World Title Trivia

[bjermaine]

Who would you have had Tunney cross the color line against? He tried to cross the color line against Wills, but Wills turned him down . . .

i didn't know that was the case but it would have been nice if he would have fought at least one black fighter in an 86 fight career.

[raylawpc]

Who would you have had Tunney cross the color line against? He tried to cross the color line against Wills, but Wills turned him down . . .

i didn't know that was the case but it would have been nice if he would have fought at least one black fighter in an 86 fight career.

It would be nice, too, if I could only win the lottery. But, that said, who would you have had him fight, and how would it have advanced his career?

[Goodnight, Irene]

...jones was one of the alphabet boys, and as i said i do not count them.

so...as 99.99% of boxing followers would agree...it's tunney and marciano...period.

Indeed. LOL @ Jones' inclusion.

sorry my question wasn't up to jaclem2's and irene's standards. don't worry, the both of you don't count either. next time there's a heavyweight title fight i'm sure all the media outlets and promoters will contact you and see if you will sanction it.

if you don't count jones that's up to you but i guess that means you don't count holy-tyson 1 & 2 as title fights either since they were just for the wba title.

since you guys' standards are so high, marciano should really be the only answer to the question. tunney never crossed the color line so he probably shouldn't count either.

To be fair, I like the way you approach a lot of subjects. Jones has never been one of those, however.

"High standards." What a joke. "Tunney, Marciano & Jones." Wow, hell of a ring to it

[Goodnight, Irene]

Who would you have had Tunney cross the color line against? He tried to cross the color line against Wills, but Wills turned him down . . .

i didn't know that was the case but it would have been nice if he would have fought at least one black fighter in an 86 fight career.

It would be nice, too, if I could only win the lottery. But, that said, who would you have had him fight, and how would it have advanced his career?

As he has already given a glimpse of in this thread, he knows very little of the era, & you are wasting your time.

"...It would be nice if he would have fought at least one black fighter in an entire 86 fight career..."

Be nice for you, would it? You are completely incapable of distinguishing then from the present time today. You couldn't spell context if it smacked you square between the eyes. "Would be nice." LOL.

[jaclem2]

..bejermaine.....i haven't decided which of the current heavyweights is the least bad, so i'm considering the title as vacant. when i do decide, i'll either enter it on a post here or contact you with a personal message.

holy/tyson..sure ..they were for the real heavyweight title..which had nothing to do with their recognition by the wba or any other ba or bc or whatver...

[bjermaine]

It would be nice, too, if I could only win the lottery. But, that said, who would you have had him fight, and how would it have advanced his career?

i wish he would have fought wills, godfrey or even flowers at some point. that said, i would pick tunney in all those fights. as far as advancing his career, none of those wins probably would of but it looks better from a historical standpoint. raylawpc, it's nice to have a discussion with someone whose opinion i respect unlike other clowns on here.

[bjermaine]

To be fair, I like the way you approach a lot of subjects. Jones has never been one of those, however.

"High standards." What a joke. "Tunney, Marciano & Jones." Wow, hell of a ring to it

no secret that jones my fave fighter but there's a reason for it. at his best, he was incredible. probably the most talented fighter ever. there's no joke in having jones' name along side marciano and tunney.

[BroughtonRulesRefuge]

holy/tyson..sure ..they were for the real heavyweight title..which had nothing to do with their recognition by the wba or any other ba or bc or whatver...

- Oh, really? So beating Seldon in McNeeley fashion qualified Tyson as the real champ as opposed to facing WBC mandatory Lewis, eh?

This the same WBC belt that Lewis originally fished out of Bowe's bin for the first title.

Last I checked, Foreman was making off with the last tattered remnants of the "real heavyweight title," which promptly got shredded in typical boxing style.

[bennie]

Who was trounced into submission in a first fight by his opponent, yet entered the rematch as a 5/1 favourite?

How about Jose Napoles vs Billy Backus?

Guess it depends how one interprets the first part of the question. Napoles was very badly cut which isn't really trounced...

The guy retired on his stool in the first fight yet was still a heavy favourite for the pathetic rematch....

Seeing as this one has died a death, Sonny Liston was a 5/1 favourite going into the disastrous Ali rematch, attended by only 2,434.

[Collins2000]

Seeing as this one has died a death, Sonny Liston was a 5/1 favourite going into the disastrous Ali rematch, attended by only 2,434.

Are you sure about that bennie? I thought the odds were very much closer with Liston a slight favourite.

Here's Time Magazine's coverage. They have Liston as 6/5 favourite which seems more realistic.

