It was obvious to me that he dove out of the ring on purpose, just as Paul Williams started to find the range on his powerful punches. This is one of
the worst acting jobs of all time. In slow-mo you can actually see the hesitation before Cintron takes two steps and launches himself through the
ropes. He doesn't even try to stop himself with the ropes!
Weak Kermit! Enjoy your payday and I hope Williams doesn't give you a rematch.
The "phantom" punch was a quick right and it landed. Liston went down for about 20 seconds before he got up and the ref ended up calling the fight.
The venue also got moved and it was the record low for attendance so a lot of people missed it, back then if you did not see the fight on TV you would
probably not see it for a long time.
Just going off my ring experience that is almost impossible to do what he did. I think he did not train up enough to get into the ring with a guy like
williams who throws a LOT of punches. He probably wanted to "fall" out of the ring to buy some time but ended up really hurting himself.
Larry Merchant was the only one of the three announcers to even have the balls to hint that there was something wrong happening. Jim Lampley and
Emanuel Steward just toed the line like a couple of schmucks. I kept asking myself what the hell were those two watching? Cintron even threw Williams
down to initiate the whole event. It was so obvious.
I tell you, Williams reminds me a lot of Thomas Hearns. When he he gets warmed up and those long punches start snapping, you can hear them even when
he misses.