destroyed all of the top-ranked heavyweights of his day (except for the ones who refused to fight him), including Zora Folley, Eddie Machen and Cleveland Williams.

(Muhammad Ali's handlers, most notably Angeo Dundee, continually ducked Folley, Machen, and, most especially, the fearsome Cleveland Williams, while Ali was on the way up. During their repeated verbal sparring sessions, which occurred over a period of many months, prior to their first fight, Sonny Liston often told Ali to "go fight Cleveland Williams, and then get back to me." Ali's handlers were not ****** - they knew Williams would demolish Ali, whom Liston knocked out twice in two of the most vicious brawls in heavyweight boxing history.)

Henry Cooper, the former British Heavyweight Champion, flat-out refused to fight Sonny Liston - under any circumstances. Cooper knocked Ali down in their first fight with a thunderous left hook (Ali would have been knocked out if the bell hadn't saved him), and Cooper had been quoted as saying, on more than one occasion, "If Mr. Liston approached me on the street, I would walk the other way."

Ingemar Johanssen, who was the reigning heavyweight champion at the time, when Liston was busy cleaning out the division in the early 1960's, constantly ducked Sonny Liston...Liston called him out on several occasions in front of the national media, but the silence from Johanssen was deafening. Johanssen had won the title by knocking out the former champion, Floyd Patterson.

During a 1987 interview, Floyd Patterson said he was convinced Liston threw both fights to Ali. According to Patterson, Ali's cut man for the first fight had contacted all of his friends and relatives before the fight and told them that it was fixed, and that they should bet everything they had on Ali (this was also mentioned in a casino sports betting paper in 1991, as well).

Liston's handlers and cornermen got wind of the scheme and put their money down on the "sure thing", and everybody cleaned up - due to the 7-1 odds against Ali at the time of the first fight. In the second fight, Liston was STILL the favorite, the odds were 7-5 in Liston's favor - and all the wise guys cleaned up yet again.

Six months after supposedly knocking out Liston with a six-inch right hand, Ali could not finish off a badly injured Patterson (who foolishly went into the fight with a very bad back).


Sonny Liston absolutely mauled Floyd Patterson, knocking him out in the first round - TWICE.

Sonny Liston did time in prisons and prison camps. He beat the hell out of both inmates and guards, while incarcerated. Liston was constantly harassed by the Feds (J. Edgar Hoover had Liston on his "su****ious persons" list), the police and the Mob. He was followed by policemen almost everywhere he went. Liston once got into a brawl with six policeman who proceeded to beat Liston over the head with billy clubs - yet Liston survived the clubbing, and took all six of the policemen OUT. And yet...Ali's ridiculous "phantom punch" knocked out Liston? Please...as P.T. Barnum once said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

Both fights with Ali were fixed, and this is a fact, not speculation - and people who were close to both Liston and Ali have admitted as much over the years. Liston's bodyguard at the time of the first Ali fight, asked Sonny if he should bet more money than he already had on Liston to win. Sonny told him that boxing was funny and you never knew who would actually come out on top in a heavyweight championship fight. After Liston failed to come out of his corner for the 7th round during the first Ali fight, Liston's bodyguard knew what was up. He asked Liston later, why he hadn't bothered to inform him that the fight had been fixed. to which Liston said, "With your big mouth, we would have both ended up in the river wearing concrete shoes...I just did what I was told."

Watch Sonny Liston's fights. Pay close attention to all the fights you can lay your hands on before the Ali (Clay) fights. Liston routinely knocked fighters' senseless with his JAB (he also knocked more than a few heavyweights' TEETH out with that same left jab). And his right hand was absolutely fearsome. Sonny could knock you out with either hand.

But, mysteriously, when he fought Ali the first time, he threw a total of maybe FIVE right hands during the entire fight. And most of those right hands were fly-swatter punches. If you watch all of his other fights leading up to the first Ali fight, you will notice that he set boxers up with his left, and when he went for the kill, he used lefts and rights in combination, especially a powerful straight right, or right hook to the head. (Or a right uppercut, he had a ferocious right uppercut.) He threw a good number of right hands in every single fight he ever fought - except for the Ali fights.