Theater of the Absurd
Friday, Jun. 04, 1965

Nobody can deny that Cassius Marcellus Clay, 23, has an affinity for fantasy. Last week in Lewiston, Me., Cassius fought a fight that did not seem to be a fight, threw a punch that did not look like a punch, scored a knockout that the referee did not realize was a knockout, and set a record that turned out to be no record. In the process, Cassius clearly established himself as the heavyweight champion of the world and a consummate actor—in the theater of the absurd.

The background music was perfect: outside the Central Maine Youth Cen ter teenage carolers chanted The Mickey Mouse March. So was the lighting: to ensure a "perfect" picture for the closed-circuit telecast that carried the action to 257 theaters across the U.S., technicians installed huge klieg lights that sent the temperature at ringside to 100°. Then there was the supporting cast. Spooked by reports that followers of the late Malcolm X planned to avenge their leader's death by assassinating Black Muslim Clay, some 300 Lewiston police, county sheriffs, state troopers, firemen and civil defense workers milled around the arena in a ratio of roughly one lawman for every 14 fans.

Ponderous Punches.
The prop for the farce, of course, was an overrated bum named Sonny Liston. He must be close to 40; he was bulky at 2151 Ibs. (to Clay's 206), was 2 in. shorter, and about as nimble as a Gila monster. Somehow he had persuaded quite a few people—including the underworld characters hanging around his training camp —that he would button the lip of the twinkle-toed loudmouth who took his title away in Miami last year. Oddsmakers made him the 6-5 favorite, and in Miami the word was that one mobster bet $30,000 on Liston to win.

The bell for the first round had barely sounded when Clay quickly banged a right off Listen's ear and went hippity-hopping around the ring, effortlessly slipping Sonny's ponderous punches. Clay hung his arms at his sides; Liston attached his arches to the canvas. The pursuit grew slower and slower, stopped altogether when Clay unloaded a solid right to Listen's head. Straining to reach Cassius with a left hook, Listen bent forward and swung. From somewhere in the general direction of his right hip, Clay flicked a right-hand chop that traveled no more than a foot to the side of Sonny's head. Listen sank to the canvas, rolled over onto his back, struggled to his knees, and went down again.

Standing over the prostrate challenger, Clay grimaced with rage. "Get up!" he screamed. "Get up, you yellow bum!" Under Maine rules, Timekeeper Francis McDonough could have delayed the count for the knockdown until Clay went to a neutral corner. But he didn't. He ticked off the seconds by pounding on the ring mat with a wooden mallet. When McDonough reached twelve, he quit. Liston was still on the floor, and Clay was still in the middle of the ring. Unable to pull Cassius away, Referee Jersey Joe Walcott, who seemed even more confused than the spectators, gave up and walked away. He never got Clay to a neutral corner; he never picked up the count. Another eight seconds passed. At ringside Nat Fleischer, editor of The Ring and high priest of boxing, screamed at Walcott: "The bum is out! The fight is over! The fight is over!" Walcott nodded, turned back—only to discover that Liston had managed to get on his feet. At that point, Joe grabbed Cassius' arm and hoisted it high into the air. Clay was the winner by a knockout. The official time of the K.O.: 1 min. of the first round—fastest ever in a heavyweight title fight.

Payday.
It was nothing of the kind. Referee Walcott stopped the fight at 2 min. 12 sec.—which would make it only the seventh fastest. That was the least of the problems. Most of the fans in the arena had not seen the knockout punch; neither had the 500,000 others watching on closed-circuit TV. "Fix! Fix! Fix!" they chanted. "Fake! Fake! Fake!" At ringside, Joe Louis conceded that Clay had landed a right, "but it wasn't no good." Snapped Canadian Heavyweight George Chuvalo: "It's a phony, a real phony." Even Cassius was confused. "I think I hit him with a left hook and a right cross," he said. "But I want to see the video tape."

When he saw the tape, Cassius had a new story. The punch that flattened Liston, he insisted, was his secret "anchor punch"—so named because it anchors opponents to the floor. The punch was taught to him by a darkface comedian named Stepin Fetchit, who learned it from Jack Johnson, first of the great Negro champions. Said Clay: "It's a chop, so fast you can't see it. It's karate. It's got a twist to it. Just one does the job."

That was ridiculous. And so was Liston's explanation. Said Sonny, whose half of the fighters' purse comes to a cool $600,000: "I've been hit harder. A couple of times." Why did he fall down? "I was stunned." And why didn't he get back up? "Just lost my balance, I guess."

