sonny liston interview

The photo captures the champions exhortations, with all the fire and passion and dynamic physicality that made him such a phenomenon. Once he went down, I got excited. [86] Former light-heavyweight champion Jose Torres said, "I have never met an athlete in baseball, basketball or football who is smarter, more intelligent than Sonny Liston". Anyone can read what you share. It was probably Liston's best moment in the entire fight. I remember thinking as a child that this was a man who wanted to be left alone.". In The Greatest, the 1977 film about the life of boxer Muhammad Ali in which Ali played himself, Liston was portrayed by Roger E. Mosley. Clay confessed later he had been hurt by the punch, but Liston was unable to press his advantage home. Walcott never began a count in the ring because of Ali's non-compliance and his physical struggle with getting Ali to go to that neutral corner. Ira Gay Sealy/The Denver Post via Getty Images According to the post, he returned back home later that morning and called his sparring partner Gary Bates to tell him he was leaving for Los Angeles but that they should get together when he returned in a couple of days. Because of the shirt he wore during robberies, the St. Louis police called Liston the "Yellow Shirt Bandit." Ali called it "the anchor punch." Liston assaulted the officer, breaking his knee and gashing his face. "He would do everything to avoid taking shots." [47] Sitting on his stool between rounds, however, Liston was breathing heavily as his cornermen worked on his cut. [15] In 1946, Helen Baskin, along with some of her children, moved to St. Louis to seek factory work. Maybe he was. We cooked up that shoulder thing on the spot. At the IBHOF, the casts of Listons hands were bigger than Lennox Lewis' which were also gigantic. "It was common knowledge that Sonny was a heroin addict," said Sgt. He was still a world-ranked boxer when he died in mysterious circumstances in 1970. He is a relatively elementary, one-track fighter." Sonny Liston | Boxing's Most Intimidating and Unwanted Champion Rainy Day Boxing 302K subscribers 5.6M views 1 year ago Join Rainy Day Boxing for an in depth career tribute to arguably the most. His "Speedway at Nazareth" was about auto racing. Liston won 14 consecutive bouts, 13 by knockout, before fighting third-ranked Leotis Martin, previously beaten by Clark, in December 1969. "He said: 'Look what they did!' Tosches, Nick (2000). [10] His family, but not one Charles (or Sonny) Liston, can be found in the 1930 census, and in the 1940 census he was listed as 10 years old. "[42], Liston made his second title defense on February 25, 1964, in Miami Beach, Florida against Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali). He said he could not hear McDonough, who did not have a microphone. I was about to say look at those mitts! I know!" [93] Liston had been hospitalized in early December, complaining of chest pains. Tocco said that the living room furniture was in disarray, but the house did not yet smell of death. A few months after Alis fight, Liston was dead from lung congestion though even that was shrouded in mystery and controversy. [108] The book suggests that Sonny Liston may have been murdered and a possibility that the crime was never investigated. Press J to jump to the feed. It was the third-fastest knockout in a world heavyweight title fight, and the first time the defending champion had been knocked out in round one. .css-m6thd4{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;display:block;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;font-family:Gilroy,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;color:#323232;text-transform:capitalize;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-m6thd4:hover{color:link-hover;}}Remembering Just Fontaine and His World Cup Record, The Man Behind the First All-Black Basketball Team, 8 Times Brothers Have Faced Off in a Championship, Every Black Quarterback to Play in the Super Bowl, Soccer Star Christian Atsu Survived an Earthquake. Wepner needed 72 stitches and suffered a broken cheekbone and nose. Liston won his final fight, a tough but one-sided match against future world title challenger Chuck Wepner in June 1970. [42], Liston's run-ins with the police had continued in Philadelphia. The NAACP had urged Patterson not to fight Liston, fearing that a Liston victory would hurt the civil rights movement. Liston was a heavy favorite. [14], Tobe Liston inflicted whippings so severe on Sonny that the scars were still visible decades later. [16] Listonaged around 13, according to his later reckoningsremained in Arkansas with his father. "[68], While Liston publicly denied taking a dive, Sports Illustrated writer Mark Kram said that years later Liston told him, "That guy [Ali] was crazy. ", One of the most vivid verses creates a word-picture of Liston in his prime with photographic clarity: "Black Cadillac, alligator boots, money in the pockets of his sharkskin suits." Rogin discounted speculation that Patterson had thrown the fight, writing: "The genesis of all this wide-eyed theorizing and downright baloney was the fact that many spectators failed to see the knockout blows. Rogin wrote. The previous month, Schreibauer had won a bronze medal in the European Championships. "I was rooting around in my childhood, maybe the way you do when you get to a certain age," Knopfler said. Ali is waiting to hit me, the ref can't control him. The governor of nearby Maine, John Reed, stepped up and volunteered to host it in the small town of Lewiston, where a resort and ice rink could provide some infrastructure. The torn tendon had bled down into the mass of the biceps, swelling and numbing the arm. Please read the rules before posting/commenting. ", Hutchison, Phillip J. In a pre-fight poll, 43 of 46 sportswriters picked Liston to win by knockout. Pan, 2017. At one point, Clay was wiping his eyes with his right hand while extending his left arm"like a drunk leaning on a lamppost" Bert Sugar wroteto keep Liston at bay. Lennox is a conqueror? His eyes swept the whole scene. These transcripts contain material that did not appear in the final program. In the third round, Clay began to take control of the fight. "[35] However, in 1963 in the aftermath