Sonny Liston: The Life and Mysterious Death of a Champion

Boxing has such a wide range of personality types. There are showboats like Muhammad Ali and Floyd Mayweather, Jr., classy gentlemen like Sugar Ray Robinson and Floyd Patterson, but the boxers that intrigue me the most are “villains” like Mike Tyson, George Foreman, and Sonny Liston.

I put villains in quotation marks because it’s only partly true of all three of them. Yes, each of those fighters in their prime played the role to some extent, but going beyond their actions in the ring and looking at who these men really were and where they came from, their lives become more complex and we can’t help but sympathize with them. Tyson’s a prime example of someone who was for years detested, feared, and mocked, but with the passing of time (and a very good documentary), showed that he could be as introspective and thoughtful as anyone.

I wrote a while ago that a documentary was the perfect format to explore the social history behind boxing, but it’s also great at exploring the individuals that made it so great in the first place. So I highly recommend watching Sonny Liston: The Life and Mysterious Death of a Champion, an HBO doc from the 90s.

This is more than just a rise and fall story. We see Liston’s life told from the point of view of boxing writers, family members, historians and members of his training camp. His story began in Arkansas. The date of his birth, however, was never determined, the film tells us, as no birth certificate was ever issued. He was one of 25 children, and his father beat him mercilessly every day. We don’t get much else on Liston’s early life, only that this upbringing eventually led him into a life of crime. He was imprisoned for armed robbery, where he picked up boxing and used it as a way out. It wouldn’t be long before he was fighting professionally, and eventually made his way up to the heavyweight championship against Floyd Patterson. He destroyed him.

Around the time his boxing career took off, however, his ties with organized crime also became public. Liston was heavily involved with the mafia as an enforcer and union buster. Boxing at this time also happened to be controlled by the mob, and Liston’s connections with gangsters from St. Louis to Philadelphia would propel his career forward.

After his victory over Patterson, a young braggart named Cassius Clay began hounding Liston for a shot at the title. Liston, who was heavily influenced by a casino owner with mob ties named Ash Reznick, didn’t take Ali seriously. A story told by one of Liston’s entourage tells of an incident at a Vegas casino where Clay was visiting, and Liston walking right up to him and smacking him across the mouth. 

Liston would go on to lose the fight to Clay, some argue, due to lack of training and an enlarged sense of his own power, which was blamed on the corrupting influence of Reznick. The fight, however, wasn’t without controversy, and many of the commentators in the documentary speculate that Liston threw the fight on purpose. Others say he tried to sabotage the fight by tainting his glove with a liquid to blind Clay.

Perhaps more controversial was their rematch one year later. Accusations that the first fight was fixed and threats on both fighters lives leading up to it made the match more heated than before. Eventually the two would meet, with Clay landing a right-hook to Liston’s jaw, knocking him down. This so-called “phantom punch” led to massive cries of a fix, and there are arguments to be made on both sides. Liston supposedly was threatened by members of the Nation of Islam, the Black Nationalist group that was backing Clay (now Muhammad Ali). Forget it, says Larry Merchant. Liston had the mob backing him. Why throw the fight? And who in their right mind could intimidate Liston? But he took harder punches than that, Floyd Patterson argues. Even Ali, at the time, didn't seem convinced that punch knocked him out. Like the first fight, no answer seems conclusive.

The rest of Liston’s life was a downward spiral. He tried to resurrect his boxing career, and had 14 straight victories (albeit against lesser opponents) before losing decisively against a former sparring partner. His life would end in Vegas and under murky circumstances. He was discovered by his wife with blood on his face and foam in his mouth. Three hours would pass before she phoned the police. Detectives found evidence of heroin in his house, but no drug paraphernalia to go with it. Did someone try to clean up the evidence? The coroner’s office would eventually rule that Liston died of an overdose. But was this an accidental overdose or murder?

Cases are made for both arguments. Liston was allegedly still working for the mob, and was possibly trying to horn in on another mobster’s loan shark operation. It’s also alleged he had a dispute with Reznick, mouthing off that he threw the fights with Ali, and was getting too big for his britches in Vegas. Then there’s the physical evidence, with the coroner’s report saying there were signs of old needle marks on his arms, lending weight to the argument he OD’d by accident. But friends of Liston’s say he would never touch needles, and was even afraid of the dentist.

There’s a lot of intrigue packed into this documentary. The circumstances surrounding his death, his fights with Ali, and his ties with organized crime all make for a terrific mystery, but I’m more interested in the “myth” of Sonny Liston. An African-American studies professor in the film notes the difficulty for black public figures not to be racialized by the white mainstream media. Liston was described in animalistic and highly racist terminology - “king of the beasts” and “the big ugly bear” being two of the most notorious. Certainly his reputation as a mob enforcer didn’t help this, and his actions and behaviour definitely contributed to his negative image, but what comes across in the documentary more than all this is that Liston was a tragic figure and misunderstood. Friends say he could be sweet and sensitive to those he trusted (he was especially fond of children); others describe him as a bully. Neither description is completely false.

In life and in death, Sonny Liston remains an enigma.  He was a man greatly at odds with the public, and more tragically, himself.