Boxing writers, politicians and editorialists proclaimed it the fight to end all fights—if they had anything to say about it. In Pennsylvania and New York, legislators instantly introduced bills to ban the sport; in Washington, Senator John Tower called for a Congressional investigation. But fix and fraud are not synonymous. The truth was simply that a big, tough, fast young boxer hit a woozy old stiff in the face. Nobody will ever be sure just how hard Cassius Clay's punch was, but it was hard enough to make Sonny Liston call it a payday.

[bennie]

Seeing as this one has died a death, Sonny Liston was a 5/1 favourite going into the disastrous Ali rematch, attended by only 2,434.

Are you sure about that bennie? I thought the odds were very much closer with Liston a slight favourite.

Here's Time Magazine's coverage. They have Liston as 6/5 favourite which seems more realistic.

Theater of the Absurd
Friday, Jun. 04, 1965

Nobody can deny that Cassius Marcellus Clay, 23, has an affinity for fantasy. Last week in Lewiston, Me., Cassius fought a fight that did not seem to be a fight, threw a punch that did not look like a punch, scored a knockout that the referee did not realize was a knockout, and set a record that turned out to be no record. In the process, Cassius clearly established himself as the heavyweight champion of the world and a consummate actor—in the theater of the absurd.

The background music was perfect: outside the Central Maine Youth Cen ter teenage carolers chanted The Mickey Mouse March. So was the lighting: to ensure a "perfect" picture for the closed-circuit telecast that carried the action to 257 theaters across the U.S., technicians installed huge klieg lights that sent the temperature at ringside to 100°. Then there was the supporting cast. Spooked by reports that followers of the late Malcolm X planned to avenge their leader's death by assassinating Black Muslim Clay, some 300 Lewiston police, county sheriffs, state troopers, firemen and civil defense workers milled around the arena in a ratio of roughly one lawman for every 14 fans.

Ponderous Punches.
The prop for the farce, of course, was an overrated bum named Sonny Liston. He must be close to 40; he was bulky at 2151 Ibs. (to Clay's 206), was 2 in. shorter, and about as nimble as a Gila monster. Somehow he had persuaded quite a few people—including the underworld characters hanging around his training camp —that he would button the lip of the twinkle-toed loudmouth who took his title away in Miami last year. Oddsmakers made him the 6-5 favorite, and in Miami the word was that one mobster bet $30,000 on Liston to win.

The bell for the first round had barely sounded when Clay quickly banged a right off Listen's ear and went hippity-hopping around the ring, effortlessly slipping Sonny's ponderous punches. Clay hung his arms at his sides; Liston attached his arches to the canvas. The pursuit grew slower and slower, stopped altogether when Clay unloaded a solid right to Listen's head. Straining to reach Cassius with a left hook, Listen bent forward and swung. From somewhere in the general direction of his right hip, Clay flicked a right-hand chop that traveled no more than a foot to the side of Sonny's head. Listen sank to the canvas, rolled over onto his back, struggled to his knees, and went down again.

Standing over the prostrate challenger, Clay grimaced with rage. "Get up!" he screamed. "Get up, you yellow bum!" Under Maine rules, Timekeeper Francis McDonough could have delayed the count for the knockdown until Clay went to a neutral corner. But he didn't. He ticked off the seconds by pounding on the ring mat with a wooden mallet. When McDonough reached twelve, he quit. Liston was still on the floor, and Clay was still in the middle of the ring. Unable to pull Cassius away, Referee Jersey Joe Walcott, who seemed even more confused than the spectators, gave up and walked away. He never got Clay to a neutral corner; he never picked up the count. Another eight seconds passed. At ringside Nat Fleischer, editor of The Ring and high priest of boxing, screamed at Walcott: "The bum is out! The fight is over! The fight is over!" Walcott nodded, turned back—only to discover that Liston had managed to get on his feet. At that point, Joe grabbed Cassius' arm and hoisted it high into the air. Clay was the winner by a knockout. The official time of the K.O.: 1 min. of the first round—fastest ever in a heavyweight title fight.

Payday.
It was nothing of the kind. Referee Walcott stopped the fight at 2 min. 12 sec.—which would make it only the seventh fastest. That was the least of the problems. Most of the fans in the arena had not seen the knockout punch; neither had the 500,000 others watching on closed-circuit TV. "Fix! Fix! Fix!" they chanted. "Fake! Fake! Fake!" At ringside, Joe Louis conceded that Clay had landed a right, "but it wasn't no good." Snapped Canadian Heavyweight George Chuvalo: "It's a phony, a real phony." Even Cassius was confused. "I think I hit him with a left hook and a right cross," he said. "But I want to see the video tape."

