September 25, 1962: Sonny Liston Knocks Floyd Patterson Out

September 26, 1962: Sonny Liston knocks Floyd Patterson out in the 1st round at Comiskey Park in Chicago, to become the Heavyweight Champion of the World.

Very few people are happy about this.

The State of Arkansas did not make birth certificates mandatory until 1965. Tobe and Helen Liston were both listed as living as sharecroppers on Morledge Plantation in Johnson Township, St. Francis County, Arkansas in the 1930 U.S. Census. They had several children who were listed in that Census, but a boy named Charles was not among them. Their son Charles was listed in the 1940 Census, as being 10 years old.

When the man eventually known as "Charles (Sonny) Liston" applied for a boxing license, he listed his date of birth as May 8, 1932. But, as with another great boxer, Archie Moore, rumors abounded that he was older than he said, perhaps much older. A later biographer concluded, based on the available evidence, that he was actually born on July 22, 1930.

Being sharecroppers, the family was poor. Sonny said, "The only thing my old man ever gave him was a beating," and he wasn't joking: He bore scars from whippings. At age 14, he ran away to St. Louis, turned to a life of crime, and served 2 years in prison for armed robbery. In prison, he learned how to properly box, instead of just beating people senseless.

He won a Golden Gloves title in 1953, turned pro, won his 1st 7 fights, avenged his 1st pro defeat with a ferocious technical knockout, and began to beat better fighters. He beat Cleveland Williams in 1959 and 1960; Williams would lose to Muhammad Ali in 1966. He beat Zora Folley in 1960; Folley would lose to Ali in 1967. He beat Eddie Machen in 1960; Machen never faced Ali, but lost to Floyd Patterson in 1964 and to Joe Frazier in 1966.

By the end of 1961, Liston was 33-1, with 23 fights ending in knockouts, technical knockouts, or his opponents simply quitting. Of those 23, 13 went no more than 3 rounds; 5 were in the 1st round. Liston was considered, big, bad and unbeatable. Rumors that he had been a "legbreaker" for organized crime, and that he still had the Mob warning fighters that they better not put up much of a fight against him, made him even scarier.

A lot of boxing observers didn't want him to get a shot at the Heavyweight Championship of the World, but, by the end of 1961, he could no longer be ignored. His title shot was set for September 25, 1962, at Comiskey Park.

Floyd Patterson, "The Gentleman of Boxing," had fought bigger and tougher men before, and won, due to great speed and a solid left hook. This time, Liston's size, strength and reach overcame whatever advantages Patterson may have had: Sonny backed Floyd up to the ropes, and knocked him out, just 2 minutes and 6 seconds into the fight. The man who few people wanted to be the Champ was the Champ.

A rematch was held on July 22, 1963, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. This time, Patterson lasted longer: 2 minutes and 10 seconds. Liston knocked him out in the 1st round again. Liston looked unbeatable.

Well, one younger man said, "I'm young, I'm handsome, I'm fast, I'm pretty, and can't possibly be beat!" His name, at the time, was Cassius Clay. He got into Liston's head, taunting him for his appearances, calling him "that big ugly bear"; for his age, saying, "You're 40 years old, if a day! And you don't belong in the ring with Cassius Clay!"; for his ability, telling fans, "If you'd like to lose your money, be a fool and bet on Sonny!"; and for his courage, or lack thereof, saying, "The odds should be three and a half to one that you won't show up for the fight!"

Instead, going into the fight at the Miami Beach Convention Center, on February 25, 1964, the odds were 8-1 in Liston's favor. People were sure that, after all the taunting, Liston would literally kill Clay in the ring, as had happened to some prominent fighters in the last few years.

But boxing historian Bert Sugar later pointed out that there was one thing that Liston couldn't handle: People he thought were crazy. "And Clay, then his name," Sugar said, "struck Liston as a crazy person."

A lot of people thought Clay was crazy. Rumors that he was backed by the Nation of Islam (which turned out to be true) didn't help. Would the fight be followed by one between the Chicago Outfit and the NOI? (Both were based in Chicago, and both had influence in Miami.) To many people, there was no one to root for.

Clay himself was asked what percentage of the fans were coming to see him, as opposed to Liston. He said, "Well, 100 percent are coming to see me, but 99 percent are coming to see me get beat, 'cause they think I talk too much."

