LISTON, Charles ("Sonny")

(b. 8 May 1932 in Saint Francis County, Arkansas; d. 30 December 1970 in Las Vegas, Nevada), boxing heavyweight champion from 1962 to 1964.

The ninth of ten children of the tenant farmer Tobe Liston and his second wife, Helen Baskin, Liston was born in a dilapidated shack on the Morledge Plantation in Arkansas, where he endured a brutal and impoverished childhood. There is some debate concerning the exact date of his birth; records are sketchy, and some sources suggest that he was born in 1927 or 1928. Liston was a troubled youth who received no formal education and never learned to read or write. His father beat him regularly and had him working full-time in the cotton fields by age eight. In 1946 Liston's mother moved to St. Louis. The thirteen-year-old Liston soon followed and lived with her in an apartment at 1017 O'Fallon Street. He grew up in the streets, an incorrigible thug who took part in a string of muggings and holdups that led to his arrest in 1950. Convicted on several counts of first-degree robbery and larceny, he was sentenced to the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City for five years. There he was encouraged to begin boxing by the prison chaplain Father Alois Stevens. Standing six feet, one inch tall and weighing 210 pounds, with broad shoulders and a powerful build, Liston possessed devastating power and a killer's instinct. Nicknamed "Sonny" by his prison trainer, he quickly fought his way to the top of the prison's boxing program. While Liston was still behind bars, Father Stevens helped secure Frank W. Mitchell, the publisher of the St. Louis Argus, as Liston's manager.

Following his parole on 30 October 1952, Liston embarked on a successful amateur career culminating in the National Golden Gloves Heavyweight Championship. He turned professional on 2 September 1953, crushing Don Smith in one round in St. Louis. Liston lost just one of his first fifteen fights, an eight-round decision to Marty Marshall, who broke Liston's jaw, on 7 September 1954 in Detroit. Liston twice avenged this loss, once in 1955 and again in March 1956. During this time Liston's career fell partially under the control of John Vitale, a labor racketeer with ties to organized crime who employed Liston as a strong-arm man and strikebreaking goon. Liston was in frequent trouble with the police, a pattern that persisted throughout his life. On the night of 5 May 1956 he began arguing with a police officer over a friend's illegally parked taxi and ended up breaking the officer's leg and absconding with his gun. He pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to the St. Louis Workhouse for nine months.

After his release Liston married Geraldine Chambers, a single mother of one, on 3 September 1957. He resumed his career, winning eight bouts in 1958 and drawing the attention of the underworld boxing czar Frank Carbo and his minion Frank ("Blinky") Palermo, who assumed control of Liston. In 1959, after being warned by a St. Louis police captain to leave town before he was found dead in an alley, Liston moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There he began pounding his way through the heavyweight ranks despite a lack of any real ring refinement. Liston, who was known for his intimidating scowl, destroyed most opponents with brute strength and a left hand from hell. In 1959 he knocked out all four of his opponents, including the tough Cleveland Williams and Nino Valdez, in three rounds each. In 1960 he stopped the highly regarded Roy Harris after toppling him three times in the first round and then knocked out Zora Folley before having to settle for a decision over the crafty Eddie Machen.

By 1961 Liston was the top contender for the heavyweight crown held by Floyd Patterson. Patterson's wily manager, Cus D'Amato, however, forestalled any encounter with the dangerous Liston by claiming a mobbed-up ex-con was unfit to fight for the championship. Many Americans who viewed Liston as an unrepentant thug agreed. Under mounting pressure, however, the two eventually met on 25 September 1962 at Chicago's Comiskey Park, where Liston knocked Patterson out with a crippling left hook to the head in two minutes and six seconds to win the championship. On the return flight to Philadelphia, Liston felt confident that Americans would forgive his unsavory past. He fully expected a hero's welcome, but when the plane landed, the airport was empty. Liston was crushed. "It was one of the saddest things I've ever seen," said the boxing writer Jack McKinney, Liston's friend. "He never really recovered from that moment." Liston realized that no matter what he accomplished, he always would be considered a sinister beast and remain the champ nobody wanted.

