I'm sorry but i can't see Liston as a great or even good boxer ?

[Rusty Tromboni]

Liston would KO Wilder cold lol

Nah. Wilder is actually pretty good,better than Williams for sure.

[Rspen46]

And definitely he was paid off for Ali, Liston was actually an excellent boxer, but he had such Power that he hardly needed it, he also had one of the longest reaches in Boxing History for HW, in his Prime he was as feared as Tyson and Foreman, I believe if not paid off in his prime and allowed to fight, he beats Ali, no way you can use the Ali fights as any judge of how good or bad he was, big mob money involved in both fights.

[jack p]

Joey Maxim was very good Fighter.
Don’t discount Liston pal

Maxim was a good fighter. A victory over him is a feather in anyones cap.

[Ascended]

Mutiple people here trolling the poster is right he wasnt that great way to slow basic and easy to read nothing impressive

[Willow The Wisp]

I got past the original post and the "Tony Galento did 100x better against" math in support of this thread starter's conclusion that an esteemed member of the IBHOF "wasn't a bum but he just wasn't great or even world-class". Then I went to the next post and read through that, as I customarily do; and noted that poster's hypothesis that Sonny Liston "was connected to Al Capone", the Chicago mobster who died in 1947, six years before Sonny Liston turned pro; and then I went on to other things in the course of my day.

[StarshipTrooper]

Yeah, someone didn't do his homework on that one lol (ps Liston was connected to Blinky Palermo and Frankie Carbo) 

[Nash out]

Liston is such an interesting case. Clearly had a great jab and power, but with his mob connections, we'll never know what was real and what wasn't. If his two losses to Ali were legit, then those were two pretty poor showings imo. People can dance around it, talk of Ali's greatness all they want, but those performances today and the guy gets slaughtered. Nothing to suggest he was anything more than a 2nd rate contender, but if he was paid to dive, then of course, that changes everything. Then his age in one of the Ali fights is between 32-45 depending on the source, so it's just crazy stuff, and that Liston was illiterate, and clearly a man of stunted intelligence, he probably didn't know how old he was either. Nash out.

[Willie Pep 229]

Disagree that Liston was a man of stunted intelligence . . . Profoundly ignorant yes, but ****** no!

There seems to be a school of thought today that Listom in the end got wacked (a hot shot) not because of the Wepner fight but because he was moving on another loan shark's territory.

Not content to be merely strong arm muscle he wanted his own territory in Vegas and he angered the powers to be.

He probably thought it payback for all the money he made them.

Not the type of fellow to be intimidated, you either take him out or you acquiesce.

[The Old LefHook]

The halfwits are out in full force for this one. Liston was a top 10 AT heavyweight, for those too dumb to know.

My oh my, it was good to shake loose that halfwit Rusty finally.

[4truth]

A lot of what made Liston what he was would not have played well in an era when 215 pounds is a very small HW.