In the ring, Clay spoke loud and clear with his fists. Any talk that Liston threw the fight was from people who didn't see how badly Clay had messed Liston's face up. Liston didn't throw the fight, but, just before the bell rang for the 7th round, he did quit on his stool. Clay was the new Champion. Shortly thereafter, he announced his religious conversion, and his new name: Muhammad Ali.

Ali said he "saved boxing" by taking the title away from Liston. They fought again in 1965, and this time, Ali knocked Liston out in the 1st round. Did he throw that fight? More likely is that, again, he saw he wasn't going to win, and he just stayed down.

Liston moved to Las Vegas, and kept fighting. On June 29, 1970, he knocked out Chuck Wepner, who would lose to Ali in 1975. That left his record at 50-4.

He never fought again. On January 5, 1971, his wife, Geraldine, returned to their Las Vegas home from a two-week trip to a foul odor coming from the main bedroom. Upon entering the room, she saw Sonny slumped up against the bed, and a broken foot bench on the floor. Authorities theorized that he was undressing for bed when he fell over backward with such force that he broke the rail of the bench.

Officially, Liston died of lung congestion and heart failure, though a heroin overdose has been alleged. The date of death listed on his death certificate is December 30, 1970, which police estimated by judging the number of milk bottles and newspapers around the front door of the property. But he could have died after the New Year.

Charles "Sonny" Liston, Heavyweight Champion of the World from September 25, 1962 to February 25, 1964, is almost certainly the most recent famous person for whom we know neither the year of his birth nor the year of his death with any certainty.

*

September 25, 1962 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Washington Senators, 8-3 at Yankee Stadium. Whitey Ford went the distance for the win. Mickey Mantle went 4-for-4 with a walk and 2 RBIs. Moose Skowron hit a home run.

* The New York Mets lost to the Milwaukee Braves, 7-3 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Warren Spahn went the distance for the win. Hank Aaron hit his 297th career home run.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-0 at Fenway Park in Boston. Bill Monbouquette pitched a 5-hit shutout. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Harmon Killebrew hit a home run.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-1 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Frank Robinson went 1-for-2, had an RBI on a sacrifice fly, and was hit by a pitch.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Los Angeles Angels, 3-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Al Kaline went 2-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* The Houston Colt .45s beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Al Spangler hit a home run in the top of the 10th inning for the team that would become the Houston Astros in 1965. Richard "Turk" Farrell went all 10 innings for the win.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. Stan Musial went 0-for-4.

* The Baltimore Orioles and the Kansas City Athletics were rained out at Memorial Stadium, Baltimore. It was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The O's won the opener, 3-0. Dave McNally pitched a 2-hit shutout. The A's won the nightcap, 6-2. Over the 2 games, Brooks Robinson went 3-for-8.

* And the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies were rained out at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. The game was never made up.

May 25, 1965: Ali-Liston II: The Phantom Punch

May 25, 1965: A fight is held for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. It's not the greatest such fight. But it might be the most controversial. Certainly, it is the strangest.

Writing this entry enabled me to have one set in the State of Maine -- and thus at least one entry in each of the 50 States.

Arguably, the most significant sports building in Maine is the Androscoggin Bank Colisée in Lewiston, about 36 miles north of Portland. Not because it was home to the Maine Nordiques, a farm team of hockey's Quebec Nordiques, from 1973 to 1977. Not because it hosted the Lewiston Maineiacs of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League from 2003 to 2011, before they moved to Sherbrooke from whence they came. Not because it hosted the Portland Pirates in the 2013-14 season while the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland was being renovated. Not because it is now home to another team named the Maine Nordiques, of the North American Hockey League.

No, it's because, after the Boston Garden balked at holding it due to both men's controversies, the rematch between Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali and former Champion Charles "Sonny" Liston as held at this arena, then known as the Central Maine Civic Center, on May 25, 1965. Built in 1958, it is the smallest building to host a Heavyweight Title fight: 3,677 seats.

Ali, born Cassius Clay, had taken the title from Liston on February 25, 1964 in Miami Beach. Shortly thereafter, he announced his name change and his conversion to Islam. Both men were shrouded in controversy: Ali due to his association with the Nation of Islam, Liston due to his status as an ex-convict and his suspected ties to organized crime. Lewiston was chosen as a site because boxing's governing bodies were committed to a New England venue, but nobody else in the 6-State region (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut) seemed to want it.

