If the Brownsville projects hadn’t
thrown up Mike Tyson, it would be harder to convey the fearsome
mystique that Charles ‘sonny’ Liston inspired
in the America of 40 years ago. As Brownsville obliged with
iron mike, imagine a less eloquent, equally destructive and
furious man, a man whose strength appeared implacable. When
Cassius Clay came to challenge him Liston was considered unbeatable.
The only uncertainty surrounding the fight would be whether
clay would exit the ring alive.
Liston had in fact been beaten. In 1954, he had lost points
to a heavyweight named Marty Marshall, a defeat he made good
with a KO some months later. But that was when he still had
to strip the rough edges of the prison yard from his technique.
Prison was where, sonny had begun to fight, legally at least,
while serving time at the Missouri state penitentiary on two
counts of robbery and larceny. Successive prison chaplains,
Edward Schlattmann and Alio Stevens, encouraged him to box.
Liston possessed a natural power that couldn’t be taught:
you either have it or you don’t. Sonny had it –
he was knocking men out with his left jab. Another inmate
was Sam Eveland, a former golden gloves amateur champion serving
time for stealing cars. “Sonny was the real thing right
away,” Eveland told David Remnick, author of king of
the world. “You’d show him a punch technique and
by the end of the day he had it down. But poor, poor sonny.
He couldn’t fight and that was it. He had the mind of
an 11-year-old
It was a measure of Liston’s life that he actually
liked prison. The food was better than he’d had outside,
and as Remnick wrote “ he started out with less than
nothing.” He wasn’t even sure exactly when he’d
been born; he guessed at either 1932 or 1933, although it
was more likely to have been 1927 or 1928. He wasn’t
sure where he’d been born either. All he knew was that
it was in one of the Arkansas cotton farming towns where his
father Tobe worked in the fields, before sonny, Tobe Liston
had 11 children with sonny’s mother, Helen. And before
that, he’d had 12 with another women. Later sonny said:
“we grew up like heathens. We hardly had enough food
to keep from starving, no shoes, and only a few clothes and
nobody to help us escape from the horrible life we lived.”
Watch video from the Cassius Clay vs Sonny Liston Weigh-in:
By the time he was 16 years old, sonny was already over 6ft
tall and weighted around 210lbs. At 22 he was in jail, where
he showed his potential as a fighter in an organised sparring
session with a decent enough pro heavyweight called Thurman
Wilson. After four rounds with big, bad sonny and his iron
bar of a left hand, Wilson was a broken man.
Liston’s early career was sandwiched between another
prison stint, when he went to the workhouse for a year for
assaulting a police officer, but by 1958, he was ascending.
He had beaten the well-regarded Cleveland Williams and Zora
Folley inside the distance, two of several fighters, dropped
by sonny’s giant fists.
Outside the ring, Liston fell into the hands of the mob,
first in the mid-west and then in New York. He became the
subject of an extraordinary contract that was divided thus:
52 percent to Frankie Carbo, the most powerful man in boxing;
12 per cent each to John Vitale and Frank ‘blinky’
Palermo and 24 per cent to Joseph ‘pep’ Barone.
It didn’t leave a whole lot for sonny, who accepted
his fate. He didn’t have much else he wanted to do,
anyhow. It was Sonny Liston’s destiny to be the last
of the fighters controlled by organised crime; Cassius Clay
would be the first not to be.
Liston took the heavyweight title from Floyd Patterson on
25 September 1962. Patterson was outgunned physically and
psychologically; he was a natural light heavyweight, weighing
around 190lbs. Liston was 214lbs. Patterson was a man tortured
by doubt; for every fight he packed what he called his loser’s
suitcase, containing things like a false beard and spectacles
to wear to disguise himself should he suffer the shame of
defeat.
Cassius clay was one of 19,000 people at Comiskey Park in
Chicago when Liston took Patterson’s title in two minutes
and six seconds of controlled mayhem. Patterson offered little
resistance. He’d lost before he stepped through the
ropes. The rematch, six months later in Las Vegas. Lasted
just four seconds longer than the first. Liston had barely
even bothered to train. The boxing writers and the television
commentators saw him as invincible. It was said that sonny
would remain champion for as long as he cared to be, or at
least until old age robbed him of his power.
The contract for the liston-vs-clay bout was signed in November
1963. Liston knew that clay was the biggest money fight out
there. While both camps negotiated the deal, clay began to
Sonny Liston hard.
“The big thing for me,” he told playboy magazine,
“ was to observe how Liston acted outside the ring.
I read everything I could where he had been interviewed. I
talked to people who had been around him or had talked with
him. I would lie in bed and put all of the things together
and think about them and try to get a picture of how his mind
worked.”
