So was Henry Cooper a better fighter than Sonny Liston?

lol.

Cooper would not have seen the second round against prime Liston.

An awful mismatch.

FBI believed the Liston - Ali fights were fixed.

Two mob gangsters in Vegas made $20 million in today's money betting against Liston.

And then there's the phantom punch.

The author Nick Tosches, in his great biography The Devil and Sonny Liston (later retitled Night Train), leaves little doubt that both fights were fixed. Not that Ali would have necessarily been a party to the arrangement. As Tosches points out, the mob’s technique was to make the deal only with the designated loser. The winner might suspect that something had been amiss, but he would never know for sure.

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Seems he fought Ali much tougher than did Liston. Didn't look so outclassed as Liston did in both fights.

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I guess that's one way to put it.

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Reportedly in that famous photo of Ali standing over Liston, he was yelling "Get up you son of a bitch! No one will believe this!"

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There's an episode in Mad Men where everyone is incredulous at the suggestion that Ali could beat Liston before the fight.

And that's sort of real history. Liston was a big version of Tyson and the huge favorite against this skinny kid.

The odds were enormous for Liston. He must have been too tempted, getting scammed by his manager or in debt to the mob.

I love the commentary by the British announcers during the Ali-Foreman fight when he K.O.'s Foreman the announcers shout..."that was no Phantom Punch! That was no Phantom Punch!"

So even in the 70's it was still in everybody's mind...how great is Ali really? What fights are real today?

Now we know him in reverance...but as soon as the Liston fights ended people were apparently like what? There was a Sports Illustrated article questioning the fight right after it happened. And then the Vietnam thing happened.

Coming back and beating George really cemented his legacy, not Liston to historians.

There are famous pictures like you said but this was not a classic series...it was sort of nonsense...boxing historians don't talk about this because what's to talk about unless you just accuse people.

Boxing makes AAU and College basketball look like the cleanest of sports on earth

Boxing is dying because old people lose interest in things when they become old and retarded.

Cheating is boxing's pastime. To this day, we can barely have a fight without an INSANE decision.

Being a dedicated boxing fan is the equivalent of being a baseball fan but all your favorite players have to cover their eyes while they play.

Nothing about the sport of boxing is genuine. That goes for the hatred between contestants, the promotions of the fights, AND the judging of the contests.

Boxing. fricking. Sucks.

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The author Nick Tosches, in his great biography The Devil and Sonny Liston

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This is the best sports biography I have ever read. Was going through some old boxes recently and came across it again. I think I may reread it over the weekend.

No, not even close. And the Clay-Liston fights were rigged. Liston was in deep to the mob. He probably got out from under his debt by throwing the fights.

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Liston was a big version of Tyson and the huge favorite against this skinny kid.

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Ali was actually bigger than Liston. His trainers knew it. They bunched him up with towels under his robe to make him appear bigger and more imposing but it was clear when they took their robes off Ali was no Floyd Patterson.

The first fight didn't seem fixed at all and it wouldn't make sense to fix it. Liston was a mob-controlled fighter and they couldn't touch Ali. It makes no sense to have the title in your hands and have him throw it to someone you couldn't touch. It makes much more sense that the mercurial Liston was just not training properly and possibly using heroine. He also may have been significantly older than people thought by the time he fought Ali.

The second fight may or may not have been thrown, but the more reasonable conclusion is that Liston just was done with it all. He had an injury that caused the fight to be postponed and by all accounts he just let himself go after that. It's more likely that he just got caught off balance and chose not to get up. He was just over it all. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

The FBI believed the Clay-Liston fight was rigged by the Mob, documents revealed.

Tuesday marked 50 years since Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, "shocked the world" and beat Sonny Liston — one of the greatest fighters to ever step in the boxing ring. The fight catapulted the young Clay to the top of the boxing world, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation thought the win might have involved something more seedy beyond the box score.

Clay and Liston sparred six rounds at the Miami Convention Center, and Liston’s decision to quit before the seventh raised red flags for the FBI, which at the time suspected the fight had been fixed by a Las Vegas gambler, according to the Washington Times.

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the Times obtained memos (some addressed directly to the FBI’s then-director, J. Edgar Hoover) showing the bureau’s investigation into Ash Resnick and Barnett Magids — two gamblers who seemed to have insider knowledge before the upset.

Two guys made over $10 million each in today's money betting on the first fight in Vegas.

You don't wager that much money unless you know it's a sure thing.

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He lied about his age like Joe Louis?

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