Was Muhammad Ali's most famous photo a lie? The many mysteries of Sonny Liston, boxing's menacing, mob-affiliated sledgehammer
He was a champion, enforcer and enigma — a Hall of Fame heavyweight who became relegated by history as the fallen giant beneath a glowering Ali. Yet more than 40 years later, the questions surrounding Liston and his fateful night against "The Greatest" still refuse to die.
Nobody knows for sure exactly when Sonny Liston was born or when he died. He’s the only heavyweight champion of the 20th century about whom this can be said. It’s fitting, that type of mystery.
It’s as if Charles L. Liston came from nowhere, was simply spit out upon the earth as a fully-formed instrument of joyless destruction, only to disappear again when no one was looking. At least with his death, people felt like they could reliably pinpoint the correct year, if not the actual day.
It was likely some time in those final hours of 1970. In his obituary for Liston in The Village Voice , Joe Flaherty called him “the menacing black man who invaded the subway of our souls at four in the morning. ” The poet Amiri Baraka wrote that Liston was “the big black Negro in every white man’s hallway, waiting to do him in, deal him under.
” Muhammad Ali, who took the heavyweight title from him in 1964 and then, in the rematch, towered over the downed Liston in arguably the most famous boxing photo of all time, was more succinct when talking with sports writer Mark Kram years later. “Liston was the Devil,” Ali said. May 25, 1965: Ali stands over the downed Liston after knocking him out in the first round of their title rematch.
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