Ali-Liston 2 - The body language is all wrong!!

As soon as Ali lands the supposed corkscrew punch and Liston goes down..His first reaction is to tell Liston to get up. It's a spontaneous..not a thought out reaction mainly because he doesn't think he's hit him...a few seconds later when he realises he's on his way to beating a dangerous foe he starts jumping up and down with his hands in the air...

Ali is blameless in the whole affair...

Watch Norris knock Mugabi down and the first thing he does is jump for joy and leg it to a neutral corner..

Both are reactions to the circumstances....

Watch Liston try to get up and roll over on his back....He seems to be thinking if it's alright to stay down or if he should go on longer...the manner of his rolling onto his back doesn't seem like a disorientated guy!!

Louis, Dempsey and other former great heavyweight champions all believe the fight was a fraud....

I think they are correct...the body language isn't right...

I agree.

I've never believed the fight to have been a pre arranged ' fix ' but I've always believed that Liston took the easy way out when he realised he wasn't going to enjoy any success in catching Ali.

Liston had trained to perfection for the return but the fight was delayed when Ali required an operation on a hernia, and the story was that Liston lost momentum and couldn't get back into shape, psychologically or physically.

A strange twist, though, is that Patterson visited Liston in his dressing room straight after the fight and claimed that Liston had exhibited all the signs of having been knocked out. Patterson reckoned that Sonny had been caught cold.

It was curious then and, nearly fifty years on, it's still curious.

liston was supposed to have admitted to taking a dive to some people and to being caught by tohers and being knocked out....certainly one of Boxings most enigmatic characters...

Thing is if you're fighting a dangerous guy like Liston you would be really excited a la Terry Norris was v Mugabi in decking him...not shouting at him to get up..

It's as if Ali's reaction was spontaneous and without thought.. and it gave the game away..only a few seconds later did his realisation he was going to defeat a dangerous foe easily kick in and the excitement came out..

I still cant make my mind up about it. When I watch it, it looks dodgy as hell. But on the other hand if you were going to fix a fight why make such a horlicks of it? I guess we'll never know.

Awesome watching Ali practically bounce round the ring for the couple of minutes it lasted though..

I thinl Liston took a dive...Don't think it was fixed per se..

I have slightly the other perspective in that I have never been convinced the fight was a fix. For me the reports I've read suggested a lot of the fighters at ring side said the punch was valid. Also the thing that makes me suspiscious is Liston was not exactly the most popular guy in the sport with the powers that be, have to think was he going to go into the tank would make a damned sight better job than we saw there.

Whilst a fighter with Ali's power knocking a guy like Liston bandy with one punch seems unlikely he would not be the first guy to be caught cold and if Liston had not turned up in shape, which we have every reason to believe he hadn't whilst it is still unlikely it is not beyond possibility.

No it's not beyond possibility and you make a good case....

You not think however that Ali's first reaction was to scream at him as if he'd been cheated......

In the heat of the moment and with the adrenaline pumping I think its quite a natural and possibly macho reaction to implore that a guy you've just knocked down get up. Especially if you were as pumped up as Ali was.

Who knows how any of us would act...

Just that his first reaction seemed to be shock and irritation that Liston went down from his shot....Spontaneous stuff and maybe it was macho...However soon after he resorts to throwing his hands in the air and circling the ring as most Boxers tend to do....

Almost as if his train of thought had kicked in...

But you know the grat thing about this is you could be right who knows...

Just think the body language is all wrong..

Definitely a weird one alright.

The thing is; Sonny actually got up and was ready to continue (meanwhile the referee goes to check the duration of the count) which they did for a few seconds before the referee came back and said the fight was over.

If Liston took a dive then why didn't he just stay down?
Also, Ali landed 3 far harder looking rights earlier in the round which Liston could have chosen to go down from and it would have looked more convincing.

I think it was just one of those freak shots and the reason for Ali's reaction was that it didn't initially feel he'd landed a massively concussive punch but soon realised that somehow he had.

I tend to agree with Windy; never in a million years was it a 'fix' in the sense of money being passed, or a prearranged outcome. But it was bogus in the sense that Liston decided he wanted out, and didn't try as hard as he could / should have done to continue.

