5 Biggest Heavyweight Boxing Upsets

#2: Sonny Liston v Cassius Clay

February 25th, 1964 | Miami, USA

Born into abject poverty, the second youngest of 25 children on farm in rural Arkansas, confusion has long surrounded Liston’s exact date of birth. Most accounts put it at either 1930 or 1932, but it’s likely earlier than that.

He endured a violent, miserable childhood, before running away from home aged 13, unable to read or write. He would eventually serve jail time for robbery, and it was in prison where he first began to box. Liston would later say that the food in the Missouri State Penitentiary was the best he ever ate.

Upon leaving jail in 1952, Liston embarked on a brief but successful amateur career before going pro under the management of the mafia, who effectively controlled US boxing in the post-war era. Liston’s criminal past and mob ties led to repeated run-ins with the law. He swapped St. Louis for Philadelphia but only found more trouble, and more serious underworld figures who took an interest in his career.

Despite this chaotic existence, by 1962 Sonny Liston had risen to #1 contender for Floyd Patterson’s heavyweight title. The two men could not have presented a more different public image.

The amiable Patterson was much-admired, and seen as the acceptable face of the civil rights movement. He had the support of community leaders, the public at large and even President John F. Kennedy wanted him to win. Nobody wanted Liston as the champion.

The President went so far as to implore Patterson not to fight Liston, but Floyd was a fair man and insisted, to his credit, that Sonny had earned his chance. He would come to regret that generosity.

Making his way to the ring to face Liston, Patterson looked, as memorably put by one scribe, “like a man being led to his execution”. He couldn’t even look at Liston as the referee gave the two men their pre-fight instructions. Patterson, a fine champion, didn’t last a round.

In 1964, the world – or America at any rate – was not yet ready for Cassius Marcellus Clay. The man who would go on to achieve sporting immortality, and, as Muhammad Ali, become one of the most famous people of all time, was at this time simply a fleet-footed, fast-talking, precociously talented 22-year-old boxer.

Ali would of course go on to become, in his own words, “The Greatest”, and one of the most iconic figures of the 20th century, gaining a cultural significance beyond that of any mere sportsman. But all that lay a long way away when Clay, as he then was, made his first challenge for the world heavyweight championship.

Many ring observers felt he was in for - and frankly, hoped he would receive - a painful beating at the hands of the frighteningly powerful and downright terrifying champion, Charles “Sonny” Liston. The brooding, sullen Liston was everything the effervescent Clay was not.

But once the first bell sounded, Clay went about stripping away that menacing aura, layer by layer. Dancing, slashing, jabbing and moving, Clay used all of his advantages in speed and height to lead the old warrior a merry dance. What followed was an utterly unexpected one-sided beating.

In the previous three years, Liston had been so dominant, so ferocious that no-one wanted to face him. The three fights he did have, including the two against Patterson, all ended within one round.

Not viewing Clay as a serious threat, he cut corners in training. Thus, as early as the fourth round, Liston was exhausted, frustrated and demoralised, barely able to lay a glove on the quicksilver Clay.

Clay cavorted around the ring, barely able to contain himself. This was the occasion of his famous “I shook up the world! I shook up the world! I must be the greatest!” outburst.

The great Joe Louis, a friend of Liston’s and working for TV that night, called it the biggest upset in the history of heavyweight boxing. If you ever wanted an exact definition of talking the talk, and walking the walk, Clay’s performance that night was it.

The infamous re-match, in May 1965, ended in even greater controversy. Liston was felled in the first round by the so-called ‘phantom punch’ – a chopping right hand so fast that most people didn’t see it. This was the punch that gave us that iconic photograph of Ali stood over his fallen foe, berating him to get up. Ali wouldn’t retreat to a neutral corner and so the count started late. Liston rose to his feet after around 20 seconds.

History has been much kinder to Liston than his contemporaries ever were. Upon claiming the most prestigious title in all of sports, he received no recognition, no respect, no welcome home parade. The snub hurt him bitterly, and he remarked “I didn’t expect the President to invite me into the White House and play with those nice Kennedy kids, but I sure didn’t expect to be treated like no sewer rat”.