In a rematch on 22 July 1963 in Las Vegas, Liston again knocked out Patterson in one round. These stunning victories reinforced Liston's reputation as an invincible ring predator. Outside the ring he maintained his menacing aura. Despite numerous arrests he continued drinking heavily, driving recklessly, and allegedly assaulting a number of women, mostly prostitutes. Liston seemingly reveled in the notoriety and once observed, "A prizefight is like a cowboy movie. There has to be a good guy and a bad guy. Only in my cowboy movies, the bad guy always wins."

The brash young boxer Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) baited Liston as the "ugly old bear" for months and finally taunted him into a bout on 25 February 1964 in Miami Beach, Florida. The quicksilver Clay deftly out-boxed the plodding Liston, peppering him with explosive jabs. The fight ended in controversy and a new champion when a bloodied Liston refused to answer the bell for the seventh round, complaining of a shoulder injury. Liston and Ali fought again in Lewiston, Maine, on 25 May 1965. The rematch ended as abruptly and mysteriously as the first fight when Liston succumbed in the first round to Ali's infamous "phantom punch," a blow unseen by many viewers or deemed not powerful enough to knock out the hulking Liston. Rumors of a fix quickly ensued, and Liston's reputation was ruined.

He nevertheless resumed boxing, knocking out four opponents in 1966 and 1967 in Sweden (where he and Geraldine adopted a son) and winning his next ten fights, nine by knockout, before being stopped by a former sparring partner, Leotis Martin, in the ninth round of a grueling battle in 1969. Liston's last fight was a tenth-round technical knockout of "Bayonne Bleeder" Chuck Wepner in a smoke-filled armory in Jersey City, New Jersey, on 29 June 1970. Back in Las Vegas, where he had settled in 1966, Liston was rumored to be involved in peddling narcotics and possibly loan-sharking. On 5 January 1971 Geraldine returned from an extended visit with her mother to discover Liston dead in their bedroom, where he had lain for approximately a week. Although his death was ascribed to pulmonary congestion and heart failure, traces of heroin were found in his body and needle marks on his arm. The police also discovered heroin and marijuana in the house. Whether Liston died of natural causes, an accidental overdose, or an intentional overdose administered by mobsters remains a mystery. He is buried in Paradise Memorial Gardens in Las Vegas.

Despite his fearsome reputation and criminal background, Liston was as much a figure of tragedy as of mayhem. An illiterate and uneducated man, he was never able to free himself from the grip of organized crime that guided his career and perhaps led to his ignominious defeats and eventual demise. Because his career flourished during the emerging civil rights movement of the early 1960s, Liston was despised and feared by many whites and denounced by many African Americans as an embarrassment to the cause. There was, however, another side to Liston, a brooding loner who loved children and maintained an easy empathy with the downtrodden. The brevity of his reign notwithstanding, some boxing experts consider Liston a great champion who may have squandered an even more considerable talent through a life of dissipation and petty crime. Perhaps the enigma was best summed up by the late publicist Harold Conrad, who observed that Liston "died the day he was born." His official record was fifty-four bouts, fifty won, four lost, with thirty-nine knockouts. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991.

The most thorough biography of Liston is Nick Tosches, The Devil and Sonny Liston (2000), a brutally honest yet sympathetic account of the boxer's troubled life. Other biographies of note are A. S. ("Doc") Young, Sonny Liston: The Champ Nobody Wanted (1963), which chronicles Liston's life up to his winning the championship, and Rob Steen, Sonny Boy: The Life and Strife of Sonny Liston (1993). John D. McCallum, The Encyclopedia of World Boxing Champions Since 1882 (1975), contains a biographical profile and accounts of Liston's major fights, while Nigel Collins, Boxing Babylon (1990), emphasizes the scandalous events that plagued the embattled champion. An obituary is in the New York Times (7 Jan. 1971).

Michael McLean