As of January 2021, Liston ranks No.27 in BoxRec's ranking of the greatest pound for pound boxers of all time with 592.7 points. He is the third highest ranked fighter to have only faced heavyweights during his professional career. "The Ring" magazine ranks Liston as the tenth greatest heavyweight of all time, while boxing writer Herb Goldman ranked him second and Richard O'Brien, Senior Editor of "Sports Illustrated", placed him third. Alfie Potts Harmer in The Sportster also ranked him the third greatest heavyweight and the sixth greatest boxer at any weight. BoxRec ranked him among the ten best heavyweights in the world at the conclusion of a year 15 times (a sequence from 1954-1969 broken only in 1957 when Liston was jailed and banned from boxing for a year); and placed him at No.1 from 1958 to 1962 and the fourth greatest of all time. Liston was inducted into the international Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991.