Vitali VS Sonny Liston

[KBRO]

So what if he was winning. Neither fight went to the scorecards to determine a winner. So the scorecards are irrelevant.

He lost both fights to the best fighters he ever faced and that's the bottom line.

The scorecards aren't irrelevant when he's the ONLY championship boxer in heavyweight history to never trail on the scorecards in any of his 47 bouts.. when he's NEVER lost more than 2 rds in any fight on judges scorecards. He lost because of severe cuts & severe shoulder injury... no one has ever come close to outboxing him.. outlanding or throwing more punches (jabs & power punches as well) than him in a fight.. so that's what Liston would be dealing with.. including an iron jaw that is punch proof.

[joseph5620]

The scorecards aren't irrelevant when he's the ONLY championship boxer in heavyweight history to never trail on the scorecards in any of his 47 bouts.. when he's NEVER lost more than 2 rds in any fight on judges scorecards. He lost because of severe cuts & severe shoulder injury... no one has ever come close to outboxing him.. outlanding or throwing more punches (jabs & power punches as well) than him in a fight.. so that's what Liston would be dealing with.. including an iron jaw that is punch proof.

He lost both fights which doesn't place him anywhere in history. Get over it.

Severely cut means he was taking a lot of punishment.

[Panthershock]

The scorecards aren't irrelevant when he's the ONLY championship boxer in heavyweight history to never trail on the scorecards in any of his 47 bouts.. when he's NEVER lost more than 2 rds in any fight on judges scorecards. He lost because of severe cuts & severe shoulder injury... no one has ever come close to outboxing him.. outlanding or throwing more punches (jabs & power punches as well) than him in a fight.. so that's what Liston would be dealing with.. including an iron jaw that is punch proof.

no one is punch proof, but he can take a punch

Vitali would have to deal with someone far more skilled and dangerous than anyone he's ever faced
the Lewis that fought Vitali would have been starched by prime Liston is a couple rounds

[Rossman]

I think Liston is better than Vitali in every category except size. And size is vastly overused by Klitschko fans here.

[billeau2]

The scorecards aren't irrelevant when he's the ONLY championship boxer in heavyweight history to never trail on the scorecards in any of his 47 bouts.. when he's NEVER lost more than 2 rds in any fight on judges scorecards. He lost because of severe cuts & severe shoulder injury... no one has ever come close to outboxing him.. outlanding or throwing more punches (jabs & power punches as well) than him in a fight.. so that's what Liston would be dealing with.. including an iron jaw that is punch proof.

Its an accepted means of being bested in boxing when someone is opened up by a punch....Vitali had a bad case of Vagina face, this was a direct consequence of Lewis' punches. This is just as acceptable as a KO. It meant that Lewis had targeted and was hitting Vitali hard.

[SN!PER]

You have to understand something. Boxing was a HUGE sport in the old days, everything was different. The trainers were better, the competition was tougher, the fighters fought twice as much as today, and there were a lot more fighters in the game.

I mean, when Jack Dempsey fought Gene Tunney in 1926, they say 120,557 people attended the event.

Compare the U.S. population in 1926 to 2013. Today, a fight of this popularity would host 350,000 people!

It's easy to look dominant when today's opposition is so less skilled than in previous eras. The boxing game is so much weaker now than it was 30-50 years ago. I'm not saying Vitali couldn't win this fight, but you have to realize that the skill levels might be a lot different than you think.

[SthPaw]

Tough fight to call in my opinion, gut feeling says Vitali wins though

[Ray Corso]

Liston at his best beats both Klitz bros. he simply had much better form and talent! Sonny at his best is a top 15 al time heavyweight who could fight and be successfull in any era. I can see Sonny breaking down Vitali and busting him up!
Ray.

