What could have been one of the greatest boxers in history. He was champion at such an old age and still knocked out boxers way younger than him. He had one of the best jabs in boxing as well as knockout's. This man was the role model of GEORGE FOREMAN. It's a shame that alot of his fights weren't recorded. Sonny Liston you will always stand out for me because for me you are one of the best. THE UNCROWNED CHAMPION - SONNY LISTON
This comment is a huge understatement. Sonny was a bad, bad man. He once took away a club and gun from a police officer who was trying to defend himself from it, and literally broke the man’s knee? Or when Sonny took another’s officer’s gun from him, slapped him silly, and then picked him up over his head and threw him into a trash container? How about Sonny knocking out a man, and knocking out or breaking 16 of the man’s teeth with a single blow - and he had regulation boxing gloves on! Sonny was dangerous enough that a man dying of cancer said the pain was less than being hit by Sonny Liston! Sonny terrorized the streets of St. Louis as a teenager, strong arm robbing people, using only his huge fists as weapons, as the “yellow shirt bandit.” Sentenced to the Missouri State Penitentiary for five years, Sonny didn’t mind prison - he told his sister it was the first time in his life he knew he would have 3 meals a day. In his year and a half in prison, the other cons were terrified of Sonny, and with good reason. Sonny tolerated no insolence from any man, and was quick to enforce his personal rules with the biggest fists ever seen in professional boxing. Bob Mee's book "Liston and Ali: The Ugly Bear and the Boy Who Would Be King" recounts that to help Liston show his potential to trainers, Father Stevens organized a sparring session with a local St. Louis heavyweight named Thurman Wilson, who was 5-2-1 as a pro, to showcase Liston's potential. Wilson expected no trouble with a man who had never had a sanctioned fight, amateur, or professional. The story is that after two rounds, Wilson quit saying "Better get me out of this ring," exclaimed Wilson, "he is going to kill me." Wilson never fought again after the beating by Liston. Sonny hated the way he was treated by the police after he left prison - and was not afraid to show it. On May 5, 1956, he got in a street confrontation with a cop. When the officer confronted him and a friend about a cab parked near Liston's home, he assaulted the officer, breaking his knee and gashing his face, and took his gun. Liston received nine months in the city workhouse. After his release, Liston had another run on with a cop, only this time the enraged Sonny disarmed the officer, literally picked him up, and threw him in a trash bin. "He started a fight with a cop, beat the cop senseless, snatched his gun, picked him up and dumped him in an alley in a trash can," recounts Jonathan Aig in "Muhammad Ali: A Life." Aig recounted: "[Sonny] then walked away smiling, wearing the cop's hat." Police officers put out the word that Liston should leave town “or else.” Sonny, no fool, and not bulletproof, moved to Philadelphia. While Liston began training for a heavyweight title shot, he also continued to have run-ins with the law. Two more arrests, this time for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and another for impersonating a police officer, led to Liston being suspended by the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission on July 14, 1961. The suspension was honored in all states. Liston's license was reinstated three months later after an appeal from his manager." Sonny was arrested 19 times, and in prison twice. In “Night Train : A Biography of Sonny Liston" by Nick Tosches, he said "Sonny did the least talking of any heavyweight ever. He didn't like talking, he considered it bragging, and he didn't like bragging either. Sonny didn't have to talk, or glare, Sonny was the toughest man there, and he knew it. Life had made him so." Emmanuel Steward said "Sonny Liston was the most intimidating fighter of all time. Mike [Tyson] was intimidating, George [Foreman] was intimidating, but Sonny Liston invented intimidation because unlike George and Mike, he was as mean in real life as he appeared to be in the ring." Ray Arcel dryly noted "Sonny Liston didn't just look mean, he was mean, real mean, and he was happy to show folks." Cleveland Williams said "other guys talk, or put on a mean face - Sonny just was Sonny. He was the meanest damn man in the world, he knew it, and he didn't have to pretend." Sir Henry Cooper, the European and British heavyweight Champion who twice fought Ali, and had a who's who of opponents in the 50's and 60's, had one name glaringly missing from his resume: Sonny Liston. When asked why, Sir Henry said "I don't even want to see him walking down the street, let alone in a gym!" Muhammad Ali said "Liston was the best fighter of all time, other than me." Ali also said ""Of all the men I fought in boxing, Sonny Liston was the scariest." Rocky Marciano said of