BoxRec

From 1966 to 1970 Liston had a total of 16 fights,15 wins,
14 by knockout and one devasting loss by knock out.
As far as I can tell at least 9 were filmed televised.
Anyone who knows of any others please list them.

Liston vrs Gerhard Zech(Stockholm Sweden)/KO 7/June.29.1966
Liston vrs Amos Johnson(Gothenburg Sweden)/KO3/August.19.1966

Liston vrs Dave Bailey(Gothenburg Sweden)/KO 1/March.30.1967

Liston vrs Bill Mc Murray(Reno,NV)/KO 4/March.16.1968
Liston vrs Henry Clark(San Francisco,CA)/KO 7/July.6.1968
Liston vrs Roger Risher(Pittsburgh,Pa)/KO 3/November.12.1968

Liston vrs George"Scrapiron"Johnson(Las Vegas,NV)/KO 7May.19.1969
Liston vrs Leotis Martin(Las Vegas,NV)/KO'D 9/December.6.1969

Liston vrs Chuck Wepner(Jersey City)/TKO 9/June.29.1970

I think Liston vs Martin was up on You Tube
and i have seen the Wepner fight floaing
around the place.

pretty sure one of the joiner fights was filmed

Any idea if it may have been the first fight with Billy Joiner in Los Angles
in May 1968 KO by 7,or their second fight in St.Louis in 1969 which was a 10 round points win for Liston?
Reportly Liston re-injured his shoulder in that bout,his only points win in his comeback,he had to cancel a rematch with Dave Bailey because of it.

klompton wrote:pretty sure one of the joiner fights was filmed

In the HBO video Sonny Liston Mysterious Life and Death of a Champion.
49 minutes into it,just after the Liston vrs Henry Clark clip,they show some grainey old 16 mm footage of Liston knocking down someone with a jab.
Is that Billy Joiner?
BTW someone on another forum said they had seen a highlight clip of Liston vrs Elmer Rush(Sweden 1967 ).

That must have been me.

I have a very short clip of Liston v Elmer Rush. (Maybe 15 seconds)

Woller

The Liston vrs Roger Rischer fight was the main event of a three fight closed-circuit broadcast for a benifit fund raising,November-12-1968.
Sonny Liston fought Roger Rischer in Pittsburgh(KO 3),
George Chuvalo vrs Dante Can from the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
I dont know who fought in the third fight.
This colosed circuit broadcast probably was only viewed regional
or like the Liston vrs George"Scrape-iron Johnson fight broadcast only to the big cities in the U.S.A

Has anyone here came across a tape or film of the closed-circuit telecast for the benefit for Ben Anolik?
Which featured George Chuvalo vrs Dante Cane in Toronto as the main event/
and Sonny Liston vrs Roger Rischer in Pittsburgh./KO3
It may have not been a greatest hit of Liston's but it is still history.
From what I understand it was only televised in closed-circuit and seen in the Northeastern USA and Canada .
In B/W.

In the meantime here is a link to a photograph of the bout.

http://www.josportsinc.com/catalog/view.php?id=3572

From what I understand the Liston-Wepner fight was secretly filmed in the audience with what looks to have been an 8mm camera.
Apparently the footage was edited sold to fight film collector's in the 1970's on either 8mm or 16mm reels.
I have seen a couple of duped VHS versions of it that I bought on e-bay about 10 years ago
.One is barely watchable because its been duped so many times,their legs look like stick figures.

I would love to see his fight with Lincoln but I've never seen it available anywhere.

Amos"Big Train"Lincoln,who according to Milt Bailey was the greatest sparring partner Liston ever had.
There fight was rough.I think they were still trying to untangle Lincoln from the ring ropes where Liston had hammered him,when they were about to give the
verdict.

I saw Liston fight Amos Lincoln in Balitmore on a live fight card.

After the live fight card was over, Joe Frazier defended his title against Bonavena on a closed circuit screen they had set up.

Liston stopped Lincoln in a few rounds. Lincoln was tall, had a good jab, but seemed to be intimidated by Liston. Liston had no mercy on him once he had him hurt. At that stage Liston still had some heavy body punches.

According to the newspapers of December-10-1968.
Sonny Liston -vrs-Amos Lincoln in Baltimore MD was to part of a double header closed circuit broadcast
with the title fight Joe Frazier vrs Oscar Bonavena in Philadelphia.
Anyone here seen film footage of that fight?
Reportly Lincoln was knocked out for 3 minutes.

Robinson wrote:I think Liston vs Martin was up on You Tube
and i have seen the Wepner fight floaing
around the place.

I have the Wepner fight. Awful quality (filmes from a handheld on a balcony). If someone can give me retard instructions I'll attempt to upload it to youtube if there's enough appetitite for it.

