Was it a legitimate knockout punch? Was the fix in? Was it a ‘Phantom Punch?’ Did Muhammad Ali really defeat Sonny Liston in an honest-to-goodness fight all those years ago in May of 1965? These questions and more have been asked many times and never will be stopped being asked – not ever – so utterly controversial was the first-round “knockout” defending heavyweight king Ali scored over former champ Liston in Lewiston, Maine, some 59 years ago.
As fans know, Ali had recently dropped his birth name of Cassius Clay – this, Ali said, being his “slave name” – and was now going by the new name his newly adopted Muslim faith had bestowed upon him: Muhammad Ali (“Worthy of all phrases, Most high.”) And as a result, Ali was controversial enough. And the first Ali-Liston fight, which had taken place some 15 months before the rematch, was absolutely loaded with controversy.
Liston, a whopping 7/1 betting favorite and seen as just about invincible, had quit on his stool after six rounds in February of 1964, citing a damaged shoulder. This fight was bad enough, with so many people utterly convinced former jailbird Liston, who had known mafia connections, had taken a dive (or a sit-down quit job), this in order for the mob to pick up a bundle at the bookies.
The return fight made things a whole lot worse, a whole lot messier. The sanctity of the world heavyweight championship was at genuine risk due to those wild and unfathomable 2 minutes and 12 seconds that played out before the world.
In a nutshell:
Before a sparse crowd of just 2,434 people, Ali, going backwards, counters a lunge by Liston, his right hand landing on the side of Liston’s head in a veritable flash, the punch one many fans fail to even see, and down goes Liston. Rolling over, an on-his-back Liston gets to his right knee before falling again. Liston finally makes it back to his feet but referee Jersey Joe Walcott, who had lost all control of Ali and of the fight, then waves it off.
Walcott, unable to get an animated Ali to a neutral corner, had been informed by Nat Fleischer of Ring Magazine that Liston had been counted out. The two fighters actually began fighting again for a few seconds as the third man conversed with Fleischer. Instantly, many in the crowd began shouting, “Fix!” In time, almost the entire world would join these attending fans and share their belief of a fixed fight, of a second tank job on the part of Liston.
And to this day, here in 2024, nobody knows for sure what the heck happened. And we have come to the frustrating conclusion that we never will know. Liston said to the press after the fight that he got “mixed up” because he didn’t hear a count and therefore couldn’t get up in time.” That and Liston said the hovering Ali made it impossible for him to get up and protect himself at the same time.
Ali was unsure what he had hit Liston with, if he had, in fact, hit him at all. “Did I hit him?” Ali asked Nation of Islam minister Abdul Rahman. Later, Ali said the punch that did Liston in was the “Anchor Punch,” this a weapon the old-time fighters used. Not too many people believed Ali.
Now, almost six decades on, with so many documentaries, books, articles, and even movies on the subject of Ali/Liston fights I and II having been released, we are still in the dark. And again, we always will be. Looking at the fight footage, it’s so hard to make a definitive decision on whether or not the punch that Ali lands – and for sure, a shot does land, and Liston’s left foot was lifted off the canvas due to the force of the blow – was hard enough to legitimately fell a tough, hard man like Liston.
Was Sonny doing the mob’s bidding again, and did he take a dive? Or did Liston perhaps take a dive all by himself, feeling he was in danger of being shot by an errant bullet fired at Ali by a Malcolm X supporter, with Liston looking to get the hell out of there at the quickest opportunity? Malcolm X, with whom Ali had had a falling out, had recently been assassinated, and there were circulating rumors that said Ali might be a target as Malcolm’s followers wanted revenge. No wonder this fight and all the things that were happening at the time made great subject matter for a movie! Liston later told the great writer Mark Kram the following: “That guy (Ali) was crazy. I didn’t want anything to do with him. And the Muslims were coming up. Who needed that? So I went down. I wasn’t hit.”
But Liston was hit by a punch, the film shows us so. But was it a hard enough punch to put Sonny on the floor, in effect, twice? Liston, if he did take a dive, never really said as much before his utterly mysterious death in either late 1970 or very early 1971. But the damage had been done on the evening of May 25, 1965, and after the fight, politicians and members of the press called for the abolition of boxing, with bills to ban the sport being planned in several state legislatures.
Thankfully, it never came to that. But it took some time before the sport recovered, as it took some time before fans were willing to fully accept Ali as a genuine world champion and as a great fighter. As for Liston, his career never recovered, although he did fight on until June of 1970. In some ways, the tragedy of the Ali-Liston fights is the fact that too many people only really know Liston from these two fights. In his prime, in the years 1959 to 1962, Liston was a fantastic fighter.
Some felt he was an invincible fighter.