the man on the canvas
Sonny Liston.
Forty years ago today, 25 February 1964, Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston in six rounds to capture the heavyweight boxing title. Clay, later Ali, evolved beyond a mere champion into a political and cultural icon. Ali lit the Olympic torch at the 1996 Altanta Games, and as recently as last month appeared in Super Bowl commercials for both IBM and Adidas. Much has been written about Ali's influence on the sport of boxing and society generally.
Largely forgotten is the other man in that fight - the champion and the favorite, Sonny Liston. Until that day four decades ago, Liston destroyed every opponent he faced, plainly, methodically. He was not polished as the man he won the title from, Floyd Patterson, nor was he flashy as Clay. Liston was an uneducated product of a barely cohesive family, raised in a rural South little changed from the 19th century. As a teenager, Liston migrated to St. Louis, where he spent several years living as a petty criminal. In prison, Liston discovered the one geniune gift he had - the ability to hit opponents harder than anyone, anywhere.
An unstoppable force as he climbed the ranks of professional fighters in the late 1950s, Liston was cast as the villian to champion Patterson's hero. The Liston narrative was populated with overtones of menace and inhumanity, created as much by the public's reaction to Liston as Liston's own history.
The tragedy of Liston is not that he was ignorant, or violent, or the product of a so-called broken home - but that even while enjoying his greatest triumphs, he never controlled his own life. As heavyweight champion and as perhaps the most intimidating physical presence on Earth in his time, Liston always answered to someone else - did the bidding of other men. And in Liston's case, these men were often underworld criminals. Even after Liston had earned more money that he could have ever imagined in his stickup days on the streets of St. Louis, after he became one of the most famous athletes in the world, he still answered to others, still followed orders right up to the end. After the Clay fight, he described the bout to his half-brother with: "I did what they told me to do."
Against Clay, Liston refused to leave his corner at the start of round seven. The man who terrorized all who stood before him in the ring simply would no longer fight. With his championship gone, Liston faded quickly into a sad life of journeyman bouts and drug addiction, including losing a match to his former sparring partner. In January 1971, he died in a Las Vegas hotel room with a heroin spike hanging from his arm. Two months later, Muhammed Ali fought Joe Frazier in what was known as The Fight of the Century.
25.02.2004 © ljr