Here is a condensed version of the nine rounds of Liston-Wepner,but its the clearest footage I have seen so far of it.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULBFQzU1HSw
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6-u6xH9V-Q

Another somewhat missing Liston fight is all seven rounds of his fight with George"Scrap Iron"Johnson in Las Vegas in May.19.1969.
I think that was the debut of a (then)new live boxing show that was televised once a month.
It may have been on cable as reportedly the fight was shown in 20 key cities in the USA.
In the first round ,Liston knocked Johnson across the ring with a vicious left hook and Johnson got a standing 8 count and said later he never really recovered after that punch.
Johnson was also suppose to get married at midnight in Las Vegas later that evening,but canceled it because he said he was not feeling too good afterwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY24J3dtoXY

Here are some highlights of two of Liston's comeback fights in Sweden 1966-1967

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH3fNCLrzo0

here are also some highlights(which appear to be repeated twice) of the seven rounds of Liston's first comeback fight against Gerhard Zech in Stockholm Sweden June 1966.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg-mvGAT80w

When I see this I see the same Sonny as in the first Clay fight, but he's up against someone who is willing to be present and accounted for when Sonny fires. Ali's mobility is very impressive when templated against this fight. Sonny's no slowpoke but Clay sure made him seem that way. Nice film! Thanks for the contribution!

If you watch Liston's fight films from the late 1950's and early 1960's.
You may notice that he did not appear very fast on his feet but he did have fast punches.
After the loss to Ali,he appeared not only slow on his feet but his punches seemed slower too.He wasnt able to finish some his opponents off after he got them hurt during his comeback fights.

Brutu wrote:Another somewhat missing Liston fight is all seven rounds of his fight with George"Scrap Iron"Johnson in Las Vegas in May.19.1969.
I think that was the debut of a (then)new live boxing show that was televised once a month.
It may have been on cable as reportedly the fight was shown in 20 key cities in the USA.
In the first round ,Liston knocked Johnson across the ring with a vicious left hook and Johnson got a standing 8 count and said later he never really recovered after that punch.
Johnson was also suppose to get married at midnight in Las Vegas later that evening,but canceled it because he said he was not feeling too good afterwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY24J3dtoXY

I think the Liston-Scrapiron Johnson fight would have been close to what a Liston-Frazier fight in 1969 may have been like.
Liston even acts here like he had just
re-claimed the Heavyweight Championship of the world

That does look to be the first Liston vrs Billy Joiner fight
May.23.1968 at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles
here at
3:12 seconds of this clip.
It looks like it was filmed with an amateur 8 mm camera
from the audience.
It matches photgraphs Ive seen of the fight.
Liston knocked Joiner down in the third round with a left hook and a short right
to Joiners head ,but Joiner got back up and slugged it out toe to toe.
the ref stoped the fight after Joiner went back to his corner
after the 7th round because he was too far behind on points .


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXSJIxIe_AE

here is a link to a neat photo from Liston vrs Joiner ,May.23. 1968.
Olympic Auditorium LA,capacity crowd 10,162.
gate receipts, $49,000(Liston's purse was $12,000).
Liston at 222lbs out weighed Joiner by 33 and a half lbs.

http://books.google.com/books?id=q0nI6V ... g=PA109&dq

Brutu wrote:According to the newspapers of December-10-1968.
Sonny Liston -vrs-Amos Lincoln in Baltimore MD was to part of a double header closed circuit broadcast
with the title fight Joe Frazier vrs Oscar Bonavena in Philadelphia.
Anyone here seen film footage of that fight?
Reportly Lincoln was knocked out for 3 minutes.

In early November 1968,the newspapers annouced that Liston was to fight a fighter yet to be annouced on the Frazier Bonavea cc fight.
A week later ,Cleveland Williams(in his comeback 5 wins,4 by KO) and Dave Zgelewicz(27-1) both publicly challenged Liston(ranked 4th by WBA)to fight in Houston Tx.
A few days later a newspaper dated Nov.16.1968
reported that Liston was scheduled to fight Zora Folley in a rematch December.10.1968 in Houston
under the Frazier-Bonavena cc title fight.
by November.29.1968 it was annouced that Liston would be fighting Amos Lincoln in Baltimore.

I thought I would revisit this thread as Ive recently gotten ahold of some footage in question here:


Liston vrs Gerhard Zech(Stockholm Sweden)/KO 7/June.29.1966 Nearly complete
Liston vrs Amos Johnson(Gothenburg Sweden)/KO3/August.19.1966 Complete (Johnson was down twice in the second, and once in the third, not three times in the third as listed here on boxrec)
Liston vrs Dave Bailey(Gothenburg Sweden)/KO 1/March.30.1967 The fight went 2:22. I have the last minute of the fight plus a little pre and post fight. This is all I know to exist
Liston vrs Elmer Rush(Stockholm Sweden)/TKO 6/April.28.1967 Nearly complete, missing a knockdown or two
Liston vrs Bill Mc Murray(Reno,NV)/KO 4/March.16.1968 Complete
Liston vrs Billy Joiner(Los Angeles, CA)/TKO7 May.23.1968 Complete color
Liston vrs Henry Clark(San Francisco,CA)/KO 7/July.6.1968 Complete color
Liston vrs George"Scrapiron"Johnson(Las Vegas,NV)/KO 7May.19.1969 3mins give or take
Liston vrs Leotis Martin(Las Vegas,NV)/KO'D 9/December.6.1969 Complete
Liston vrs Chuck Wepner(Jersey City)/TKO 9/June.29.1970 Complete


A previous post stated there was footage of Liston-Rischer, I dont think Ive ever seen this.