[Humean]

i said "JUST North of 210" meaning that a heavyweight need not be considerably larger than maybe ten or so pounds above 210. And the point is when more weight JUSt North of the average size for a heavyweight champion (if we took a sample of all champs and did an average) is considered, two things happen: the advantages start to dissapear as the weight becomes greater and there are diminishing returns on the advantages. Otherwise Butterbean would become a champ....At a certain weight, even if it is muscle, the weight becomes unweildy. The added power must be balanced out against this diminished capacity. For example, if we take a power lifter with 3percent body fat he statistically has more muscle than a marathon runner. In fact, he should be capable of doing more work...yet it does not help in a distance race.

In Boxing, We know that if we put a 240 heavyweight against a 140 fighter the extra power given the weight will make the outcome obvious. But when we take a fighter like Tyson at 220 against this same 240 fighter, we can see that the footwork, speed and manuvearability of Tyson might nullify the weight of the 240 heavyweight... all other factors being hypothetically equal.

Liston had more skill in the clinques which molifies any percieved strength advantage....Remember that Liston was very strong as well. Also Ali knocked Liston out with speed and suprise. Lewis beat Vitali! so the reach certainly was a factor.

However it is a good point that Liston's height would give him a disadvantage because he would be punching upwards....this is true I concede this point.

I'm not suggesting that if you are say a 6'2" heavyweight weighing 210 that you should pile on fat and muscle to be 230 or 240, it might well be more advantageous because of better condition and speed to stay at 210 and use that size to your advantage. However whether a small heavyweight piles on extra weight or not he is at a big disadvantage against either of the Klitschko's because they are 245 pounds in great condition, they are simply huge men with fantastic athleticism for their size. Historically it is a very new phenomenon to have such big and heavy guys like that, the old huge guys which the heavyweight division had from time to time were usually fairly useless in comparison.

Thats a fair question. It is because the advantages of having more size tend to diminish as one gets bigger. Its why in virtually all combatives the heavyweight division is open past a minimum weight.

The mistake in thinking people often make is to assume that there is evidence that people are bigger and stronger to a degree that it is materially consequential now, where as before it was not....Nothing could be further from the truth. The proof is in the pudding: the average size of heavyweights has not changed over the years in any meaningful way. It might eventually.

The average size of heavyweights has increased in meaningful ways over the years. Through most of the history the typical heavyweight hovered around the 200 pounds mark, some slightly under, some slightly over. Your typical heavyweight now is 230-250, this is not an insignificant increase in weight especially when it corresponds to a significant increase in the size of these men. In the 70s being 6'3" meant you were a tall heavyweight, 6'3" now means you are pretty average.

[Humean]

You have to understand something. Boxing was a HUGE sport in the old days, everything was different. The trainers were better, the competition was tougher, the fighters fought twice as much as today, and there were a lot more fighters in the game.

I mean, when Jack Dempsey fought Gene Tunney in 1926, they say 120,557 people attended the event.

Compare the U.S. population in 1926 to 2013. Today, a fight of this popularity would host 350,000 people!

It's easy to look dominant when today's opposition is so less skilled than in previous eras. The boxing game is so much weaker now than it was 30-50 years ago. I'm not saying Vitali couldn't win this fight, but you have to realize that the skill levels might be a lot different than you think.

To use the attendance numbers as signifying the popularity of the sport is misleading because you are not taking into consideration ticket prices. The largest ever attendance I believe is Chavez-Haugen and that was in the 90s, Zale-Pryor (1941) was I think second but entry was free. Also bums on seats was the most important element of the economics of the sport whereas from the 1950s onwards the tv revenue has become paramount.

Clearly boxing was more popular in the US in the earlier part of the 20th century compared to today but you are not taking into account other parts of the world and it is a complete non-sequitur that popularity would necessarily increase the quality or competition of the sport. In the past and today the vast majority of boxers made/make very little money from the sport.

You are not the only one to claim there were more active fighters in the past, do you have any actual evidence for this claim? It keeps getting repeated but there doesn't seem to me any evidence for it.