{"id":293954,"date":"2025-12-02T00:32:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T00:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/293954\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T00:32:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T00:32:12","slug":"muhammad-ali-singled-out-one-man-as-his-toughest-ever-opponent-he-was-a-truly-great-heavyweight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/293954\/","title":{"rendered":"Muhammad Ali singled out one man as his toughest ever opponent: “He was a truly great heavyweight”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Muhammad Ali<\/a> was never short of options when asked to name the toughest opponent he ever faced.<\/p>\n

The career of \u201cThe Greatest\u201d is filled with historic moments<\/a>, edge-of-the-seat drama and a litany of fighters eager to knock his ego down a notch. Across 21 years and 61 fights, he travelled the world taking on all-comers, including Joe Frazier<\/a>, George Foreman<\/a> and Ken Norton.<\/p>\n

But in an interview with The Ring magazine<\/a> for their \u2018Best I Faced\u2019 series, Ali revealed the man he considered the toughest \u2014 a fighter who today would be dubbed \u201cthe baddest man on the planet\u201d \u2013 Sonny Liston.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe toughest would be my fight with Sonny Liston, when I won the title in 1964.<\/p>\n

I was young and a great admirer of Liston\u2019s talent. He could do just about everything except dance.<\/p>\n

Liston had a tremendous jab, could punch with either hand, was smart in the ring and as strong as any heavyweight I\u2019d ever seen\u2026<\/p>\n

I still respect him as one of the truly great heavyweights of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ali, known as Cassius Clay at the time, did everything he could verbally to undermine Liston in the build-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was ugly, too. In and out of the ring. Being a big (8-1) underdog and acting crazy at the weigh-in made everybody think I was scared half to death.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the ring, however, Ali proved otherwise. Liston was no match for the challenger\u2019s superior skills.<\/a> But late in the fourth round and into the fifth, Ali complained that his eyes were burning, blaming irritation from something on Liston\u2019s gloves.<\/p>\n

At the end of the sixth, Liston failed to come out for the next round, retiring on his stool and crowning Ali as the new heavyweight champion. A year later they would meet again. Ali would once again prevail but further controversy surrounded the rematch courtesy because of the \u201cphantom punch\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Muhammad Ali was never short of options when asked to name the toughest opponent he ever faced. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-293954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}