of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Liston broke off a European boxing exhibition tour to return home and was quoted as saying he was "ashamed to be in America. On the album's lyric sheet, below the Liston song, Knopfler includes a famous quotation from Liston from 1962: "Some day, they're gonna write a blues for fighters. "[35], U.S. President John F. Kennedy also did not want Patterson to fight Liston. Don't confuse shyness with dullness, Sonny was reluctant to talk to the press - the always painted a bad picture of him.Dwight Muhammad Qawi Braxton ATG Philly Joe Frazier Bernard HopkinsTags:pernell whitaker jersey joe walcott louis julio chavez evander holyfield lennox lewis felix sturm oscar de la hoya floyd mayweather miguel cotto marquez manny pacquiao pacman boxing boxer ko knockout tribute robbery mike tyson rocky marciano oscar de la hoya manny pacquiao foreman fight miguel cotto dead death muhammad ali cassius mike tyson clay lennox lewis eric morales barrera floyd mayweather fedor emelianenko ufc boxing ko k.o. Elizabeth Bear wrote the short story "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall", published in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy in 2008. Sonny Liston was a bad, bad guy who was also a victim, and I dont know that anyone can point to when a victim becomes a perpetrator and how much sympathy he deserves, but I also think any holistic take is fair this far in history. [45][46] A clearly angered Liston rallied at the end of the round when Clay seemed tired, delivering punishing body shots. You really never watched the first fight did you? Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Both fights were in Summerlin's hometown of Detroit.[23]. "There is power in both his left and his right, even though the fists move with the languor of motoring royalty or as if passing through a gaseous envelope more dense than air." [85] Geraldine had a daughter from a previous marriage, and the Listons subsequently adopted a boy from Sweden. "At about noon on the day of the fight, (Magids) reached Resnick again by phone," the memo read. On May 5, 1956, a policeman confronted Liston and a friend about a cab parked near Liston's home. Naturally, they decided that Ali would take on Liston. ", Knopfler compared writing a song about Liston to the work a sculptor performs on a statue. interview with Alex Haley in Muhammad Ali by Thomas Hauser. He particularly resented a 1961 arrest by a black patrolman for loitering, claiming to have merely been signing autographs and chatting with fans outside a drugstore. He rounded out the year by stopping Nino Valdez and Willi Besmanoff. Sonny Liston in his prime . Liston went down on his back. Wepner, who also fought George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, said after his career was over that Liston was the hardest puncher he faced. The official time of the stoppage was announced as 1:00 into the first round, which was wrong. Liston was the subject of a 1995 HBO documentary titled Sonny Liston: The Mysterious Life and Death of a Champion. While true he also sent women to the hospital, which his sparring partner confirms. He had been deliberately snubbed. "The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating," Liston said. One memo, dated 24 May 1966, outlined an interview with Houston gambler Barnett Magids, who believed Liston would win. [38], Patterson finally signed to meet Liston for the world title on September 25, 1962, in Comiskey Park in Chicago. After repeated overnight detention by the St. Louis police and a thinly veiled threat to his life, Liston left for Philadelphia. Only Massachusetts was willing to host the fight, though it was delayed from November 1964 to May 1965 so that Ali could recover from hernia surgery. He rolled over, got to his right knee and then fell on his back again. "Nat Fleischer [editor of The Ring] was sitting beside McDonough and he was waving his hands, too, saying it was over." [39] Leading up to the fight, Liston was an 85 betting favorite, although many picked Patterson to win. And it was probably for the best ticket-buyers didnt exactly get their moneys worth. People around the world tuned in via satellite to watch the match, which was fought in front of 2,434 paying ticket-holders, the smallest crowd in heavyweight championship fight history; people there suggested the crowd was more like 4,000, but nonetheless, it was a very small in-person audience. Alois Stevens, suggested to Liston that he try boxing, and his obvious aptitude, along with an endorsement from Stevens, who was also a priest, aided Liston in getting an early parole. Who needed that? But by the sixth round his sight had cleared, and a clearly enraged Clay fought a blisteringly aggressive round landing numerous combination punches. The toxicology report said his body was too decomposed for the tests to be conclusive. Very rare interview of Sonny Liston talking about how he got started in boxing, his fights with Williams and Patterson and his training routine. The World Boxing Association one of several boxing organizations was not too pleased, moving to strip Ali of his title and advising states not to agree to host the rematch. [36], Jack Dempsey spoke for many when he was quoted as saying that Sonny Liston should not be allowed to fight for the title. THE PREFIGHT MOODS OF SONNY LISTON. Liston kept running into trouble with the law and Ali had a target on his back after the assassination of Malcolm X, whom he had disavowed after Elijah Muhammad forced him out of the Nation of Islam. But a Senate subcommittee hearing turned up no evidence of any match-fixing, and doctors confirmed his explanation that hed taken such damage to his shoulder that he couldnt feel his arm. Sonny Liston vs Eddie Machen (1960) As usual, Liston wasted no time throwing his jab and keeping Machen at bay, who was trying to get his hands off with minimal success. Because of that, Cage may have thought Sonny was an informant and shot him with a hot dose as retribution. Shaun Assael. Unlike Dylan or Carter, however, Knopfler does not present Liston as innocent of a crime for which he was imprisoned. The Murder of Sonny Liston: A Story of Fame, Heroin, Boxing & Las Vegas Pan publisher; 2017.

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