![]() ![]() Known as "The Louisville Lip", he had won the light heavyweight gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Italy. On the other hand, Clay was a glib, fast-talking 22-year-old challenger who enjoyed the spotlight. He said, "Liston was the big Negro in every white man's hallway." He was a man who, according to Ali biographer David Remnick, "had never gotten a break and was never going to give one". Author James Baldwin understood Liston perhaps better than anyone in the press and sympathized with him and liked him, unlike boxing writers. He was typically described in thinly veiled racist terms-a "gorilla" and "hands like big bananas". He distrusted boxing writers, and they paid him back, often depicting him as little more than an ignorant thug and a bully. The mob was deeply entrenched in boxing at every level at the time, and Liston was never able to escape being labeled as the personification of everything that was unseemly and criminal in the sport, despite the fact that his criminality had been in the past. For much of his career, his contract was majority owned by Frankie Carbo, a one-time mob hit man and senior member of the Lucchese crime family, who ran boxing interests for the Mafia. Later, he was re-incarcerated for assaulting a police officer. Liston learned to box in the Missouri State Penitentiary while serving time for armed robbery. ![]() Liston's ominous, glowering demeanor was so central to his image that Esquire magazine caused a controversy by posing him in a Santa Claus hat for its December 1963 cover. Several boxing writers actually thought Liston could be damaging to the sport because he could not be beaten. It never occurred to Liston that he might lose a fight." Johnny Tocco, a trainer who worked with George Foreman and Mike Tyson as well as Liston, said Liston was the hardest hitter of the three. When Sonny gave you the evil eye-I don't care who you were-you shrunk to two feet tall." Tex Maule wrote in Sports Illustrated: "Liston's arms are massively muscled, the left jab is more than a jab. Cooper's manager, Jim Wicks, said, "We don't even want to meet Liston walking down the same street."īoxing promoter Harold Conrad said, "People talked about Tyson before he got beat, but Liston was more ferocious, more indestructible. Henry Cooper, the British champion, said he would be interested in a title fight if Clay won, but he was not going to get in the ring with Liston. Many were reluctant to meet him in the ring. With the Patterson victory, Liston had defeated eight of the top 10 ranked contenders at heavyweight, seven of which by knockout. Ten months later, Liston and Patterson met again with the same result-Patterson was knocked out in the first round.Īt the time of the fight, Liston was generally considered the most intimidating fighter in the world, and among the best heavyweight boxers of all time. Liston was the World Heavyweight Champion at the time of the first Liston–Clay fight in Miami Beach on February 25, 1964, having demolished former champion Floyd Patterson by a first-round knockout in September 1962. The infamous "phantom punch", as well as a botched countdown by the referee, aroused suspicions of a fix and have been subject to debate ever since. Their second fight was on in Lewiston, Maine, which Ali won with a first-round knockout. Clay, who was a 8–1 underdog, won in a major upset, when the champion gave up at the opening of the seventh round. The first bout was held on Februin Miami Beach, Florida. Sports Illustrated magazine named their first meeting, the Liston–Clay fight (Ali had not yet changed his name from Cassius Clay), as the fourth greatest sports moment of the twentieth century. The two fights between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston for boxing's World Heavyweight Championship were among the most controversial fights in the sport's history. ![]()
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