David Haye vs Sonny Liston

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Liston was a bona fide hard case. He was a mob enforcer and 'strike breaker' .... That means that when people went on strike, he waded into the crowd and beat the shit out of the ringleaders. He was a genuinely scary guy and, in my humble opinion, the only opponent that Ali was ever truly scared of.

hOWEVER .... When Liston was in jail, he was one of the most feared guys there, but the only only people he avoided were the ones who were truly mentally disturbed. If you read some of the better biographies, his view was they (and I paraphrase) 'they were crazy and unpredictable, so you never knew what they might do next'

I think Cassius Clays great feat in the build up to their fight was to convince Liston that Clay was mentally unbalanced. They were the only people Liston was scared of, and Clay pulled this off and that was the single biggest reason he won the fight.

Back to the original question, Haye is athletic and has good power and a pretty unorthodox style, but PRIME Liston, and by the way that's not the Sonny that fought Patterson or Clay, was was well schooled, technically clumsy but brutally efficient, and a serious hard man.

Haye would blink, and back off from engaging Liston toe to toe. He would move backwards, dummy and fake, and try to ambush Sonny. Haye had good power. His problem is that Liston had a concrete chin in his prime and I suspect Haye would become discouraged and begin to look for a way our after about the 6th round.

Controversially, I think Liston might win after Haye is disqualified for persistent fouling or something like that once he begins to gas out.