I am a bit of a boxing fan. I was a big fan of Muhammad Ali.
Ali won the Olympic title in 1960. This is seen as the first step to winning the professional world championship.
Why was Ali beating Liston considered the biggest upset in boxing history? Did nobody see his potential?
Afterall he was the Olympic champion and he went on to become the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time.
Bit of hindsight there, though.
Ali had had some trouble when he arrived at the top echelon of heavyweights; it was by no means apparent what he would become. Liston was a powerful, powerful puncher. The expectation was that the comparatively slight Ali would go down quickly.
And on further thought, I think I’ll take this one away from GD.
Moved from GD to … IMHO, I guess.
I had read (can’t find a cite now) that Liston was considered the Mike Tyson of the era; a brutal, tough, bully of a fighter. People didn’t expect someone who was more of a fast finesse fighter like Ali to stand a chance.
At 7-1 odds in the Clay fight, Liston had stopped Floyd Patterson twice in the previous few years. I think that had something to do with the consensus about the pre-thinking about the forthcoming fight.
Why did this get moved?
One, I don’t think this is the “biggest upset in boxing history.” Probably not even heavyweight history. Jimmy Braddock’s upset of Max Baer was arguably a larger upset and more recently the Douglas-Tyson fight and the Tyson-Holyfield fight would arguably qualify as bigger upsets.
Two, as has been said, Liston was regarded as a beast of a man who destroyed his opponents. Ali (at the time, Clay) won an Olympic medal at light heavyweight and hadn’t faced all that great of opposition before he fought Liston. He struggled with Doug Jones, for instance, and had not shown the type of skills many felt he’d need to defeat Liston. Given the two fighters’ records prior to their meeting, it was natural that Liston would be a heavy favorite.
Because I didn’t see any debate arising, only opinions.
Ali’s boxing style was also a bit unconventional (he kept his hands down low at his waist instead of keeping them in front of him). Liston has pulverized Floyd Patterson and was considered just too powerful for Ali to stand up to. The general impression of Ali was that he couldn’t get out of the way.
Also, a lot of people didn’t like Ali’s big mouth and wanted to see him lose, so he was not given enough credit.
Although the question has been answered, one other point about this fight was that most of Liston’s opponents (like Tyson’s years later) were just plain scared. Not Ali. So, in retrospect, that took away one of Liston’s weapons, and Ali made him look like a lumbering old man.
Ali tended to box down to his opponents’ level, and did struggle against less-hyped fighters when fighting them, but not because of his ability. This made it hard to figure out just who Ali was as a fighter (er, boxer), especially early on.
For Ali to ‘fight up’ to an opponent, their had to be some hype about the opponent/situation to get Ali’s best to come out. Plodding through lesser fighters that weren’t forecast to give him much trouble, and with any colorful background stories to ‘up the ante’, Ali didn’t impress on numerous occassions. Conversely, fighters with more Liston/Tyson type styles tended to mow down lesser opponents, creating hyperbole over their abilities.
Watch Ali fight the greatest heavyweights of all time or get invloved in the greatest and most colorful events preluding a fight and you are CONVINCED he was indeed the greatest, plus tougher than ever imagined, and smarter than any boxer in history.
Watch Ali against some ho-hum guys, and in fights where some colorful/emotional background was missing and Ali fights down to the other fighter.
Everyone’s been pretty much spot on so far. Liston was a scary-as-hell ex-con bruiser, and Ali was a relatively unproven kid with a big mouth. The Tyson comparsion is an apt one; like Tyson in the 80’s, Liston was considered virtually unbeatable at the time. Liston was a beast, one of the hardest hitters of the 20th century, one of the few guys who could knock you out with just his jab. One of his opponents once described his jab as like being hit with a telephone pole with a fist at the end of it. Not many guys wanted to get in the ring with him.
There’s some famous prefight footage of Ali showing up at Liston’s training camp to taunt him, and Liston is working a heavy bag when he arrives. Ali calls Liston a “big, ugly bear” and says he’ll take him in eight rounds, while Liston ignores him (at first) and keeps working the bag. Liston is just destroying the bag with bonecrushing power, really frightening. I can’t imagine seeing that and still being in the mood to talk trash.
Liston spent years at the #1 contender position, and went thru many of the other top contenders like shit thru a goose. D’Amato wanted no part of Liston for Patterson - wisely so, given that Patterson was an overstuffed middleweight (he won the Olympics as a light middleweight). Finally Patterson was shamed into giving Liston a shot, and lasted less than a round. Ditto for the rematch.
Liston fought Ali because there was hardly anyone else left in the division. Liston had burned himself out fighting them all. There was no reason to believe that Ali would do much better than, say Tom “the Bomb” Bethea, who was missing six teeth after Liston got done with him. And, as mentioned, Ali did not look that great against Jones, and Henry Cooper put Ali down hard with a left hook (Angelo Dundee split Ali’s glove open to give him a rest after the knockdown, Ali got an extra five minutes to recover, and went on to score a TKO over Cooper, who would start bleeding if he heard a cutting remark). And the left hook was Liston’s best punch.
The lead up to the Liston fight was an incredible psych job for Ali, but it is like the fight with Foreman - no amount of psych would help if Ali weren’t a great fighter.
Regards,
Shodan
A couple of reasons - 1.) Ali was a brash young kid and Liston was a tried and true champion. 2.) Look at the size difference between the two fighters. Liston was a mountain compared to Ali and in those days, most thought that was the deciding factor in the heavy-weight class or at least a key factor. The prevailing feeling was “Sure he did OK in the Olympics, but you don’t go 15 rounds (they did go 15 in those days) and you get points for just touching your opponent with the gloves not knocking him out.”
It didn’t hurt that Clay/Ali was a loud mouth. The Louisville Lip irritated a lot of people and they bet against him for that reason. Not may people pre-Ali were quite so self-promoting as Ali and it raised some hackles and that money went against him.
I was just a high-school kid at the time, but I made great money on the fight betting on Ali. I probably would have bet on Liston if there was somebody that would take the bet, but nobody would. So just to put some money on the fight I bet on Clay. I bet on him every time thereafter and he continued to make good money for me.
It should be noted that the next Liston/Ali fight it was also Liston who was favored again. Also when Ali went against Patterson, Patterson was the favorite.
Ali irritated a lot of “smart money” betters.