To make matters worse, the fight, originally scheduled for November 16, 1964, had to be delayed, as Ali needed surgery due to a hernia. So it was delayed to May 25, 1965, allowing all the simmering resentments to come to a near boil. There was even talk that the fight was fixed -- though both men's fans were suggesting it was fixed for the other.

The referee was former Champion Jersey Joe Walcott. Both fighters were booed upon their introductions. Midway through the 1st round, Liston threw a left jab, and Ali went over it with a fast right, knocking the former Champion flat on his back. Liston rolled over, got to his right knee, and then fell on his back again.

Walcott had a hard time getting Ali to go to a neutral corner. Ali initially stood over Liston, yelling, "Get up, sucker!" At this point, Neil Leifer of Sports Illustrated took the picture above, one of the most famous photographs in sports history.

When Walcott got back to Liston, and looked at the knockdown timekeeper, Francis McDonough, to pick up the count, Liston had fallen back on the canvas. Walcott never did pick up the count. He said he could not hear McDonough, who did not have a microphone. Also, McDonough did not bang on the canvas or motion a number count with his fingers. McDonough, however, claimed Walcott was looking at the crowd and never at him.

After Liston arose, Walcott wiped off his gloves. He then left the fighters to go over to McDonough. Waltcott later said McDonough had told him, "I counted him out. The fight is over." Nat Fleischer, editor of The Ring magazine, had no authority over the fight, but he backed McDonough up, saying the fight should be over. Walcott then rushed back to the fighters, who had resumed boxing, and stopped the fight, awarding Ali a knockout victory.

It remains one of the quickest heavyweight title knockouts in history. Many in the small crowd had not even settled in their seats when the fight was stopped. The official time of the stoppage was announced as 1:00 into the first round, which was wrong. Liston went down at 1:44, got up at 1:56, and Walcott stopped the fight at 2:12.

McDonough and Fleischer were wrong in their interpretation of how the rule should have been applied. Under the rule, the timekeeper is supposed to start the count at the time of a knockdown. The referee's duty is to get the boxer scoring the knockdown to a neutral corner, pick up the count from the timekeeper. and continue it aloud for the knocked down boxer.

Nevertheless, Liston was down for 12 seconds -- 2 seconds fewer than Gene Tunney was down in his "Long Count" fight with Jack Dempsey in 1927. But Liston was no Tunney. He was more like the Mike Tyson of his era: Show him that you're not afraid of him, and that you can hit him, and he would fold, or even start cheating. In his 1st fight with Ali, he tainted his gloves to try to blind Ali. In the 2nd fight, he never got the chance to cheat.

Some people wondered if Ali had even hit Liston, or if Liston had gone down on his own, quitting the way he'd quit on his stool between the 6th and 7th rounds of their 1st fight. The suggestion was that he lost on purpose for more money from gamblers -- in ring parlance, "took a dive." The film shows this not to be the case: It clearly shows that Ali's punch was no "Phantom Punch." Instead, it had lifted Liston off the canvas entirely. Liston didn't dive: He fell, from being hit.

James Braddock was Heavyweight Champion from 1935 to 1937. He said of Ali, "I have a feeling that this guy is a lot better than any of us gave him credit for. It isn't the knockout punch that sticks in my mind as much as a punch he let go earlier... It was a right to Liston's jaw, and it shook him to his shoetops. For all we know, it could have been the one that set up the knockout."

Rocky Marciano was Heavyweight Champion from 1952 to 1955. After seeing the replay, he said, "I didn't think it was a powerful punch when I saw the fight from ringside. Now, I think Clay, seeing the opening, snapped the punch the last six inches." But he still didn't think the punch was hard enough to be a knockout, only a knockdown.

Liston had 16 more fights, winning 15 of them, 14 by knockout. So the suggestion that "He was never the same fighter" is ridiculous. But he never got another shot at the title, not even after Ali was stripped of it in 1967, following his refusal to accept being drafted into the U.S. Army. Of course, by then, Liston was officially 35 years old -- but Walcott had been 37 when he won the title. Liston died in 1970, also under mysterious circumstances.

McDonough died in 1968, Fleischer in 1972, Walcott in 1994.

*

May 25, 1965 was a Tuesday.  These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Cleveland Indians, 5-1 at Yankee Stadium. The Indians scored 4 runs in the top of the 6th inning, including 1 of the 2 home runs hit by Vic Davalillo, knocking Jim Bouton out. Sonny Siebert was the winning pitcher. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris each went 0-for-3, with Mantle adding a walk.

