The Devil and Sonny Liston

by Nick Tosches

  "The police liked the boy," Harrison would say. "He was handy around the station, washed cars, did everything. He was big for his age. Finally they found his aunt, and she came and claimed the boy. But it was the same thing. There was Sonny: hungry, no money, no place to eat or sleep. He saw a boy with five dollars - money the mother had given him to buy groceries - and he took it, strong armed him for it when he was only fifteen years old."

  It was Harrison who said that Sonny had attended school for a few days and been driven to quit because the other children laughed at him. Again, however, there was never any record of his attending school, and it is unlikely that he would have fled the mockery of smaller children. As Bob Burnes later declared, "Sonny never went to school." Liston himself cottoned to Harrison's tale, but in delivering the new revised version as autobiography, he sometimes let slip morsels of revelation about an earlier and more youthful criminal career. Telling one time of how the other schoolchildren had ridiculed him, he ended the poignant performance with the point blank afterthought: "So I wound up in the wrong school."

  "What school did you wind up in?" his interrogator asked.

  "Well, the house of detention."

  "How old were you then?"

  "I was about fourteen."

  Age, according to the endless flux of the Liston calendar is, of course, highly subjective, but according to the birth date he had finally settled on, he would have turned fourteen in 1946.

  "How long did you stay there?"

  "My mother, she got me out; and then, well, I figure - she got me out, and I went right back for the same things."

  "You did what?"

  "I went back to the same thing and wound up in a bigger school this time."

  In what seems to be his most straightforward account, published in 1961, Liston said:

  I got to running with the wrong crowd. We broke into this restaurant about two in the morning and got away. But after we had gone ten blocks we decided to get some barbecue, and then the police came along and barbecued us. I got out on probation. I was sixteen then, weighing over two hundred pounds. I was in a lot of street fights. I used to punch first and ask questions later, that's the way those guys do. I guess I was the biggest, strongest guy on the corner. None of the other gangs would mess with me, and so I started to strut with this gang and wound up in a bigger house.

  Some sucker sold me a gun to be shot only on Saturday night, that's the only time you needed it. I never shot a gun before, so I held it up in the sky and pulled the trigger. The gun lit up and I, thinking it was on fire, threw it in the mud. After that I started running with this guy who had a car. We made a few stickups, got away with the first, tried a second and it didn't turn out. This time, they sent me away to Jefferson City for five years.

  As much as they tried to cultivate for him an image of innocence, he inspired in Mitchell and Harrison themselves images of the predatory, the beastly, and the savage, which they expressed years later. In telling a story to illustrate the speed and stealth of the fighter's hands, Mitchell recounted the day when Sonny reached down and scooped a moving pigeon from a St. Louis sidewalk. "Man," Mitchell told him, "turn that pigeon loose. Everybody looking, think you a cannibal."

  "He's like a leopard," said Harrison, "that animal out there in the jungle - leap at an animal, kill it, but he don't need it."

  Sonny had not yet achieved much refinement of boxing style. He did not finesse his opponents: he simply obliterated them, usually without ever even using his right fist. "He had absolutely no right hand at all at this time," recalled Jim Lubbock, a Globe Democrat reporter who was involved in that newspaper's sponsorship of the Golden Gloves. "He just slapped with his right hand. He really didn't know how to fight." But, in Lubbock's phrase, "he had a left like a pile driver."

  That February 1953.Liston swept the competition in the open and novice heavyweight division of the Globe-Democrat's eighteenth annual Golden Gloves tournament. He went with the other local winners to Chicago, where, emerging as the sole surviving victor of the St. Louis team, he wiped out all comers and took the Midwestern Golden Gloves title from Ed Sanders of Los Angeles, the heavyweight champion of the 1952 Olympics. At the national matches in March, Liston defeated Julius Griffin of New York to become the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of America. And his right was becoming less idle.

  When sports minded St. Louisians turn out for the Globe Democrat's International Golden Gloves matches a week from tomorrow night. [wrote Jim Lubbock on June 14, 1953] chances are they'll be coming as much to see one St. Louis fighter as they will the 10 all European champions who make up the visiting team.