While everyone obsessed over Liston’s size and strength,
clay went to work on his head. He began a sustained and audacious
campaign of intimidation. He nicknamed Liston big ugly bear,
he was pictured with Angelo Dundee and Bundini brown reading
a book entitled psychological warfare. He showed up at the
gym when Liston was sparring and yelled at him. Liston began
to question clays mental state. Before sonny’s second
fight with Floyd Patterson, clay stepped up his campaign.
He travelled to Las Vegas with Angelo Dundee and found Liston
in a casino shooting craps. There are varying accounts of
the exchange that followed- one even has clay shooting a water
piston at Liston – but they agree on the result. The
exchange the pair had backfired on clay. Sonny Liston scared
the hell out of him.
Liston was loosing at the crap tables. As he rolled the dice,
clay appeared, yelling, “look at the big ugly bear,
he cant even shoot craps. He cant do nothing right.”
Liston was angry. He threw down the dice and walked up to
clay, “listen, you nigger faggot,” he said, “if
you don’t get out of here in 10 seconds, I’m going
to pull that big tongue out of your mouth and stick it up
your ass.”
Later, Liston saw clay on the casino floor again. He walked
up to him and slapped his face.”
“What was than for?” clay asked.
“Cause you’re to fucking fresh….”
Liston said to his friend jack McKinney, “I got the
punk’s heart now.”
In his interview with playboy, clay admitted it was true.
Liston had frightened him. “I ain’t gonna lie.
That was the first time since I known sonny Liston that he
scared me. I just felt the power and the meanness of the man
I was messing with.”
It was a miscalculation on clays part. He had picked the
wrong battleground. Liston was from the streets, clay was
not. Intimidating people in casinos came easily to a man like
sonny. By contrast, Clay was an athlete. His natural arena
was the ring. But he had achieved something; nonetheless,
because Liston was becoming convinced clay was crazy. After
all, who, other than a lunatic would treat Sonny Liston in
such a way?
Clay wasn’t finished yet, however. He drove his bus
to Liston’s house in the middle of the night and had
Howard Bingham get out and ring the doorbell. When Liston
arrived at Miami airport to begin his final preparations for
the fight, clay goaded him into throwing a punch (“he
missed by a country mile,” clay crowed). He then took
a bus full of screaming girls to Liston’s training HQ
at the surfside community centre. And finally, when the big
day finally came, he really freaked Liston out.
At the morning weigh in, clay arrived first and went through
his usual routine, coming up with the inspired rhyme “when
the crowd laid down their money/they didn’t dream they’d
see a total eclipse of sonny…” and making a prediction:
“round eight/to prove I’m great!”
When Liston showed up, though, clay went berserk. He screamed
at sonny – “you chump, you ugly bear, I’m
gonna whip you! ” He became manic. His heart rate was
measured at 110 beats per minute up from its usual 54. The
fight doctor, Alexander Robbins, proclaimed that clay was
“emotionally unbalanced, scared to death and liable
to crack up before he enters the ring.”
Adding to the hysteria were rumours of a fix, along with
the dawning realisation that clay had joined the nation of
Islam, or at least was preparing to. And yet once the throng
dispersed and the weigh in was over, Clay's vital signs were
utterly normal once more. He was calm, sonny Liston had returned
to his hotel convinced he was fighting an unhinged man who
might do anything.
All the excitement had not had its usual effect on the fight
fans of Miami though. The expectations of a mismatch combined
with some absurdly high ticket prices-ringside seats went
for $250 – left the fighters with a half empty arena
in which to compete. There were 8,297 paying customers in
a hall that held 15,44. Clay was paid $63,000, Liston $1,360,500.
Away from the hype, in the sanctuary of the dressing rooms,
Angelo Dundee and Cassius clay understood the test they were
facing. “I won’t lie,” Ali admitted to Thomas
Hauser in 1991, “I was scared. Sonny Liston was one
of the greatest fighters of all time. He hit hard and he was
fixing to kill me. But I was there, I didn’t have no
choice but to go out and fight.”
Dundee thought clay would win as long as he didn’t
become intimidated by Liston. “I felt hed win because
he had the speed to offset Liston’s jab and Liston’s
jab was the key to everything. Liston had a jab that was like
a battering ram. If he got you at the end of that jab, you
were gone, but Cassius was able to surround the jab, side
to side either side with quickness and agility.”
Called to in the ring for the referee’s instructions
clay met Liston’s gaze as Angelo had instructed him
to do. In a final act of bravado, he whispered to Liston,
“I got you now chump.” The fight began.
Liston came out of his corner almost running so eager was
he to button the lip clay low slung and loose dodged a couple
of big lefts with ease.
“He was jabbing with his left but missing,” he
said later. “And I was back pedalling bobbing weaving
ducking, he missed me with a right hook that would have hurt
me. I just kept running watching his eyes, Liston’s
eyes tip you when he’s about to throw a big punch.”
