Monday marked the golden anniversary of what history records as the rematch between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston, even if one had changed his name.
For anyone not around on May 25, 1965, here is a synopsis of events that night in Lewiston, Maine: Boxing's reigning heavyweight champion, in the glory of his youth at 23, knocked out a past titleholder, age unknown, in the first round. And people have cried "fix" for the last 50 years.
The third man in the ring, celebrity referee Jersey Joe Walcott, himself a former heavyweight champion, botched things so badly that he declared the losing fighter knocked out while engaged in battle.
With the loser in a supine position, the winner hovering overhead with fists clinched and yelling, Neil Leifer snapped arguably the greatest sports photo in history. It appeared in Sports Illustrated along with a column by Jim Murray, who said it was "no phantom punch." The man from the Los Angeles Times had come a long way with the winner, saying before the first fight that the sassy underdog could beat the illiterate champion only in "reading a dictionary."
Ah, the first fight, about which the second fight cannot be analyzed in proper context. The first fight, exactly 15 months earlier, equally controversial and ending unexpectedly, marked the dawning of boxing's age of Aquarius, giving birth to sports' first trash-talking champion.
Beating Sonny Liston in Miami Beach on Feb. 25, 1964, catapulted then-Cassius Clay into the national consciousness, where at age 73, as Muhammad Ali, in reduced circumstances physically, he remains.
ESPN blundered in 1999 when it selected Ali No. 3 in its "SportsCentury" poll behind Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth. Ali became the first global athlete, his two most legendary fights taking place in Zaire and the Philippines -- winning both, of course. Only Joe DiMaggio could rival Ali for stopping conversation cold in any room he walked -- Ali without benefit of marrying Marilyn Monroe.
Yes, Ali stayed around too long, not the first ring warrior to pursue one payday too many after his skills were gone. Ali's blood sugar was so out of whack when he fought Larry Holmes in 1980 that his handlers should have been hauled into court. A 1981 loss to Trevor Berbick finally sent Ali, with a 56-5 record, into retirement.
Whatever else history says about him, let it be noted that Ali went 5-1 against past or present champions Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman. He wasn't beating up on Klitschko brothers, although it seemed once that he might face Wilt Chamberlain. Famously, he wouldn't fight in Vietnam, but that's another story.
That all this would transpire could not be foreseen when Ali and Liston touched gloves that May night in Lewiston, Maine. That fight almost never happened and when it did, it didn't last long.
Nobody really wanted to hold the rematch, memories afresh of Liston sitting on his stool and surrendering the title to Clay in Miami Beach. Liston claimed a bum shoulder; others thought he was hurt taking a dive from a high board. The next day, controversy still raging about the outcome, Clay declared himself a Black Muslim and called himself Cassius X, later refined to Muhammad Ali. And for the second time in 24 hours, boxing's heavyweight champion, in his words, "shook up the world."
They moved the rematch from Boston, where it was scheduled in November 1964 but delayed by six months after Ali underwent emergency surgery for a strangulated hernia. By all accounts, Liston, who was listed at 32 but might have been 40, declined physically after working himself into the best shape of his career.
In the interim, Malcolm X, the champion's former spiritual leader, was gunned down in New York. Outside threats against both fighters -- Ali from Malcolm's followers, splintered from the Nation of Islam and leader Elijah Muhammad; Liston from the mob -- so poisoned the waters that only 2,434 fans turned out in a 4,900-seat arena. Security was tight, every women's bag frisked, Red Smith wrote, although "somebody should have searched for concealed sleeping powders."
Midway through the first round, which was also the last round, Liston threw a left jab and Ali countered with a fast right, the former champion going to the floor. Ali called it the "anchor punch," as taught by a black comedian then part of the champion's ever-growing entourage. Many said they never saw it; others claimed it was a perfect punch.
Inside the ring, chaos ensued. Liston rolled over, got to his right knee and then fell on his back again. Walcott never picked up the count, let them keep fighting and then was told by the knockdown timekeeper, "I counted him out." Walcott rushed between fighters to stop it, a smelly ending to a pungent evening.
"I could have got up," Sonny said, "but I didn't hear the count."
Whatever the case, Charles L. Liston took the night train to oblivion. He lived another six years before dying in Las Vegas under circumstances as cloudy as those surrounding his birth.
One of 25 children to an east Arkansas sharecropper, neither able to read nor write, in and out of trouble with the law most of his life, learning to fight in prison, controlled by sinister elements, but yet blessed with a left hook that would make an opponent flinch, and heavyweight champion of the world through six rounds of his first fight with Cassius Clay, Sonny Liston mystifies us beyond the grave. The epitaph on his headstone, like one of his left jabs, is crisp: "A Man."
As for the winner that night in Lewiston, Maine, Ali's place in American history is secure. He made mistakes along the way, many outside the ring, and spent 3 1/2 prime years in exile after dodging the military draft. That boxing's heavyweight champion would be branded a coward but someday carry the Olympic torch is a story only Ali could have predicted.
Love him or hate him, the man who called himself "The Greatest" wouldn't let you ignore him.
Sports on 05/26/2015