BoxRec

From the NY Times, February 26th, 1964

Clay Wins Title in Seventh-Round Upset As Liston Is Halted by Shoulder Injury, By ROBERT LIPSYTE

Clay-Liston I was the second time the HW Championship changed hands with a champion RTDing. The first time around, Willard-Dempsey, there was just as much confusion, (confusion on what round the bookmakers were to pay.) On July 7th Tex Rickard complained to the newspapers that he was receiving thousands of telegrams calling for an official result. A few days later a commission calling itself The Board of Boxing Control (I have no clue who they were) jumped at the opportunity to take the lead and on the 15th released a statement:

NY Times, July 15th, 1919: "The Board of Boxing Control in an official statement last night announced that but forty-seven seconds of the third rest period had elapsed when Willard's seconds tossed a towel into the ring . . . the Board decided the bout at Toledo on July 4 ended in the third round. "

For a few days the 'what round argument,' 6th vs. 7th, had the bookies in a frazzle in '64 as well.

But here lies the rub: if the the logic is that Willard quit before the fourth round began and therefore it was a 3rd round KO, Liston does not quit until after the bell starting the seventh round rings, thus making the 7th round and the above headline correct.

True.... If you quit during the rest period it's the previous round... If the bell rings - the next round already started.

But it wasn't a shoulder injury. It was a torn left biceps... It's a fairly common injury for incessant jabbers... As you practice really long and rangy jabs, cracking them out and snapping them back like lightning, it puts strain on the biceps... After a lot of years of overworking this technique the muscle fibers might start to stretch a bit and pull apart... The arm will feel a little sore but the boxer will massage and rub it out and continue working as usual... But without healing well, one day the muscle will suddenly rip and you're done.

It's the same injury Larry Holmes suffered vs Norton... Holmes suffered his injury a couple weeks before the Norton fight... Holmes was able to stop training and get the injury treated for 2 weeks, but it started unraveling after the 4th round... If it happens during a fight you're screwed because you're not mentally prepared for it.

Holmes adjusted by making a brawl out of it after he couldn't retract the jab well... That's why it was a great fight... You can still jab fine with the injury. You can't retract it like a rubber band to defend right counters... The biceps snaps it back.

Liston's shoulder was getting frequent massages by cornermen between rounds, especially after he quit.

But perhaps when Liston told them that his bicep was injured, they didn't know the difference between a bicep and a shoulder.

Pain from an illness or injury can migrate.

You may think the shoulder is injured when it's really the arm.... And how often does the press get everything wrong anyway??? A kid kept complaining of pain his his shoulder and doctors did MRI's and couldn't find any injury... But one doctor noticed the edge of his lung looked funny and they took a chest x-ray... The kid had a lung full of cancer.

Kalan wrote: ↑26 Dec 2017, 00:34 Pain from an illness or injury can migrate.

You may think the shoulder is injured when it's really the arm.... And how often does the press get everything wrong anyway??? A kid kept complaining of pain his his shoulder and doctors did MRI's and couldn't find any injury... But one doctor noticed the edge of his lung looked funny and they took a chest x-ray... The kid had a lung full of cancer.

This excerpt from SI via Wikipedia suggests the 'shoulder' and 'bicep' were a related injury.

"A team of eight doctors inspected Liston's arm at St. Francis Hospital in Miami Beach and agreed that it was too badly damaged for Liston to continue fighting. The torn tendon [shoulder] had bled down into the mass of the biceps, swelling and numbing the arm."

Maule, Tex (March 9, 1964). "Yes, it was good and honest". Sports Illustrated pg. 20

Of course a different writer had this to say:

For his book, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero, David Remnick spoke with one of Liston's cornermen, who told him that Liston could have continued: "[The shoulder] was all BS. We had no return bout clause with Clay, and if you say your guy just quit, who is gonna get a return bout. We cooked up that shoulder thing on the spot."

David Remnick, King of the World, pg. 202

APerno wrote: ↑26 Dec 2017, 00:56

Kalan wrote: ↑26 Dec 2017, 00:34 Pain from an illness or injury can migrate.

You may think the shoulder is injured when it's really the arm.... And how often does the press get everything wrong anyway??? A kid kept complaining of pain his his shoulder and doctors did MRI's and couldn't find any injury... But one doctor noticed the edge of his lung looked funny and they took a chest x-ray... The kid had a lung full of cancer.

This excerpt from SI via Wikipedia suggests the 'shoulder' and 'bicep' were a related injury.

"A team of eight doctors inspected Liston's arm at St. Francis Hospital in Miami Beach and agreed that it was too badly damaged for Liston to continue fighting. The torn tendon [shoulder] had bled down into the mass of the biceps, swelling and numbing the arm."

Maule, Tex (March 9, 1964). "Yes, it was good and honest". Sports Illustrated pg. 20

Okay.... I'll go with that... It was both shoulder and biceps... probably with massaging the shoulder they squeezed a ton of blood down into the biceps from the torn tendon area and swelling the arm up badly... That's why some newspapers reported that it was the biceps and some the shoulder... Whatever....the injury took a long time to heal and Liston needed physical therapy for quite a while to bring the arm back.

David Remnick is a lying bastard... Who's going to quit with the fight dead even, and give up the Heavyweight Title which is worth millions - if they don't have a severe injury and can't continue??? Especially after they've already gone 6 rounds and won 3 of them on the cards... Use common sense. There're a lot of lying ass pricks who are boxing writers... guys who would make up something they "heard from one of Liston's cornermen" ... "Really? Which cornerman was that?" .... "Didn't get his name" .... "Right. Didn't think you would have."