* The New York Mets lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 10-3 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Boston Red Sox, 17-5 at Fenway Park in Boston. Harmon Killebrew went 3-for-6. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-3.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Kansas City Athletics, 6-3 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Brooks Robinson did not play.

* The Washington Senators swept a doubleheader from the California Angels, 7-3 and 6-5 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969).

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-6 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Len Gabrielson hit home runs. For the Pirates, Roberto Clemente went 1-for-6, but Donn Clendenon went 4-for-5 with an RBI, and Andre Rogers went 3-for-5 with 3 RBIs, including a single that scored Clendenon in the bottom of the 12th inning to win it.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 7-5 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Al Kaline went 3-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Houston Astros, 7-4 at the Astrodome in Houston. Frank Robinson went 2-for-5 with a RBI. Pete Rose went 1-for-4 with a walk.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Curt Flood led off the game with a single, and then Don Drysdale didn't allow another hit, outpitching Bob Gibson. In fact, except for Dick Groat reaching on an error in the 5th, Drysdale didn't allow another baserunner.

* And the Milwaukee Braves beat the San Francisco Giants, 14-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

February 25, 1964: Muhammad Ali Becomes Heavyweight Champion of the World

February 25, 1964: The Miami Beach Convention Center hosts a fight for the Heavyweight Championship of the World.

Neither fighter is popular. The Champion is Charles "Sonny" Liston, who had won the title in 1962, by knocking out the popular Floyd Patterson in the 1st round, then doing it again in the rematch. Liston was big, moody, nasty-looking, had served 2 years in prison for armed robbery, and wasn't exactly friendly with the media, or with anyone else.

The challenger is Cassius Clay. On the surface, the 22-year-old Clay seemed like the perfect antidote. He had won a Gold Medal for America at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. He was a stylish fighter, already known for "dancing" in the ring. He made himself accessible to the media, predicting the round in which he would knock out his opponent (and frequently turning out to be right), and reciting poetry made up on the spot. He may have been the original battle-rapper.

And he was a good-looking guy. As he said himself, comparing himself to Liston, "He's too ugly to be the world's champ! The world's champ should be pretty, like me!"

Still, a lot of people didn't like Clay. They saw him as a young upstart, a braggart, an egomaniac. The native of Louisville, Kentucky was nicknamed the Louisville Lip. If he'd been white, they might have called him "the Mouth of the South." Being black didn't help: Lots of white people didn't like that a black man was talking so big. Liston was also black, so bigots didn't like either man.

An interviewer asked Clay what percentage of the fans were coming to see him, as opposed to coming to see Liston. He said, "Well, 100 percent are coming to see me, but 99 percent are coming to see me get beat. Because they think I talk too much."

Liston was 35-1 as a professional fighter, his only loss a split decision 10 years earlier. His last 3 fights, including his dethroning of Patterson and a rematch with him, had all ended in 1st-round knockouts. Twice, he had beaten rising contender Cleveland Williams, in a total of 5 rounds. He had knocked out rising contender Zora Folley in the 3rd round. Of his last 8 fights, only 1 had gone beyond the 4th round.

The Las Vegas oddsmakers posted 8-1 odds in Liston's favor. Hardly anybody was willing to publicly say that Clay would win.

But Clay was sure he could. He had been trained to believe that by his trainers, Angelo Dundee and Drew Brown. Brown -- whom Ali always called "Bodini," a variation on his middle name, Bundini -- gave the boxing starlet his first big quote:

Float like a butterfly,
sting like a bee!
The hand can't hit
what the eye can't see!

Sometimes, to psych Clay up, Brown would look him in the eye, and, together, they would yell, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! Ahhhh! Rumble, young man, rumble! Ahhhh!" Clay was telling people, "I am the greatest!" Brown was telling him, "Born the champ in the crib!" Dundee wasn't yelling or creating quotes, but he and Brown were both getting him ready.

So when the fight with Liston for the title came, everyone wanted to know when he was going to knock out Liston. He said:

For those of you unable to watch the Clay-Liston fight, here is the 8th round, exactly as it will happen:

Clay comes out to meet Liston, and Liston starts to retreat!
If Liston backs up any further, he'll end up in a ringside seat!
Clay swings with his left! Clay swings with his right!
Look at young Cassius carry the fight!
Liston keeps backing, but there's not enough room!
It's just a matter of time: There! Clay lowers the boom!
Liston crashes through the roof with a terrible sound!
But the ref can't start counting until Sonny comes down!
Liston disappears from view! The crowd is getting frantic!
But our radar stations have picked him up: He's somewhere over the Atlantic!
Who would've thought when they came to the fight
that they'd witness the launching of a human satellite!
The crowd did not dream when they put down their money
that they would see a total eclipse of the Sonny!