Liston, "he isn't faking his toughness, and his strength is just something you got to see, and that jab, he can knock a man out with the jab!" When asked how he would have fought him, the Rock shook his head and said “I’d have done my best, but Lord God he is strong…” "Liston does not merely defeat his opponents," Jonathan Aig wrote of the fighter. "He breaks them, shames them, haunts them, leaves them flinching from his punches in their dreams." Sonny was the product of a harsh, unforgiving, life. Charles "Sonny" Liston was born into a sharecropping family who farmed the rocky, poor quality land of Morledge Plantation near Johnson Township, St. Francis County, Arkansas. Sonny said, confirmed by other family members, that his father inflicted beatings and whippings so severe on Sonny that the scars were still visible decades later. "The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating," Liston said. "We hardly had enough food to keep from starving, no shoes, only a few clothes, and nobody to help us escape from the horrible life we lived," he would later say. "We grew up like heathens." "I had nothing when I was a kid but a lot of brothers and sisters, a helpless mother and a father who didn't care about any of us," Sonny said. "We grew up with few clothes, no shoes, little to eat. My father worked me hard and whupped me hard." Beaten and abused as a child, he grew up to stay in trouble, and even in prison, other cons were terrified of making Sonny mad. He grew up in a world with no kindness and no forgiveness, and he gave none to anyone. Sonny was born into a family that couldn't afford for him to go to school, and when the family mule died, Sonny's father hitched his 9 year old son to the plow and made him the mule. When Sonny was 13, his mother and siblings ran away from his father, and left Sonny, who managed to run away to try to rejoin them. Sonny, who had never been to school, and was left to run the streets, ended up in trouble, as the “yellow shirt bandit.” Stories about Sonny Liston terrorizing other fighters are legion - and they are true. Sonny's first pro fight lasted 33 seconds: Liston leveled Don Smith with his first punch, and Smith was out for 3 minutes! Sonny Liston knocked out Wayne Bethea in 1958 in 69 seconds of the first round! Bethea, a tough, hardened, pro, had never been off his feet in his life - Liston dropped Bethea for the first time in his career, knocking out 7 teeth, with 9 more broken! 16 teeth knocked out or broken with one punch! Neither Mike Tyson nor Rocky, nor Foreman himself ever managed that much damage with a single punch. Bethea, never the same again, said of Liston "he must have hit me with a horseshoe in his glove!" Nor was that the only time Sonny hit men with unbelievable power that eclipse's anything anyone else has done - in the mid 60's, Sonny sparred with Ray Shoeninger in Denver, and he hit him with a jab so hard, the stitching in Ray's protective headgear literally tore and the headgear came apart with the blow, which getting through, knocked out three teeth! When Sonny knocked out #2 ranked Zora Foley, they thought Foley might be dead, and when Foley finally regained consciousness, he asked Sonny, who was standing next to the referee, what happened. "I knocked you out," said Liston matter of factly. Foley said later, "I was lucky, Sonny didn't dislike me, so he just beat me up a little." Foley went on, "ain't a man that walks this earth stronger than Sonny Liston." Nino Valdes, as he lay dying from cancer, drugged heavily with morphine, was asked by his family if it hurt, and said "not as bad as getting hit by Sonny Liston!" Johnny Tocco, who worked with Foreman, Tyson and Sonny Liston, said of the three, Liston hit the hardest, and was the strongest. So did Emmanuel Steward, who said of Liston, "he was unbelievably strong, and his punching like a wrecking machine." A good example of Sonny's sheer strength was an exercise he devised in training camp of loading an industrial sized wheelbarrow full of rocks, and wheeling it up and down a hill. Foreman, 19, and training with "the old man," could only carry one wheelbarrow for every 3 for Sonny. "His strength," said Foreman, "you just can't believe how strong he was!" (Foreman later took Sonny's idea, and pulled a car up and down a hill to train!) George Foreman said "I was afraid of Joe Frazier," said Big George, "every man is afraid of a man like that, if he has sense. But with Sonny Liston I was always real careful to not make him mad. Sonny was something special." Chuck Wepner, who fought great heavyweights like Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, said no one ever hit him harder than Liston. Wepner once said getting hit by him was like getting hit with a baseball bat. He wasn’t exaggerating, as he walked out of that fight with a broken nose, a broken cheek bone and 72 stitches! Wepner said "Sonny made George [Foreman] look like Mr. Friendly!" That fight, Sonny's last, took place when he was at least 40, and probably closer to 50.