Floyd Patterson, willed on by those who wished to be rid of the champ nobody wanted, was put up to try and beat Liston in an immediate rematch. It ended in another first-round knockout. This was the man Cassius Clay was stepping into the ring against in February 1964.

After returning from the 1960 Rome Olympics with light-heavyweight gold, the 18-year-old Clay was possessed of an easy charm, a winning smile and plenty to say for himself. He was not what you’d call short on self-confidence.

But by the time he faced Liston, the act was starting to wear a little thin. Clay was expected, in the contemptible racial language of the time, to “know his place”. But he was his own man right from the very start. He didn’t conform, he didn’t play by the rules and he took orders from no-one.

With razor sharp reflexes and hands and feet almost as fast as his mouth, Clay was considered a promising talent. But good enough to beat Liston? He’d already been floored twice, once by a famous Henry Cooper left hook, much to the delight of the British fans.

In fact it was only some mischief from his legendary cornerman, Angelo Dundee, that bought Clay precious time to recover between rounds rom ‘Our Enry’s’ sledgehammer left.

Eight months after that narrow escape in London, Liston v Clay was on. Clay had done so much talking in the build-up that he actually managed to make the reviled Liston a more popular winner in many fans’ eyes. His vocal support for Malcolm X and the militant Nation of Islam hadn’t gone down too well either.

Come the weigh-in, in those days held on the morning of the fight, Clay went into overdrive. His hyperactive performance convinced many he was scared witless and might not even show up to fight. Liston, as usual, sat through Clay’s clowning in silence, exuding menace.

But in the challenger’s corner before the start of the fifth, there was panic. His eyes were burning and he could hardly see. The suspicion at the time, and for a long time after, was that Liston’s corner had tried some dirty trick to temporarily blind Clay by spreading liniment on Sonny’s gloves.

Yet Clay’s trainer Dundee, who knew every trick in the book, dismissed that suggestion some years later. Whatever it was, Clay got on his bike in the fifth round and managed to avoid serious punishment as an increasingly desperate Liston launched one final assault. The danger having passed, Clay re-asserted his dominance in the sixth. Liston had had enough.

As the bell rang for the start of the seventh, the champ remained seated. He’d had enough. Clay, arms aloft, shuffled to mid-ring as a disbelieving crowd looked on. The referee raised Clay’s hand – cue pandemonium.

Referee Jersey Joe Walcott let the fighters continue, but was then ordered to stop the bout by officials insisting that Liston had failed to beat the count.

Debate as to whether or not Liston took a dive continues to this day. Rumours persisted of threats made to Liston by the mafia and the Nation of Islam. Those who think Liston suffered a genuine knockout are in the minority, but he was certainly hit by a hard shot.

For Ali, his incredible journey was entering its next stage. A deeply unpopular, divisive figure, in 1967 he was stripped of his world title and banned from boxing for standing up for his beliefs and refusing to fight in the American war in Vietnam.

By the time he was cleared to fight again over three years later, Ali was idolised as a man prepared to challenge the establishment and fight for what was right, no matter the personal cost. In later titanic battles against Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Ken Norton, he displayed almost suicidal courage, further cementing the Ali legend.

For Sonny Liston there was, inevitably perhaps, no riding off into the sunset. No peaceful retirement. He was found dead at his Las Vegas home in 1970, amid whispers of foul play and a mob hit.

A champion forever on the margins, Liston has been viewed more sympathetically since his mysterious, murky demise. Musicians including Tom Petty, Nick Cave, The Roots, The Animals and Wu-Tang Clan have all referenced this ill-fated, enigmatic man, while Mark Knopfler lamented “the king they cast aside” in his 2004 “Song for Sonny Liston”.

The mythology built up around the sport of boxing sometimes makes it hard to locate the truth. This is true of Muhammad Ali perhaps more than any other fighter, but there is no less mystique surrounding the complex and ultimately tragic figure of Charles “Sonny” Liston.