Aside from Liston, Ali has just one first round knockout to his name. One. That came early on in his career I believe and, if my memory serves me correctly, came against a man who had stepped in as a late replacement. Using solely that, the idea that he could have scored a legitimate first round knockout against a man with a chin as good as Liston's seems a little fanciful. But what gives it away most to me was Liston's reaction to the punch; having watched boxing for as long as I can remember, as well as partipating in it myself on a small basis, I can safely say that fighters who have been truly knocked out simply don't put their arms out to break their fall, which Liston did once Ali's right hand had connected.

Moreover, a genuinely knocked out fighter usually doesn't know to duck a punch of two, with Liston did once the farce of a 'count' had ended in the breif moment where it seemed the fight was set to continue. Everything, to me at least, simply points to Liston not feeling up to the job, not wanting to be humiliated by Ali again, and simply throwing the towel in, metaphorically speaking.

Good stuff....

I've always thought it was a dive - or at least - that Liston could have got up.

I've heard rumours about betting swings in the run up to the fight - but such stuff gets passed down generations until it becomes the stuff of legend. Who knows if its true.

I have also heard that 1 week later about 10 policemen with truncheons were whacking Liston around the head for a misdemeanour - and they failed to subdue him.

The same Liston who could take a truncheon to the head would not go down for that Ali right hand, quick though the punch was.

I've always believed that Liston could have got up and continued to fight but chose to quit fearing another beating, i think the punch initially stunned him but he chose to roll about a bit and wait for a count that nearly never came. He looked ready to continue though but i don't think it would have been long before he went down and took the full count again. I don't believe the fight was fixed and if it was i don't believe Ali had anything to do with it.

He was kind of hanging on for dear life rather than fighting back....wasn't he.

Oxring and Galveston - In actual fact Liston did get up and the fight continued for a few seconds before the ref dived in and decided he'd been counted out after all.

A lot of questions about this fight might have been answered had it not been for the sheer incompetence of Jersey Joe Walcott, surely the worst referee that a major title bout has ever had to endure. With a decent referee, we would have been able to see whether Liston was really caught off guard or in a vulnerable spot - he wasn't such a great actor that further dissembling would have been possible - and Ali would have been able to gain his satisfaction one way or another. The question has never, to my knowledge, been really raised as to whether Walcott was mixed up in the murkier aspects of events surrounding the fight, or whether he was merely miles out of his depth, but his role was absolutely crucial in the fog of speculation which still persists around it.

SugarRayBray wrote:Oxring and Galveston - In actual fact Liston did get up and the fight continued for a few seconds before the ref dived in and decided he'd been counted out after all.

He did - and started fighting Ali - and did he look on shaky legs to you?

I agree with captain about Walcott - truly atrocious referee.

Although I could allow him the excuse that almost certainly he did NOT expect to be dealing with a KO at that point in the fight.

oxring wrote:

SugarRayBray wrote:Oxring and Galveston - In actual fact Liston did get up and the fight continued for a few seconds before the ref dived in and decided he'd been counted out after all.

He did - and started fighting Ali - and did he look on shaky legs to you?

I agree with captain about Walcott - truly atrocious referee.

Although I could allow him the excuse that almost certainly he did NOT expect to be dealing with a KO at that point in the fight.

He didn't really start fighting Ali as much as Walcott walked off, they looked at each other for a second and then Ali started pummeling him and taking nothing in return.

John Bloody Wayne wrote:

oxring wrote:

SugarRayBray wrote:Oxring and Galveston - In actual fact Liston did get up and the fight continued for a few seconds before the ref dived in and decided he'd been counted out after all.

He did - and started fighting Ali - and did he look on shaky legs to you?

I agree with captain about Walcott - truly atrocious referee.

Although I could allow him the excuse that almost certainly he did NOT expect to be dealing with a KO at that point in the fight.

He didn't really start fighting Ali as much as Walcott walked off, they looked at each other for a second and then Ali started pummeling him and taking nothing in return.

OK if we're being pedantic Ali was "pummeling him" but wasn't knocking Liston down, nor did he look like he was about to. Considering the theatrics of the roll 30sec before - its a bit odd.

None of this is definite proof there was anything iffy going on - its just an odd set of events. Which is logical I suppose because it was an odd fight.

Odd to say the least. I think really Liston just swallowed it. He probably thought the fight was over when he got up as, like we've mentioned, Walcott was terrible as ref.