@@xGhostRidahSugar Ray Robinson did have a prime, it just wasn't filmed properly Liston didn't have a prime cause he started boxing when he was already a grown man
@@H.K.5 Yeah, but when he faced Muhammad Ali, he was getting old, and he still put a good fight. By the way, this is PRIME Muhammad Ali he was facing when he was nearly 40 years old
Imagine liston in his 20-25 damn that would be unfair for the other boxers but unfortunately we only saw him in his 30-40 Its still unknown how old he truly was
@@BADBoxerpuncher well officially he died at 38 but thats bcz when Sonny liston signed to fight ali he said that he was 32 while in reality he was close to 40 or even older so on paper he died at the age of 38 but ur probably right
Leotis Martin lost an eye in that fight. Won the battle but lost the war. Sonny was a terrifying man to fight. Even if you win you lose unless you're a prime Ali.
He absolutely dominated that Martin fight before getting Stopped just shows how good he is when he has a shoulder injury and is over 40. RIP Sonny Liston we’ll remember you as the Baddest Man to ever walk on this Planet
Ali ve Holmes sol direk konusunda tarihin en iyisi olarak biliniyor, ama Listonun sol direği rakibi uçuruyordu. George Foreman bir röportajında, Liston için çok dinamik bir sol direği vardı demişti..
When he got knocked by Ali, many people thought he could get up, a lot of controversy around the knockout, some people think he didn't hear the count, others say the mob forced him to lose, we'll never truly know 🤷
Yeah that rematch was controversial. it's so hard Liston just getting knocked down like that and early in the round too considering of how much a monster he was.
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Not only the most feared and strongest boxer who ever lived since. He was also a gentleman outside the ring.
This man made sir foreman take back step
Most feared boxer in history 🥶
One of the most underrated boxers of all time. A lot of people only know him for “taking a dive” against Ali but the man was a beast.
He wasn’t underrated at all considering he was a cheater.
Rest in Peace Sir! I will one day visit your grave and pay you the tribute you deserve ❤.
Sonny Liston it my idol
Greatest His Hardest 🥶
What could have been one of the greatest boxers in history. He was champion at such an old age and still knocked out boxers way younger than him. He had one of the best jabs in boxing as well as knockout's. This man was the role model of GEORGE FOREMAN. It's a shame that alot of his fights weren't recorded. Sonny Liston you will always stand out for me because for me you are one of the best. THE UNCROWNED CHAMPION - SONNY LISTON
He already is one of the greatest boxers in history,
Most experts rank him 2 to 6 of greatest heavyweights in history.
This comment is a huge understatement.
Sonny was a bad, bad man.
He once took away a club and gun from a police officer who was trying to defend himself from it, and literally broke the man’s knee? Or when Sonny took another’s officer’s gun from him, slapped him silly, and then picked him up over his head and threw him into a trash container?
How about Sonny knocking out a man, and knocking out or breaking 16 of the man’s teeth with a single blow - and he had regulation boxing gloves on!