When he saw the tape, Cassius had a new story. The punch that flattened Liston, he insisted, was his secret "anchor punch"—so named because it anchors opponents to the floor. The punch was taught to him by a darkface comedian named Stepin Fetchit, who learned it from Jack Johnson, first of the great Negro champions. Said Clay: "It's a chop, so fast you can't see it. It's karate. It's got a twist to it. Just one does the job."

That was ridiculous. And so was Liston's explanation. Said Sonny, whose half of the fighters' purse comes to a cool $600,000: "I've been hit harder. A couple of times." Why did he fall down? "I was stunned." And why didn't he get back up? "Just lost my balance, I guess."

Boxing writers, politicians and editorialists proclaimed it the fight to end all fights—if they had anything to say about it. In Pennsylvania and New York, legislators instantly introduced bills to ban the sport; in Washington, Senator John Tower called for a Congressional investigation. But fix and fraud are not synonymous. The truth was simply that a big, tough, fast young boxer hit a woozy old stiff in the face. Nobody will ever be sure just how hard Cassius Clay's punch was, but it was hard enough to make Sonny Liston call it a payday.

Hard to argue with Time magazine. Howard Bingham ain't all that.

[jaclem2]

..back to the thread....i still think it's louis and schmeling II....

[Collins2000]

..back to the thread....i still think it's louis and schmeling II....

Well it certainly wasn't Ali - Liston (2) despite what bennie says...

[Friedie]

..back to the thread....i still think it's louis and schmeling II....

In the rematch Louis was only 2/1 favorite, not 5/1


But here another question: When did Joe Louis and Max Schmeling enter the same ring the last time and where?
(it was not 1938 in NY) ;;-)

[jaclem2]

...over the years i've seen odds on this fight varying from 5/2 and 3/1 and there were no doubt others. the odds quoted today are almost always las vegas odds. as the bookies were the ones who set the odds back then there were no "official" odds. my grandfather set the odds in my neighborhood.. I've never seen 5/1 odds though...i just thought the odds on this one were the closest.

i think it's time the post gave us the answer he's looking for.

don't know when joe and max appeared ithe ring at the same time. maybe las vegas?

[Collins2000]

bennie, New York Timess any good to ya?



May 21, 2000
Ideas & Trends; Sonny Liston: He Never Knew What Hit Him
By ALLEN BARRA

AMERICANS love a conspiracy theory, whether it concerns the murder of a president or the defeat of a boxer. And so it is that Muhammad Ali, who easily dispatched Sonny Liston in the ring, may never beat him in the arena of popular mythology and public opinion. There, Liston may forever be bobbing and weaving, held up by the famous ''phantom punch'' that floored him in their heavyweight championship fight in 1965.

The myth of that punch in the second fight between the men not only refuses to die, it's making a comeback just in time for the 35th anniversary of the bout, May 25. Nick Tosches's new book, ''The Devil and Sonny Liston'' (Little, Brown) and a coming biographical movie starring Ving Raymes are reviving old theories that the Mob or the Black Muslims or someone besides Ali knocked out Liston.

It is hard to recall at this distance the hold these two fighters held over the popular imagination, even among those who had no interest in boxing. Among the fight crowd, no heavyweight since Joe Louis in his early 20's carried such an aura of invincibility as Liston. He stood 6 feet 1 inches and weighed about 215 pounds, big in an era of small heavyweights. But with his 15-inch fists, 17 1/2-inch neck and menacing scowl, he appeared bigger and more terrifying than the tape indicated.

Liston also had a well-deserved reputation for violence. He had learned to box in prison and had been an arm breaker for the St. Louis mob, which controlled his career. Blinkie Palermo, who controlled much of big-time boxing in the 1950's, was one of Liston's patrons, and a man with ties to ''Murder, Incorporated.''

Liston seemed to cow his opponents even before they stepped into the ring. Floyd Patterson, from whom Liston took the heavyweight belt, appeared almost paralyzed by fear. And Liston's punching power, particularly a paralyzing left hook to the body, was awesome. He could also take a punch, having once fought almost an entire fight with a broken jaw.

By contrast, in 1964, at the time of the first fight, Cassius Clay, as Ali was then known, was viewed by the boxing establishment as little more than a sideshow freak. Screaming ''I am so pretty!'' and spouting rhymes that predicted when he would knock out his opponents were not how tough guys were supposed to behave. Given his youth (22 at the time) and his unorthodox style, which included holding his hands at his sides and leaning away from punches, most boxing writers thought the only question was whether Liston would permanently injure or kill him. This was reflected in the odds at fight time, which were seven to one against Clay.