The eyes don't lie. Watch the fights.

There exists reams and reams of evidence that overwhelmingly proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Sonny Liston threw both fights with Ali. (Read "The Devil and Sonny Liston," by author Nick Tosches, for starters.)

And consider this -

Ever watch Ali's fight with Doug Jones? This fight took place about 11 months before Ali's first fight with Liston. Doug Jones was a journeyman light heavyweight (14.5 pounds lighter than Ali during the time of their fight at Madison Square Garden on March 13, 1963)...Ali's handlers wouldn't let Muhammad fight Cleveland Williams or Zora Folley or Eddie Machen, or ANY of the top contenders of the day, so Ali agreed to fight Doug Jones, as one of his two tune-ups for the first fixed fight with Liston.

Jones was the agressor duing the entire fight with Ali, and he came forward incessantly with great success - despite the great disparity in their weights (and the alleged disparity in their boxing prowess). Ali won a unanimous decision in this fight, and many observers thought that THIS fight was fixed, and that Jones had clearly won, despite Ali's strong showing in the last two rounds of this 10-round fight. You can watch this fight on DVD, or online...ESPN sometimes shows it on their "ESPN Classics" channel. Listen to the boos and watch the reaction of the Madison Square Garden crowd after you watch it...I watched this fight and I thought that it was, in the very least, a draw...Jones won at least five of the first seven rounds, and if I had to pick a winner on the night in question, it would have been Jones...Doug Jones stunned Ali in the first round with a good shot to the head.

Watch the fight. Then tell me that Ali is "The Greatest"...

Henry Cooper knocked Ali down (and almost out) with one punch. Chuck Wepner knocked Ali down with one punch. Joe Frazier knocked Ali down with one punch. Sonny Banks knocked Ali down with one punch.

Nobody ever knocked Sonny Liston down with one punch - except Muhammad Ali...

Contary to popular opinion, Muhammad Ali was one of the most overrated fighters in history.

And he got the title handed to him via a total setup.

Think about this - if the Liston/Ali fights were fixed (which they were), how many other Ali fights were fixed? Tell me that a boxer who gets knocked down by Henry Cooper is one of the greatest fighters in history? Tell me that a boxer who loses a fight to Doug Jones (a journeyman light heavyweight), is one of the greatest fighters in history? How many more of Ali's fights were fixed. Watch the movie "Raging Bull" and ponder this important question...

Boxing's murky past is checkered with countless fixed fights, various and sundry Mob goings-on, and sordid, shady dealings behind closed doors. It's a fact of life, and anybody on the inside will tell you this. The same holds true for ALL professional sports, but that is not the subject of this post.

Sonny Liston was the most fearsome (and accomplished) heavyweight champion in history. And in my humble but informed opinion, he would have knocked out Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Mike Tyson and yes, even Rocky Marciano. (During a made-for-TV boxing special back in the mid-1980's, an in-his-prime, Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson admitted that he would have been afraid of fighting only one man in heavyweight boxing history - Sonny Liston.)

Nobody could stand up to Sonny Liston - unless the outcome had already been predetermined.

***Interesting sidenote - Much has been made over the years of Liston's alleged (and absolutely irrefutable) Mob connections...Sonny Liston won the last fight of his career, in June of 1970 against Chuck Wepner...and many people have alleged over the years that Liston was supposed to take a dive in the Wepner fight, but he refused...six months after the Wepner fight, Liston turns up dead - the result of an alleged "heroin overdose," which is a circumstance that seems very unlikely, in the least, given the fact that it was common knowledge among anyone who ever knew him, that Sonny Liston, the baddest fighter in the history of Planet Earth, was deathly afraid of only one thing - needles.

very useful informaton, thanks!!!! i was wondering, could you tell us how big was sonny's wang? what was the circumference of his left nut!!! do tell! do tell! let us no after you recover his balls from your mouth.

[warp1432]

No they were not. If you watch the second fight the replay's clearly show that punch that lands and it's brutal.

The first fight was pretty close by the way until Liston quit.