Sonny was dangerous enough that a man dying of cancer said the pain was less than being hit by Sonny Liston!
Sonny terrorized the streets of St. Louis as a teenager, strong arm robbing people, using only his huge fists as weapons, as the “yellow shirt bandit.” Sentenced to the Missouri State Penitentiary for five years, Sonny didn’t mind prison - he told his sister it was the first time in his life he knew he would have 3 meals a day.
In his year and a half in prison, the other cons were terrified of Sonny, and with good reason. Sonny tolerated no insolence from any man, and was quick to enforce his personal rules with the biggest fists ever seen in professional boxing.
Bob Mee's book "Liston and Ali: The Ugly Bear and the Boy Who Would Be King" recounts that to help Liston show his potential to trainers, Father Stevens organized a sparring session with a local St. Louis heavyweight named Thurman Wilson, who was 5-2-1 as a pro, to showcase Liston's potential. Wilson expected no trouble with a man who had never had a sanctioned fight, amateur, or professional. The story is that after two rounds, Wilson quit saying "Better get me out of this ring," exclaimed Wilson, "he is going to kill me."
Wilson never fought again after the beating by Liston.
Sonny hated the way he was treated by the police after he left prison - and was not afraid to show it. On May 5, 1956, he got in a street confrontation with a cop. When the officer confronted him and a friend about a cab parked near Liston's home, he assaulted the officer, breaking his knee and gashing his face, and took his gun. Liston received nine months in the city workhouse.
After his release, Liston had another run on with a cop, only this time the enraged Sonny disarmed the officer, literally picked him up, and threw him in a trash bin.
"He started a fight with a cop, beat the cop senseless, snatched his gun, picked him up and dumped him in an alley in a trash can," recounts Jonathan Aig in "Muhammad Ali: A Life."
Aig recounted: "[Sonny] then walked away smiling, wearing the cop's hat."
Police officers put out the word that Liston should leave town “or else.”
Sonny, no fool, and not bulletproof, moved to Philadelphia. While Liston began training for a heavyweight title shot, he also continued to have run-ins with the law. Two more arrests, this time for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and another for impersonating a police officer, led to Liston being suspended by the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission on July 14, 1961. The suspension was honored in all states. Liston's license was reinstated three months later after an appeal from his manager."
Sonny was arrested 19 times, and in prison twice.
In “Night Train : A Biography of Sonny Liston" by Nick Tosches, he said "Sonny did the least talking of any heavyweight ever. He didn't like talking, he considered it bragging, and he didn't like bragging either. Sonny didn't have to talk, or glare, Sonny was the toughest man there, and he knew it. Life had made him so."
Emmanuel Steward said "Sonny Liston was the most intimidating fighter of all time. Mike [Tyson] was intimidating, George [Foreman] was intimidating, but Sonny Liston invented intimidation because unlike George and Mike, he was as mean in real life as he appeared to be in the ring."
Ray Arcel dryly noted "Sonny Liston didn't just look mean, he was mean, real mean, and he was happy to show folks."
Cleveland Williams said "other guys talk, or put on a mean face - Sonny just was Sonny. He was the meanest damn man in the world, he knew it, and he didn't have to pretend."
Sir Henry Cooper, the European and British heavyweight Champion who twice fought Ali, and had a who's who of opponents in the 50's and 60's, had one name glaringly missing from his resume: Sonny Liston. When asked why, Sir Henry said "I don't even want to see him walking down the street, let alone in a gym!"
Muhammad Ali said "Liston was the best fighter of all time, other than me." Ali also said ""Of all the men I fought in boxing, Sonny Liston was the scariest."
Rocky Marciano said of Liston, "he isn't faking his toughness, and his strength is just something you got to see, and that jab, he can knock a man out with the jab!"
When asked how he would have fought him, the Rock shook his head and said “I’d have done my best, but Lord God he is strong…”
"Liston does not merely defeat his opponents," Jonathan Aig wrote of the fighter. "He breaks them, shames them, haunts them, leaves them flinching from his punches in their dreams."