  The local larruper is a big, quiet, amiable heavyweight named Charles "Sonny" Liston. Virtually unheard of in fistic circles a year ago, he is currently bearing out predictions that someday soon he'll be "another Joe Louis."

  Within just a few months of formal boxing training, "Sonny" has batted around with comparative ease the best of the amateur fighters. One of his victims is World Olympic Heavyweight Champion Ed Sanders of Los Angeles.

  In fact, he has so completely outclassed most of his opposition that Chicago coaches have selected him to fight as their heavyweight when the Europeans battle here Tuesday night in their only other matches in this country.

  Possessed of no astounding amount of boxing skill as yet, "Sonny's" technique is simply to push his opponent in the face with a long, powerful jab, and occasionally crash home with a ponderous but even more powerful right.

  This rudimentary approach to the noble art of self-defense succeeds so well principally because the young man employing it is one of the strongest, fastest amateur heavyweights ever seen in a St. Louis ring, according to veteran boxing coaches who have seen them all for many years.

  Since last January, Liston has smashed and bashed his way to heavyweight championships in the Globe-Democrat's St. Louis Golden Gloves, the Midwest Golden Gloves and the National Golden Gloves, the latter two tourneys in Chicago. He has also won the Ozark A.A.U. title here.

  Just 20 years old, Sonny weighs 204 pounds. He works at the St. Louis Ordinance Plant, 4300 Goodfellow Boulevard, and trains in the evenings at Tony's Gym. 4525 Olive Street. His heavy punching makes sparring partners hard to find.

  What luck he'll have battling West Germany's Herman Schreibauer, the hard-hitting European heavyweight, remains to be seen. Most ringsiders expect to see him win. They feel they are watching the early stages of what could well be a truly great ring career.

  On June 22, Liston wiped out Herman Schreibauer of West Germany in less than a round, thus becoming the Golden Gloves champion of the world. According to the Globe-Democrat, "His victory over Schreibauer was so impressive that it left the 7489 fans in Kiel Auditorium Monday night convinced that the amateur ranks no longer can contain him."

  In four months, he had risen to the height of the amateur standings, and few who saw him doubted that there was a man alive he could not bring down. "Gloves King Liston Ready to Turn Pro," declared a headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch two days after the Schreibauer fight:

  Charles "Sonny" Liston climaxed the show with a quick technical knockout [reported the Post-Dispatch] in the first round of the final heavyweight bout.

  Obviously unworried, Liston whistled as he went about his work, stalked his opponent and then floored him with a solid right. When Schreibauer rose, he was unsteady and Referee Vic di Filippo quickly signaled the end of action after 2:16 of the round.

  This probably was Liston's final appearance in the amateur ranks. He is expected to sign a professional contract within the next few days.

  His contract with Harrison and Mitchell granted the two men half of Liston's purses and held them to pay all his expenses. The managers soon discovered, however, that it was difficult to find anybody willing to fight him, and when they could, the purses were small. Expenses included all his meals: and, as Mitchell's mother, Mrs. Nellie Mitchell Turner, said, "That Sonny is an eater."

  The first professio
nal fight they lined up for him - the contract was signed on August 26 - was a four round preliminary match against Don Smith, a newcomer from Louisville who had won his two previous matches, both in St. Louis, with impressive early round knockouts. Liston's rise through the amateur ranks had been so fast and so fulminous - such a sudden, attention commanding burst of neon lightning and Shango thunder - that the price negotiated for his professional debut was two hundred dollars, about four times the going rate for a preliminary novice.

  The Liston - Smith fight, held in St. Louis on September 2, 1953, lasted thirty three seconds, ending in a knockout by Liston with the first punch of the first round.

  Those thirty three seconds, that one single blow - the same blow that had felled robbery victim and Olympic champion alike - brought Liston more money than he had ever seen.

