Exactly 53 years ago, boxing great Sonny Liston passed away. The legendary world heavyweight champion is consistently included in any list of the world’s greatest boxers of all time, regardless of weight class, and his fights with Muhammad Ali are still discussed to this day.
Liston was born in 1932 and was the 24th (!) child in the family. At an early age he ran away from his father due to constant beatings, after which he was seen in several crime stories. A little later, Sonny received a sentence for participating in an armed robbery at a gas station and was released from prison in 1952, paroled at the request of a Catholic priest. It was this priest who recognized Liston’s boxing talent and unique physical characteristics.
Sonny was not a tall and heavy boxer, his height was only 185 cm. At the same time, his arm span was disproportionately large: 213 cm. The fists of the American boxer were also huge – 38 cm, and this is a record that stood until the beginning of Nikolai Valuev’s professional career.
Valuev’s achievement:
“The incredible Russian giant.” How Valuev set an eternal boxing record. Video
Liston’s amateur career turned out to be short-lived, but in just one year as an amateur he managed to win several tournaments, including the famous Golden Gloves. By the way, in one of the fights he defeated the future Olympic champion Ed Sanders.
Sonny made his professional debut in 1953 and won his first seven fights before losing to journeyman Marty Marshall. The marshal immediately broke Liston’s jaw, but Sonny survived the eight rounds and lost by decision. After this, the future world champion returned to a winning streak, where he defeated Marshall twice and closed the unfortunate defeat. But, even though his career was going uphill, Liston’s character and his gangster past sometimes made themselves felt. In 1956 he was sentenced again, this time to nine months for punching a police officer, and did not return to boxing until 1958.
sonny ribbon
Photo: Stanley Weston/Getty Images
Liston’s return proved to be powerful; Sonny had eight wins in one year, most of which were early. The American claimed a title fight, but belt holder Floyd Patterson actively avoided a fight with Liston, citing Sonny’s criminal past as a reason. Sonny’s next victories led to a world title fight against Patterson. Initially, the fight was supposed to take place in New York, but the local commission did not accept the fight due to Liston’s criminal record. The fight took place in 1962 in Chicago, and Liston knocked down the defending champion in the first round, winning the long-awaited belt. The restless Patterson agreed to a rematch with Sonny and a year later he was knocked out again in the first round.
After defeating Liston, Ali’s career took off:
Ali became The Greatest in eight minutes. We remember the best fight of the legend
After that, Sonny had two fights with Muhammad Ali, which went down in the history of world boxing. In February 1964 they met for the first time, at which time Ali was performing under the name Cassius Clay. The champion was considered the favorite, but this did not bother the young challenger. He angered Liston in every possible way and influenced him psychologically. The fight itself took place in Miami, Clay acted more confidently, crushed his opponent at a distance and inflicted significant damage on him – Liston gradually began to have cuts and bleeding. After the sixth round, something happened that no one would have expected. Liston told the trainer, “That’s it,” and the fight ended. Sonny refused to fight and Clay, who soon changed his name to “Mohammed Ali”, declared for the first time that he was the Greatest.
There were problems with the rematch. First, Ali was diagnosed with a hernia and the fight was postponed, then the athletic commissions of different cities refused to sanction the fight due to the possible influence of criminal circles on the result. As a result, the fight took place in the small town of Lewiston, and the outcome of this fight was discussed by the boxing community for a long time. Midway through the first round, Liston attacked, but ran into a right hook from Ali and collapsed to the ground. At that moment he took the legendary photograph of Muhammad standing over his fallen opponent and shouting: “Get up and fight, you surrender. You are such a bad guy. “No one will believe it.”
More on the second fight between Ali and Liston:
A phantom coup and suspicions of a deal. Muhammad Ali’s legendary knockout
Liston tried to get up, while the referee was not counting, but he calmed Ali down. Sonny finally got to his feet and the referee was even ready to continue the fight, but he was told that Liston had been down for too long and the referee stopped the fight. Ali won, but of course this victory had a negative connotation. Many experts believed that Ali did not actually hit Liston and collapsed as if he had been shot. There was a lot of talk about the contractual nature of the fight, about the fact that Liston was ordered to “lie down”, but of course it was extremely difficult to prove all this.
After two losses, Liston took a break and returned to the ring just a year later. After winning 14 fights in a row, Sonny fought Leotis Martin, in which he lost by knockout in the ninth round. In mid-1970, Liston closed out the loss by knocking out Chuck Wepner, and after the fight, Wepner received 72 stitches to stop the bleeding.
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Photo: William Lovelace/Getty Images
Liston had no intention of retiring; Negotiations were underway about a fight with George Chuvalo, but in early January 1971, Sonny’s wife found her husband dead. A syringe was found near Liston and drugs were found in the kitchen. That’s why Liston’s official cause of death was an overdose, but an autopsy showed that the level of drugs in his blood was too low for an overdose.
Considering that Liston was afraid of needles and couldn’t even get vaccinated properly, and also that Sonny had no history of drug use, many believed that Liston was murdered by his organized crime acquaintances. But the police did not investigate these circumstances. The experts who arrived at the scene stated that the death occurred six days ago, so the official date of death of one of the most mysterious boxers in the world is December 30, 1970.