Sonny was the product of a harsh, unforgiving, life. Charles "Sonny" Liston was born into a sharecropping family who farmed the rocky, poor quality land of Morledge Plantation near Johnson Township, St. Francis County, Arkansas. Sonny said, confirmed by other family members, that his father inflicted beatings and whippings so severe on Sonny that the scars were still visible decades later.
"The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating," Liston said. "We hardly had enough food to keep from starving, no shoes, only a few clothes, and nobody to help us escape from the horrible life we lived," he would later say. "We grew up like heathens."
"I had nothing when I was a kid but a lot of brothers and sisters, a helpless mother and a father who didn't care about any of us," Sonny said. "We grew up with few clothes, no shoes, little to eat. My father worked me hard and whupped me hard."
Beaten and abused as a child, he grew up to stay in trouble, and even in prison, other cons were terrified of making Sonny mad. He grew up in a world with no kindness and no forgiveness, and he gave none to anyone.
Sonny was born into a family that couldn't afford for him to go to school, and when the family mule died, Sonny's father hitched his 9 year old son to the plow and made him the mule. When Sonny was 13, his mother and siblings ran away from his father, and left Sonny, who managed to run away to try to rejoin them. Sonny, who had never been to school, and was left to run the streets, ended up in trouble, as the “yellow shirt bandit.”
Stories about Sonny Liston terrorizing other fighters are legion - and they are true.
Sonny's first pro fight lasted 33 seconds: Liston leveled Don Smith with his first punch, and Smith was out for 3 minutes!
Sonny Liston knocked out Wayne Bethea in 1958 in 69 seconds of the first round! Bethea, a tough, hardened, pro, had never been off his feet in his life - Liston dropped Bethea for the first time in his career, knocking out 7 teeth, with 9 more broken! 16 teeth knocked out or broken with one punch!
Neither Mike Tyson nor Rocky, nor Foreman himself ever managed that much damage with a single punch.
Bethea, never the same again, said of Liston "he must have hit me with a horseshoe in his glove!"
Nor was that the only time Sonny hit men with unbelievable power that eclipse's anything anyone else has done - in the mid 60's, Sonny sparred with Ray Shoeninger in Denver, and he hit him with a jab so hard, the stitching in Ray's protective headgear literally tore and the headgear came apart with the blow, which getting through, knocked out three teeth!
When Sonny knocked out #2 ranked Zora Foley, they thought Foley might be dead, and when Foley finally regained consciousness, he asked Sonny, who was standing next to the referee, what happened. "I knocked you out," said Liston matter of factly.
Foley said later, "I was lucky, Sonny didn't dislike me, so he just beat me up a little." Foley went on, "ain't a man that walks this earth stronger than Sonny Liston."
Nino Valdes, as he lay dying from cancer, drugged heavily with morphine, was asked by his family if it hurt, and said "not as bad as getting hit by Sonny Liston!"
Johnny Tocco, who worked with Foreman, Tyson and Sonny Liston, said of the three, Liston hit the hardest, and was the strongest. So did Emmanuel Steward, who said of Liston, "he was unbelievably strong, and his punching like a wrecking machine."
A good example of Sonny's sheer strength was an exercise he devised in training camp of loading an industrial sized wheelbarrow full of rocks, and wheeling it up and down a hill. Foreman, 19, and training with "the old man," could only carry one wheelbarrow for every 3 for Sonny. "His strength," said Foreman, "you just can't believe how strong he was!" (Foreman later took Sonny's idea, and pulled a car up and down a hill to train!)
George Foreman said "I was afraid of Joe Frazier," said Big George, "every man is afraid of a man like that, if he has sense. But with Sonny Liston I was always real careful to not make him mad. Sonny was something special."
Chuck Wepner, who fought great heavyweights like Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, said no one ever hit him harder than Liston. Wepner once said getting hit by him was like getting hit with a baseball bat. He wasn’t exaggerating, as he walked out of that fight with a broken nose, a broken cheek bone and 72 stitches! Wepner said "Sonny made George [Foreman] look like Mr. Friendly!"
