Talk:Sonny Liston/Archive 1 - Wikipedia

I removed the material which said:

"If you search you may find that Moe Dalitz of the Cleveland Mob, the real godfather of Las Vegas, had an argument with Liston, when Liston called Mr Dalitz dirty names. Moe Dalitz suposedly said "One phone call and you are dead in 24 hours". After all, the death is still unsolved."

If someone wants to put something in about the Cleveland Mob and Moe Dalitz, I think it should be a little less awkwardly worded. What I mean to say is that this sounds a bit loony and less neutral than it should be.

69.92.82.104 23:38, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a difference between a fight being fixed and a fighter taking a dive. A fix implies participation by both camps. However, Ali was as surprised as everyone else when Liston went down and would not have been a party to such a charade.

While I personally believe that Liston took a dive (for whatever reason), the article needs to remain neutral. While it is fair to say that the bout ended in controversy, which can be backed up, we need to be careful about calling it a fiasco, a fix, an affair, or anything else along those lines. It was a controversial ending to a title fight.

We can quote the opinions of experts in the fight game, but need to be careful about making declarations one way or the other -- or injecting our own opinions. --NameThatWorks 20:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

My uncle was at the Lewiston fight. It was AMAZING that a fight would be held in Lewiston, which my father always said was the ---hole of the universe. My uncle was taking his seat when the fight was stopped. The crowd went crazy yelling that the fight was a fix. Most people at the time considered it a fix (as well as the first fight) as Sonny Liston was so notorious (being owned by the mafia). Sonny apparently lived up to the predictions that he would throw fights. --Shemp Howard, Jr. (talk) 02:08, 17 September 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shemp Howard, Jr. (talk • contribs)

And you wonder why this article has a grade of C? Sonny Liston's contract was owned by the two most notorious gangsters (who controlled pro boxing and went to jail for it). This was documented by the FBI and the press. Sonny Liston TESTIFIED BEFORE THE U.S. SENATE in the Kefauver Committee's investigation into Mafia control of boxing, and offhandedly dismissed criticims of Blinky Palermo and Frank Carbo. Anyone with any knowledge of Liston and the fight game in the early 1960s knows what a major thing this was -- an unapologetic Mafia-connected boxer becoming heavyweight champ, the speculation that he would throw the fight, and then the two dubious losses to Clay/Ali. DOES ANYONE BOTHER TO READ, since you have no memories of the period? It's Liston's Mafia connections and the two dubious fights (Sports Illustrated ran an article after the fight in '64 answering the question was the first fight fixed, and everyone but the deaf, dumb and blind knows the second one was) that defined him, and it is left out. This article is a blot on Wikipedia.Shemp Howard, Jr. (talk) 01:44, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

(Angelo== Ali vs. Liston == Liston never had a proper fight with Ali he was always running away if you ask he was afraid he was tring not to serve himself embarrasment. Liston stayed on the ground for around 20 seconds How? Why? Rumors say he bet against himself because he had to give money to the Mafia He knew he couldn't beat ALi. Ali was THE Greatest. (Shabbir Bokhari)

In 'The Phantom Punch', I replaced 'toss himself off' with 'take a dive'. 'Toss himself off' is an English euphimism for 'masturbate'. Ketlan

I just watched the Liston-Ali fight and here's what happened: Sonny gets hit quite hard on the head. He stumbles around and keels over on his back. He tries getting up on one knee and almost tips over again. He finally gets up before the 10 count and the fight continues. Ali attacks aggressively and Liston is still too dazed to fight back, so the ref calls the fight. It didn't look like there was anything amiss at all. I think Sonny Liston later said he threw the fight because he was too embarassed to admit he went down in the first round like that. Anyway, I think the description should be changed to more accurately describe the knockout. As it is it minimalizes the hit by Ali, when in fact it looked like a devastating blow to the head. JettaMan April 24, 2006

He didn't get hit quite hard on the head. Ali didn't even know he hit Liston as you can see him mouthing the words later "did I hit him". Why do you think he's telling Liston to get up? It's because he knew it wasn't a loaded punch. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.77.164.244 (talk) 02:37, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

"The photograph of the conclusion of this fight is one of the most famous pictures in boxing history": So the article appears to be grossly misleading: it suggests a stoppage by KO, while the special article dealing with these two fights (as well as the posting above) say there was further fighting action until the referee stopped the fight!

The sentence "It is documented that muslims from the Nation of Islam, which controlled Ali, had threatened Liston before the fight" sounds a little loony and almost certainly wrong. I removed it.

I changed "the conclusion of this obviously fixed fight" to "the conclusion of this fight" in the 'Subsequent fights' section. The possibility of a fix is discussed later in the section, and it is of course not known whether the fight was fixed or not.

I'm fairly sure that the black and white photo of Ali standing over Liston, with his arms by his sides is more famous than the one shown (although both are famous), so I think it should be the one mentioned. 211.28.185.39 (talk) 20:11, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

As currently written, this section is INCREDIBLY slanted and needs serious re-writing. See this article for a more neutral, encyclopedic take on the story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali_vs._Sonny_Liston DFS (talk) 21:57, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

So fix it. --Yankees76 ^Talk 13:04, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

My uncle was at the Lewiston fight. It was AMAZING that a fight would be held in Lewiston, which my father always said was the ---hole of the universe. My uncle was taking his seat when the fight was stopped. The crowd went crazy yelling that the fight was a fix. Most people at the time considered it a fix (as well as the first fight) as Sonny Liston was so notorious (being owned by the mafia). Sonny lvied up to the predictions that he would throw fights.Shemp Howard, Jr. (talk) 02:08, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

First of all, I'm not going to say much but I'm from South Philly and my father knew Angelo Dundee, Frankie Dundee, and Chris Dundee as well as being very good friends with Joe Pollino, who stood for my father during confirmation. My father also knew Blinky Palermo very well and Frankie Carbo actually had a house in Philadelphia. Joe Pollino lived and died on the 900 block of McClellan street in South Philadelphia. Our family is from the 900 block of Morris Street and the Dundees were from the 700 block of Morris Street. My grandfather trained fighters on the 700 block of Morris Street. If I remember correctly, Joe Pollino was Sonny Liston's trainer until the last few fights before the Ali fight where he was assistant trainer. Joe Pollino was in a wheel chair and could hardly speak in the last days of his life. When I was young and we went to visit him and we talked about Sonny Liston, he said, "tank, both fights, tank." He's dead so I can say it. I met Frankie Dundee (Angelo Dundee's brother) in 1983 or 1984 up Passyunk gym on Passyunk and Moore in South Philly. He was with ex fighter Tommy Forte who passed away in 2001. Tommy Forte and my father boxed together in the 30's. I don't know if Frankie is still living, but Angelo is. All I can say is that Frankie never said that the fight was a tank nor did he infer it. But I can say that he told me and Tommy Forte what his brother Angelo told Ali in between rounds to get Ali to go out and fight because Ali wanted to quit and what Frankie told us was very different than the mild version that Angelo talks about on TV. After Ali finally went out, Liston quit the next round. According to old time Philadelphia mobsters years ago in the 70's, and this is hearsay from my father, is that the first fight was supposed to go the distance and that Liston was supposed to take it easy on Ali. However, since Ali was going to quit the plan changed and they made Liston quit in the next round. Because of the problem with the first fight, they didn't want to take any chances in the second fight so they told Liston to lay down in the first round. As for the second fight, they even had Jersey Joe Walcott as the referee who was Felix Bocchicchio's fighter. Felix was Blinky's partner.