  Fifteen days later, he beat Ponce de Leon, a stiff from Spokane who was in the fifth year of a dead-end career laden with losses and draws. On November 21, Liston beat Benny Thomas of Memphis. In his first fight of the new year, on January 25, 1954, he beat Martin Lee: and on March 31, he beat Stan Howlett for the Missouri state championship. These are men whom boxing history has all but forgotten, but who never forgot their nights in the ring with Liston.

  By the spring of 1954, Liston had fought five fights, all of them in St. Louis, all of them against nobodies, all of them victories. Every good fighter with smart handlers is given many lambs to slaughter, easy fights that build a record that looks good on paper while giving the experience in the ring that will prepare him for bigger, tougher, and more seasoned game.

  Liston's first big fight, his first out of town fight, his first televised fight, was on June 29, 1954: a main event match in Detroit against the Michigan state heavyweight champion John Summerlin, a veteran fighter who had lost only once in a career of twenty bouts. That loss, several years before, had been to another St. Louis fighter, Wes Bascom, who was among the top ten light heavyweight contenders of his day and with whom Liston had sparred in St. Louis.

  Summerlin was a hometown hero and generally considered to be Michigan's finest heavyweight. Local bookmakers had Liston as an off the board twenty two to one underdog. But those odds meant nothing to Sonny, except for the nickel he had laid on himself: and he was the victor that night before the near capacity crowd of twelve hundred at the Motor City Arena.

  Six weeks later, in a rematch, on August 10, in the same ring, also televised by WWJ TV. Liston won again. "Sonny Liston," stated the Detroit News the next day, "could claim the Michigan title without dispute, if he resided here."

  Before the fight, the Detroit News had scoffed at growing comparisons of Liston to Joe Louis. "His home town," wrote Harry Stapler, "is paralleling his rise to that of Joe Louis, a bit of wishful thinking often engaged in on behalf of other heavyweights since the mid-thirties."

  After the fight, the Detroit Free Press quoted Bill Appleton, one of the three officials who judged the fight: "At this stage of his career, I'd say he's a better prospect than Joe Louis at a comparable point."

  "Liston is handled by Frank Mitchell, a wise old ring hand," said the Free Press. "If he shows patience and understanding, if he has the luck and good connections of Roxborough and Black, then maybe Liston will fulfill the bright promise he now shows." (John Roxborough and Julian Black were the managers of Joe Louis from the outset of his career, in 1934, to 1949.)

  "His backers," said the Press, "are prepared to move his headquarters from St.Louis, his home town, to Chicago."

  Backers. Connections. Chicago. If only they knew.

  Less than a month later, on September 7, fighting again at the Motor City Arena - not televised this time - Liston suffered the only loss in his rise to the top, when he was defeated by Marty Marshall, the light heavyweight champion of Michigan.

  A story circulated that Liston, who had never seen anyone he prostrated spring so sprightly back to his feet, was so bewildered and bemused when Marshall rose from a first round knockdown that his mouth hung open in disbelief, and Marshall caught him off guard with a punch that dislocated his jaw.

  The truth is that the punch that allegedly fractured Liston's jaw came three rounds later, and Liston, busted jaw and all, lost only by a close decision after the full eight rounds. It is with the loss to Marshall that the record entry for CHARLEY (SONNY) LISTON ends in The Ring Record Book of 1955. Regarding that sole and unlikely loss to a fighter twenty pounds lighter than Sonny, Frank Mitchell contended that "Marty Marshall is a clown," and that Sonny could have knocked him out if he had wanted to when he hit him in the second round. "But Sonny tells me he was told to carry the boy three or four rounds so the fans could get their money's worth. Sonny got to laughing, Marshall hit him, and broke his jaw."

  Sonny himself told a somewhat similar story: "I was told to take it easy for a couple rounds. Marshall's a clown, they told me, who'd bounce around and flick punches from all sides.

  "I was standing there, kinda wondering, when all of a sudden he lets out a yell, and with my mouth wide open, gaping, he slugged me right in the jaw. It didn't hurt, but I couldn't close my mouth. I had to fight the last six rounds with my mouth open. After a while it hurt bad."