Clay survived the first round something Floyd Patterson had
twice failed to do. Hed even bamboozled Liston with a flurry
of punches towards the bell.
“I got back to my corner thinking, ‘he was supposed
to kill me,” clay told Alex Haley. “Well I’m
still alive.’ I was thinking something like, ‘you
old sucker. You try to be so big and bad!” He was gone.
“Who won the round?” clay asked his cornerman
Bundini brown.
“You did,” Bundini replied.
Liston bulled forwards at the start of round two, determined
or desperate or both, he got clay on the ropes but couldn’t
pin him there. He hit him with a hard body shot that clay
rode out. He threw the big left hook, clay spun away and Liston’s
fist struck the rope. “The rope! Liston was being embarrassed.
Clay got to work. He flicked his jab into Liston’s
heavy face. Those at ringside could see a welt beginning to
rise under the champions left eye. The unthinkable was happening.
Liston no longer looked unbeatable.
“He hit me some, but I weaved and ducked away from
his shots,” clay told playboy after the fight. “I
remember thinking, all I gotta do is keep this up…”
Clay noticed the welt under Liston’s eye and went to
work on it. A cut began to open. He was concentrating so hard
on an inch or so of Liston’s face he didn’t see
the long left hand that caught him flush on the jaw towards
the end of the round. “The punch shook him up. “But
he either didn’t realise how good I was hit, or he was
already getting tired and didn’t press his chance.”
In the third, clay opened the cut on Liston’s face
with a good left right combination. Liston dabbed it with
his glove and saw red. It was the first time sonny’s
blood had ever been spilled in the ring.
The fight had turned decisively clays way, or so it seemed.
Throughout rounds three and four he bossed Liston. The champ
hadn’t trained for a long fight and he was tiring quickly.
Towards the end of the fourth though clay began to have trouble
with his eyes. They were stinging badly and began to stream
with tears. Angelo Dundee guessed the liniment from Liston’s
shoulder or the coagulant his corner had used to stem the
bleeding from the cut under his eye had been transferred into
clay eyes via Liston’s gloves. Many years later, David
Remnick uncovered hearsay evidence that Liston’s gloves
had been juiced by his cornerman Joe Pollino, a tactic they’d
also used against Eddie Machen and Cleveland Williams. Pollino
was said to have used an astringent that blinded a man just
long enough for Liston to lay some leather on him.
Whatever the truth only Dundee’s clear head prevented
disaster.
Clay collapsed on his stool, shouting, “I can’t
see. Cut the gloves off, were going home!” Some black
fans at ringside began shouting that Dundee himself was responsible
for clay's discomfort. Dundee remained cool. If he hadn’t
there might have been no Muhammad Ali – Liston would
certainly not have offered a rematch had he won. With mayhem
all around and Cassius panicking Dundee dabbed his finger
into clays eye and put it in his own. It burned. Quickly Dundee
sluiced clay’s eyes with a sponge and yelled at him
“cut the bullshit, were not quitting now. You gotta
go out there and run.”
What followed was an exhibition of rare skill and courage:
for this alone clay deserved the title. He was still unable
to se much at all: some kind of internal radar kept him away
from Liston’s best punches. While he did so, Angelo
showed the black Muslims at ringside the water in his bucked
and let them feel his sponge. “I want to win this as
much as you do,” he told them.
Midway through the round clays eyes cleared, he had come
through. The fight was fair once again and the better man
prevailed. For the rest of the fifth and the sixth rounds,
clay hit Liston at will. He broke him up and he broke his
heart. Liston slumped on his stool at the end of the sixth.
He was finished.
Howard Cosell, providing radio commentary began to yell:
“wait a minute… wait a minute…. Sonny Liston
is not coming out. The new heavyweight champion of the world
is Cassius Clay!”
Liston had quit on his stool. His face was bloodied and he
claimed a shoulder injury was giving him to much pain to continue.
The truth was, his spirit was broken and sonny knew he would
soon be knocked out.
Bedlam erupted, the ring filled with bodies. Clay ran to
the ropes and climbed on them, screaming at the crowd and
at the reporters who hadn’t yet absorbed what they just
witnessed.
“I am the greatest! I am the greatest! I’m the
king of the world!”
Twenty-six years after the fight Ali told Thomas Hauser:
“did Liston really hurt his shoulder? I can’t
say for sure, but I don’t think so.”
He also recalled a strange incident that occurred before
the penultimate fight of his career, with Larry Holmes. A
man had approached him and offered him a yellow substance,
which, he told Ali would temporarily blind Holmes if Ali rubbed
it into his gloves. Ali refused, of course, but he thought
back to his first fight with sonny Liston and wondered.
