Ali's phantom punch,can anyone explain it?

Question

The one thing i can never get a clear definative answer to is this strange carry on in the second fight with Sonny Liston,even in an interview I ahve of Alitrying to explain he is,for once,lost for words and does not really want to look at the camera,the first fight was strange enough but the second was even stranger,as was Listons untimelt death.what do you think??

Answer 1

That was a real punch and it really knocked him out. If you want to knock some one out the best place to hit them is right on the tip of the chin so it snaps there head, THROWS OFF THE EQUILIBRIUM AND THIS IS WHAT HE DID AND YOU SAW THE RESULT. WATCH IT CLOSELY, IT WAS A PERFECT PUNCH.

Answer 2

agreeing with elmer and bundini.

the referee walcott was confused and didn't know what to do.

liston was knocked down, though probably not enough to put him to sleep but he simply gave up... and that for me is worse than being KO'ed. it's a cheap way to escape a fight.

Answer 3

Angelo Dundee said that he looked Liston in the eyes after the fight and he was still dazed.That's good enough for me.See the punch in slow motion and watch Sonny's head.

Answer 4

liston was a renowned fierce fighter,,,ali took him out with a punch which appeared to be a flick of his wrist..observers noted at the time that it was not possible for liston to be knocked out by a flick of the wrist,,but he was,,hence the "phantom punch"was reported by the press at the time.ali also did a similar thing to karl mildenberger who also was reputed to be unstoppable.

ali was without doubt the greatest boxer i have ever seen

Answer 5

Joe Louis was at ring side and said at the time no one could have been hurt by the punch, since Ali was on his toes and moving backward.

Many felt that Liston threw both fights, since he was a heavy betting favorite in both fights.

Liston was an ex con with mob connections so many will always feel there was something sinister about his life and death.

Answer 6

I've seen the slo-mo a lot of times and I think it was a legit knockdown.  You see, a well-timed punch, even if not delivered with enough force or power, can always send a guy to the canvass, and that's exactly what happened.  Ali's right hand was perfectly timed and caught Liston square on the jaw.  What was pretty obvious here, however, was that Liston or any Ali opponent would've got up easily from that knockdown.  

Though the punch was enough to send him to the canvass, it wasn't that powerful as to have him counted out.  My conclusion:  Liston just gave up.  But it was a legit victory for Ali.  Even if Liston got up, Ali would've battered him to submission anyway.

Answer 7

When I saw the first angle of Foreman's KO over Moorer, I literally yelled at the TV screen, FIX!  

When the reverse angle came up on replay, I exclaimed "oh *BLEEP*, George nailed the *BLEEP* out of him.  

The point is, we don't have a good view of the punch, and  until we have a Zapruder film from the other side of the ring, I'm going to reserve judgement on it.

What the angle does show is Ali hitting Liston, and Liston's lead foot, the foot that was supporting most of his weight at that moment, come off the canvas.  That implies that a punch did land with some force.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozPuZNgd5...

After that come the greatest single clusterfrick ever in history of refereeing.  There should have never been a count until Ali found a neutral corner.  The fight should have never been stopped without a 10 count over Liston.  But the one bit of evidence that seems to imply that the fix wasn't on was that Liston did get up and continue fighting.  If he wanted the fight over, he'd have stayed on his butt.  He didn't.

One other thing of note, Liston reached down to soften the fall to the canvas, so he was clear-headed enough to know where he was.  What could have happened was that this was a flash knockdown, and Liston decided to stay down until he heard the referee count up to 8.  He was never given a count, so he just stayed down.

Answer 8

I don't think Liston quit in the second fight.  A fighter's chin may fade with age, and the Liston who withstood Cleveland Williams' best punch a few years earlier could have been floored by a lesser punch that caught him by surprise or off balance.  The real issue here is why Sonny didn't get up.  Speaking for myself, if Ali was standing over me, taunting and shaking his fist at me, I wouldn't get up either.  But as Elmer said, there should not have been a count until Ali went to a neutral corner.  Maybe Sonny was waiting for that and got a raw deal when Nat Fleischer told Walcott the fight was over.

Rumors at the time suggested that Ali's new friends in the Nation of Islam may have threatened Liston.  But I would rather have Sonny's mob connections than the Fruit of Islam in that situation.

I know Sonny wasn't a talker, but I never saw or heard an interview in which he was asked about this issue and wonder if he was.