And then Clay won in what may have been boxing's most shocking upset.

To watch that fight on video today, however, is not to see an upset. Rather, one sees the fastest heavyweight in boxing history battering an overconfident, under-trained and probably over-the-hill champ (Liston's age was listed as anywhere from 29 to 31, but most people believe he was some years older than the latter figure). Liston was badly cut around both eyes (the left eye would require the attention of a plastic surgeon), and was unable to answer the bell for round seven, claiming an injury to his left shoulder. The skeptics initially scoffed, but Alexander Robbins of the Miami Beach Boxing Commission, one of seven physicians to examine Liston, declared, ''There's no doubt in my mind the fight should be stopped.'' In fact, Liston had torn his biceps.

FIFTEEN months later the men met again in Lewiston, Me., Clay now reborn as Muhammad Ali. As with the first fight, interest in the fight far transcended boxing's usual boundaries. This time however, the odds were just seven to five in favor of Liston.

Just past the first minute of the first round, Ali knocked Liston cold, with a punch that almost nobody saw, even those at ringside. Immediately, there were rumors of a fix -- that Liston had taken a dive. The famous sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, who hated Ali, called the fight a ''swindle of a charade.'' The New York Times ran an editorial predicting that ''a sport as sick as this one surely cannot survive much longer.''

What really happened? The fight was covered both by closed circuit television and by a film camera. The broadcast tape provides no help; the cameras were placed in both fighters' corners, in such a way that the punching action was never clearly seen unless both men were broadside to one of the lenses. The film is only marginally better. It was shot from above the ring and from an angle that completely obscures Ali's right hand and the left side of Liston's jaw as the knockout punch was delivered. Both for what it does and doesn't reveal, this has become boxing's Zapruder film.

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED published a frame-by-frame analysis of the film in its June 7, 1965, issue, concluding that Liston was, in fact, knocked out. In the first panel of a four-shot sequence, Ali is seen pulling back to avoid a Liston jab; in the second, he is planting his weight on his left foot, while throwing a short right hand over Liston's left hand; in the third, the punch is just about to land; in the fourth, Sonny's head is snapped sideways the force of the blow, which actually lifts Liston's left foot -- the one his weight was on -- off the canvas, as can be seen by the shadow under Liston's foot.

Liston doubled the blow's impact by stepping directly into it, and Barbara Long, who covered the fight for The Village Voice and was seated behind Ali's corner, recalled that Liston had reacted, when hit, ''like a man on a bicycle hitting a low-lying branch.''

There is also circumstantial evidence that argues in favor of a knockout. No major crime figure was known to have made big money from betting on Clay in the first fight; and in the second fight, with the odds so close, it would have been impossible to make a killing betting on either man. Nor has any Black Muslim involvement, like a threat against Liston's life, ever been proven.

Jim Murray, perhaps the most respected sportswriter in the country at the time, never doubted what happened. ''What happened?'' he wrote in The Los Angeles Times. ''Well, I'll tell you what happened. Sonny Liston got the hell beat out of him is what happened. This time I was looking for it and I saw it: an old man groping his way into a speedy insolent reckless kid.''

Murray's shot seems right on target, but it's hard to knock out a myth.

[Collins2000]

Remember these two?

[Collins2000]

Here's one I've never seen before...

[raylawpc]

Here's one I've never seen before...

Floyd Patterson and Buster Mathis

[raylawpc]

Remember these two?

Not from that angle.

[Expug]

I'll take a stab at it. Doug Jones - Eddie Machen?

[Collins2000]

I'll take a stab at it. Doug Jones - Eddie Machen?

Eddie Machen is one of them. Good spot.

But the other one is not Doug Jones.

[Collins2000]

Here's one I've never seen before...

Floyd Patterson and Buster Mathis

That is indeed correct, Ray!

Interesting photo I thought.

[raylawpc]

I'll take a stab at it. Doug Jones - Eddie Machen?

Eddie Machen is one of them. Good spot.

But the other one is not Doug Jones.

Well, if the guy on the right is Machen (how Brian got that from his left eye and forehead I'll never know), and I know the guy on the left looks like Nino Valdes - it must be Valdes-Machen

[Collins2000]

I'll take a stab at it. Doug Jones - Eddie Machen?

Eddie Machen is one of them. Good spot.

But the other one is not Doug Jones.

Well, if the guy on the right is Machen (how Brian got that from his left eye and forehead I'll never know), and I know the guy on the left looks like Nino Valdes - it must be Valdes-Machen

Nino is indeed the other fellow.