That fight, Sonny's last, took place when he was at least 40, and probably closer to 50.
@@The_Bronx_BullBro write a book 😮
@@The_Bronx_Bullthanks so much bro the fans needs to see this
@@The_Bronx_Bullgah damn
unfortunately we have never witnessed prime legend Liston competing
Yes Liston was like 36 when he debut and 44 when he fight Ali
We've been robbed from a lot of fighters in their primes. Especially Sugar Ray Robinson.
@@xGhostRidahSugar Ray Robinson did have a prime, it just wasn't filmed properly
Liston didn't have a prime cause he started boxing when he was already a grown man
@@OliverOils oh I see.
@@rock8448Why did he officially die at 38?
In my opinion sonny is the 2nd greatest heavyweight of all time 👑
2nd greatest? His best win was against Floyd Patterson plus he was a cheater.
@@H.K.5explain how he cheated
@@H.K.5 Yeah, but when he faced Muhammad Ali, he was getting old, and he still put a good fight. By the way, this is PRIME Muhammad Ali he was facing when he was nearly 40 years old
@@cobrateddy2203 Lol Ali kicked his ass, wasn’t a competitive fight at all.
@@ianssirensproductions7418 He blinded his opponents by putting lineament on his gloves. He tried doing that to Ali too and still lost.
A guy who could knock you out with his jab. RIP champ 🕊️
After blinding you with lineament.
Imagine liston in his 20-25 damn that would be unfair for the other boxers but unfortunately we only saw him in his 30-40
Its still unknown how old he truly was
He was about 50-51 when he dead
@@BADBoxerpuncher well officially he died at 38 but thats bcz when Sonny liston signed to fight ali he said that he was 32 while in reality he was close to 40 or even older so on paper he died at the age of 38 but ur probably right
@@B2C3H7G8No actually he was 44year old when he fought Ali
@@rock8448 yes but on paper 32
Great man
In my opinion he was the most misunderstood boxer. Despite all of that deepdown he was a good person❤
Apperantly liston was in his 40s when he fought Ali. I can belive that because george foreman became champ at 45!
Imagine what a young sonny would be capable of
Good Edit Keep It up
Leotis Martin lost an eye in that fight. Won the battle but lost the war. Sonny was a terrifying man to fight. Even if you win you lose unless you're a prime Ali.
Also got dominated and knocked down numerous times before he landed that right hand.
RIP
He absolutely dominated that Martin fight before getting Stopped just shows how good he is when he has a shoulder injury and is over 40. RIP Sonny Liston we’ll remember you as the Baddest Man to ever walk on this Planet
Top 5 heavyweight
Underrated I see him as a man who is a cruel mean devil he was a crude scary mean man.
Only edit where I seen his smiling
Ali ve Holmes sol direk konusunda tarihin en iyisi olarak biliniyor, ama Listonun sol direği rakibi uçuruyordu. George Foreman bir röportajında, Liston için çok dinamik bir sol direği vardı demişti..
The first part was his only REAL lose
Yea fr
What.. I don't believe this when he knock down, to me he's underrated guy
Do Bob Foster Next Bro
When he got knocked by Ali, many people thought he could get up, a lot of controversy around the knockout, some people think he didn't hear the count, others say the mob forced him to lose, we'll never truly know 🤷
Yeah that rematch was controversial. it's so hard Liston just getting knocked down like that and early in the round too considering of how much a monster he was.
من هذا الملاكم الذي هزم سوني ليستون في البدايه Who is this boxer who initially identified Sonny Liston?
Ali up anyway❤
When is the Bob Satterfield edit coming out?
Imma do Bob Foster First, Then Bob Satterfield
@@Open1 ok
@@Open1two scary beans
Sonny liston is most scary boxer ever rest in peace the big bear you are my favorite boxer ever