55 Years Ago Today: A Great Fighter – A Man – Passed Away. Sonny Liston

you believe in a place called Fighters’ Heaven, then you surely also believe that there is one particular born fighting man residing there. A great, so vastly misunderstood heavyweight fighter. That man’s name is Charles. L Liston – better known as Sonny Liston.

Heavyweight king in 1962, 1963 and, for a short while into the new year of ’64, Liston was at this time feared, he was fabulous, and he was all set to hold the crown for pretty much as long as he liked. When we look back on the fistic greats, the real greats; those who did their stuff long before the term great became the so overused five-letter word it is today, we have to know that Liston is surely up there right now, with his heroes, or the few people Sonny admired…….Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Ezzard Charles, and one or two other special ones who donned the gloves and made themselves and the world proud in doing so.

Liston as we know, passed away (or was taken), officially, on this day of December 30 in 1970. Liston was reported to be 38 at the time of his cruel and unfair end, and he was found dead in his Las Vegas apartment. To this day, and very possibly for all eternity, the true circumstances surrounding Sonny’s death will remain a big, monstrous void of a mystery.

Was it murder by the mob? Did Sonny overdose on drugs, either accidentally or on purpose? Or did the one-time Baddest Man on the Planet (and, boy, Liston surely was when he was in his 1958 to 1962 prime) simply suffer a heart attack?

Again, and to repeat to an agonising level, we will never know.

But Liston remains not only a fascinating and mysterious figure/legend/all-time great, this all these years later; he is also a fighter, a man, a full-on force of nature that is so much more appreciated and admired today. By some of us, anyway. Looking back, not only at his fights but at his rare interviews and media spots (and remember, Sonny had zero formal education, with him barely able to read or write; his skills at communicating and showcasing his intelligence reliant on his natural smarts, his street smarts and his inbuilt savvy and brains), it’s clear Sonny was a sharp, witty, and admirable man.

But also today, and so unfortunately, Liston is still best remembered by too many people as a man who snarled, who never laughed, who was a mere bruiser. This is absolutely one of the biggest injustices in the sport’s history. Sonny deserves better. Yes, Liston could have done better in life, and for God’s sake, Sonny deserved better in life. But those who are willing to dig deeper and find the real Liston story – massive shout out to writer and full-time Sonny Liston supporter and defender, Paul Gallender – will indeed locate a great story, of a great man, of a great fighter.

When was Sonny born? We will also never know the answer to this question. But it is now widely believed that Sonny may have been born way before his officially recorded DOB of May 8 of 1932. Some, including the he-should-know Gallender, say Sonny could have been born as early as 1917! – and let that sink in. It means Sonny, as awesome as he was in wiping out the entire heavyweight division across the years 1958 to 1962 (Cleveland Williams, Nino Valdes, Zora Folley, Eddie Machen, Floyd Patterson) was a, pardon my French, f*****g old man!

By the time he joked and laughed his way through training camp ahead of his first fight with “clown” Cassius Clay, later, of course, Muhammad Ali, Liston was old as dirt and he was out of shape (mostly from a mental standpoint). And so, in one of the most unfairly handed, so-called defining fight to any boxer, Liston today is still best know by younger fans as the man who quit against Ali’s speed and grace.

Whether or not the two Ali-Liston fights were fixed, well, that drags us back to the agonising state of never being able to know. But we do know Liston trained like a demon for the return fight, only for Ali to fall victim to a hernia and the subsequent op, this delaying the fight by many months. Who knows how the rematch would have gone if Sonny and Ali had met again on the original November ’64 date?

But the biggest question here is: What really happened inside Sonny’s Vegas apartment that night or early morning in late December of 1970, this when his wife Geraldine was out of town? It’s a fascinating subject, and as much as we may admire Liston for what he and his massive hands did in the ring, we cannot turn away, we are all guilty here, of never being able to deviate from the desire to delve into a mystery. And no fighter EVER met as mysterious a death as Sonny Liston did.

Wherever he is today, at a time when he would have (officially) been 93 years old, all of us who wish to know about the real Sonny Liston wish him nothing but well.