Like Star Wars character Han Solo, this was a man you would never tell the odds. He'd tell anyone who would listen, especially Liston, "If you'd like to lose your money, be a fool and bet on Sonny!"

Clay was in Liston's head, citing his appearance, his courage, and his age: "You're 40 years old, if a day, and you don't belong in the ring with Cassius Clay!" (Like Archie Moore, whom Clay had demolished in 4 rounds, 2 years earlier, nobody really knew how old Liston was. Officially, he was 31, but nobody believed he was that young.) Sportswriter Bert Sugar, who knew more about boxing than any man alive, said, "Liston could handle anything except crazy people. And Clay, then his name, struck Liston as a crazy person."

Miami Beach Convention Center

In the 1st 4 rounds, Clay danced around the ring, and Liston hardly laid a glove on him. With advantages in height, reach and speed, Cassius messed Sonny's face up. Liston knew he was in trouble, and that cheating might get him out of it. In the 5th, he got his glove into Clay's eye, and suddenly, Clay started blinking. He couldn't see. And Liston finally started landing punches.

When Clay got back to his stool, he was, for the first time in his boxing career, scared. He told Dundee, "I can't see! Cut the gloves off!"

History -- that of boxing, and that of American culture -- hung in the balance at that moment. Everything this boxing contender would become, and everything he would come to mean to anyone, might not have happened.

Dundee saw a white powder on Clay's glove, from where he'd wiped it out of his eye. Dundee washed Clay's eyes out, and, acting as "bad cop" to Brown's "good cop," told him that he was too close to winning the title to give up now. He told Clay to use his great footwork to stay out of Liston's way until his eyes cleared, and then go after him again.

He did. The film shows Clay pretty much dancing away from Liston's blows in the 5th and 6th rounds. Late in the 6th, Clay's eyes cleared, and he resumed his methodical demolition of Liston's face.

The bell rang for the 7th round, and Clay was ready to finish the job. Liston decided that, his cheating unsuccessful, the job was finished. He quit on his stool. Cassius Clay was the Heavyweight Champion of the World.

On the surviving TV broadcast, he can be heard yelling, "I just knocked out Sonny Liston, I don't have a mark on my face, I just became the world's champ, and I'm only 22 years old! I must be the greatest! He wanted to go to heaven, so I knocked him out in seven! I am the king of the world! I'm pretty! I'm a bad man! I shook up the world! I shook up the world! I shook up the world!"

Certainly, he'd thrilled the world. But the shakeup was yet to come.

"I'm young, I'm handsome, I'm fast, I'm pretty, and can't possibly be beat!"

As it turned out, there was one man who could beat Cassius Clay. He even wiped him out of existence. And his name was Muhammad Ali.

Over the next 10 years, the world would change tremendously, and Ali would be one of the reasons why. He would become perhaps the most hated man in America, including by many people who would have been expected to be among his biggest fans. But times would change, and the general perception of him changed with them. When he won the title for the 2nd time, on October 30, 1974, he would be the most popular man in the world.

The comedy team of Key & Peele appeared in a 2013 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, with Keegan-Michael Kay playing Michael Jordan, and, with some irony, Jordan Peele playing Muhammad Ali.

*

February 25, 1964 was a Tuesday. Baseball was about to start Spring Training, and football was in its off-season, so no games were played in those sports. And there were no NHL games scheduled for that day. But 3 NBA games were scheduled:

* At Madison Square Garden in New York (the old one, at 49th Street & 8th Avenue), the Boston Celtics beat the New York Knicks, 114-102.

* At the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center, the St. Louis Hawks beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 115-107. (The Hawks moved to Atlanta in 1968.)

* And at the Cow Palace in the San Francisco suburb of Daly City, California, the San Francisco Warriors beat the Cincinnati Royals, 117-108. Wilt Chamberlain scored 52 points for the Warriors. (They changed their name to the Golden State Warriors in 1971, upon their move across the Bay to Oakland. In 1972, the Royals moved, becoming the Kansas City Kings. In 1985, they moved to Sacramento.)