  Neither of these accounts makes much sense. The blow that busted Sonny's jaw came in the fourth round of an eight round fight, and by then Sonny surely should have fulfilled his crowd pleasing obligations. But that is not what intrigues. It is the casual, almost whimsical "he was told to carry the boy three or four rounds," the casual, almost whimsical "I was told to take it easy for a couple rounds."

  Who was doing the telling and who was concerned that the humble ticket buyer should get his money's worth? Who was so compelling and so powerful that he very likely decided the outcome of the fight?

  Note that in Mitchell's version, he himself is innocent of knowing anything about anybody's being told anything until Sonny, after the fight, "tells me he was told." In fact, said Mitchell, he was not even with Sonny in Detroit. "I was busy with the newspaper," he said. "I sent Sonny up there alone", Mitchell said that Sonny was "very angry" with him for not going to Detroit with him, and for giving him the bill for having his jaw wired. But Mitchell expressed no anger at Sonny's listening to them, and Sonny expressed no anger at them for telling him to take it easy. "Marshall's a clown, they told me" - those were Sonny's words. "Marty Marshall is a clown" - those were the words of Mitchell.

  As for Marshall's being a clown, of the fifteen fights of his four year career, he had lost only twice and drawn only once.

  One thing is certain. Nobody in the fight racket ever gave a fuck about the suckers in the seats, except maybe for the guys that were selling the peanuts.

  And it wasn't like it was back in the ring in that penitentiary yard; it wasn't even like it was back in those alleys of dirt, fist, feet. It was a world of they and of them. And, just like back in those sandy slough plantation fields, when the Man says move, you got to move.

  With his decisive defeats, not once but twice, of the formidable favorite John Summerlin, Sonny's days as an underdog had come to an end. All that could be hoped for by those who bet on him was that short odds could be made longer. The more ineffectual a fighter appeared to be in one fight, the longer the odds against him in his next fight against a strong opponent. In this light, Sonnys' loss to Marshall turned out better than hoped for. But Sonny ended up out of action for nearly six months on account of that jaw. And there would be no further humanitarian concerns for the crowd by them, for Sonny was too exceptionally fine and potentially valuable an animal, and that potential must be brought to golden fruit. Soon, odds or no odds, he must be allowed to do what he did best, which surely was not to carry unknown clowns for the sake of those odds, but rather to bring ruin to them. Besides, they - somebody - owed him for that loss; and they owed him, putatively, for that busted jaw as well.

  In his return to the ring after the layoff following the first Marshall fight, Sonny beat Neil Welch of Toledo on March 1, 1955, at the Mason
ic Temple in St. Louis. This victory over Welch was as strangely lackluster as his loss to Marshall had been. If the Detroit loss - a big long money payoff for those foolhardy or wise enough to bet against him - made Liston look bad and raised the odds against him, the Welch victory did little to dispel the effects of that loss.

  In a story headlined "Sonny Liston Outpoints Toledo Boxer but Disappoints His Fans," W. J. McGoogan of the Post Dispatch wrote:

  Despite the fact that Liston pounded Welch at will and the Toledo boxer's only defense was to wrap his arms around his head, Liston was unable to floor the visitor, let alone knock him out.

  And on occasion, Welch managed to land a punch which momentarily stopped Liston, too, although Sonny wasn't hurt at any time while Welch appeared to be on his way out several times. He always managed to evade the kayo punch or Liston didn't find the right way to land it.

  No one knew Sonny Liston better as a man or as a fighter than the St. Louis light heavyweight Foneda Cox. On the June night in 1953 when Liston's amateur boxing career ended with his defeat of Herman Schreibauer, the twenty three year old Cox shared the evening's glory, defeating a West German opponent in the match preceding the Liston Schreibauer contest. On the night in Detroit when Liston beat Summerlin for the second time, Cox was again also a victor, winning a five round decision in a preliminary match against Bill Hunter.

  Tall, rangy Foneda Cox was a protege of Frank Mitchell, and Tony Anderson was his trainer. After Liston's parole from prison the previous year, "they put Sonny in the same gymnasium with me, and I started boxing with Sonny. That's how we got together." The two men became more than sparring partners and fellow boxers: they became fast friends.