by Nick Tosches
"Liston collapsed slowly, like a falling building, piece by piece, rolling onto his back, then flat on his stomach, his face pressed against the canvas." This account, from a front page story in the next day's New York Times, describes the halting, unnatural, and awkward amateur choreography of a man who is performing a fall rather than the sundering spontaneity of a man knocked down unawares.
It was a shambles. The referee, Jersey Joe Walcott, the Camden, New Jersey, assistant director of public safety and promotional shill of InterContinental, lost control of the goings on after the knockdown. While maneuvering Ali into a neutral corner, Walcott failed to follow the knockdown count of the timekeepers at ringside. After the fight was declared over upon the count of twelve, Sonny rose only to find out that the fight, which was over, was still going on as far as Jersey Joe was concerned. Confused, he squared off, like Ali, as if to fight again, while Walcott simultaneously and belatedly became aware of the timekeepers' twelve count. "Twelve? You counted to twelve?" he asked.
"Yes, twelve. The fight's over," they replied - whereupon Joe rushed across the ring and raised Ali's arm in victory.
The crowd stood and chanted. "Fake, fake, fake," again and again, until the last of them dwindled and dispersed in disgust.
"Fake, fake, fake." Some of them rushed the cordon of state troopers that surrounded the ring, yelling, "Fix, fix, fix," as Ali yelled back telling them to shut up, telling them that his was a righteous victory, a triumph of the "righteous life."
In reality, Ali seemed to have noticed the winning punch no more than anyone else. He would describe it after the fight as the "anchor punch," the secret weapon of Jack Johnson as passed on to Ali by Stepin Fetchit, the elderly comedian and old time movie player who was now a part of Ali's ever stranger retinue. In time, it became known in legend as the "phantom punch." Studied frame by frame, the film of the only camera that captured it showed what those who saw it that night in Lewiston saw - among the many who saw nothing - a punch that seemed too ineffectual to knock down, or even to ruffle, the leviathan that was Charles Sonny Liston.
"I overtrained for that fight," Sonny would say.
Maybe it said something, too, that he trained no longer to the nasty horns and pistol rhythms of "Night Train," but to "Railroad Train No. 1" by Lionel Hampton, who was from Ali's hometown of Louisville. It was as if that song. "Night Train," which was the beat and synesthesia of his deepest pulse, had now been taken utterly and without outward sound into the secret part of him, that secret part that was indeed becoming the whole of him.
But it was the damnedest thing: for once, finally, he had been cheered going into that ring in Maine. What a hell of a time to have it all taken from you.
Six months later, in November, he was talking about recruiting Cus D'Amato to manage him in a comeback. D'Amato called Sonny "a challenge" and said there was "a distinct possibility that I could make Liston the heavyweight champion again if he divests himself of the people around him." When told of D'Amato's statement, Sonny said, "It's the onliest way." And that was that.
By Christmas, his home in Denver was up for sale. On March 29, 1966, Sonny bought Kirk Kerkorian's place in Vegas for sixty four grand: split level, pastel green, with a swimming pool and a backyard that looked out over the sixteenth fairway of the Stardust Country Club. The address was 2058 Ottawa Drive, in the exclusive area of Paradise Township, less than a mile from where his hero and buddy, Joe Louis, lived, at 3333 Seminole Circle, in a house bought from Johnny Carson.
The tie between Vegas and St. Louis was not a tenuous one. Later, during Sonny's final days, one casino owner was known to associate with Charles "the Blade" Taurine, who in turn was implicated in dealings with John Vitale in St. Louis. Still later, it would be said by police intelligence sources that between one and two million dollars in gambling revenues were "illegally diverted from the Aladdin Hotel's casino in Las Vegas" and "channeled to underworld figures in St. Louis." This report of November 1980, said: "as much as $50,000 was brought to St. Louis each month by couriers, often businessmen who went to Las Vegas ostensibly to gamble. The sources said that both these couriers and Aladdin employees delivered the money to John J. Vitale, an alleged underworld boss.
"Until last month, the gambling resort was owned largely by St. Louis interests. Wayne Newton, the entertainer, bought the casino for about $85 million."
Sonny's first fight after the downfall in Lewiston came more than a year later. In Stockholm, on June 29, he knocked out Gerhard Zech of Germany in the seventh round.
"Blood streamed from Zech's eyes and mouth in the sixth round," said a wire service report, "and the flow continued in the seventh until Liston mercifully knocked him out."
His next three fights were in Sweden as well: a third round knockout in Gothenburg of Amos Johnson, on August 19; a first round knockout against Dave Bailey in Gothenburg on March 30, 1967; a sixth round knockout of Elmer Rush in Stockholm on April 28, 1967.
"This fighting is for the bird," he wrote to a friend in January 1967. From Sweden, in May of 1967, the Listons returned with a three year old boy, Daniell, who lived with them as an adopted son.
"I’m my own manager now," he declared in the summer of 1967. "When they try you for murder, they got to produce a body. But nobody can produce anybody who is managing me except me." Later, within the breadth of that same day, he said, "All I need is a manager. Somebody with a nice, clean record."
He talked about leaving Vegas, buying a farm somewhere, maybe Colorado.
In the fall of 1967, it was rumored and reported that Sammy Davis, Jr., was to be Liston's new manager. "Why would Sammy want to get involved with managing a guy nobody wants any part of?" asked Dick Young in his New York Daily News column of November 18.
A guy nobody wants any part of. "Liston, the bum of bums" yeah, that's what some other columnist called him - "the nothing of all nothings."
For the first time, as if uncaring, he indirectly admitted to his control by Carbo and Blinky. Applying for a license to fight in California, a member of the boxing commission in Sacramento asked him about his history of managers.
"One's doin' fifteen years," Sonny said, "and another's doin' twenty five."
The California commission turned down his application, but in February 1968, a California license was granted him.
In the spring of 1968, Sports Illustrated published an article called "What's Become of the Big Bear?" The author, Jack Olsen, described his attempts to draw words from the once infamous man who was now all but forgotten:
"Sonny lounged on a long window seat and tried his best to stay awake. 'Been huntin' rabbits,' he said with great effort, 'and when we hunts rabbits, we don't get much sleep. We leave at two o'clock in the morning." Olsen spends much of the time talking with Geraldine, then finally there is a question that Sonny rouses himself to answer. Olsen asked him if he lost any friends after the Clay fights. Sonny looked dead straight at him and dead straight said: "No. I had my friends in my pocket."
Back in 1965, he had been given a bit part in one of the two bad movies called Harlow that were released that year. In Vegas, he connected with a couple of more movie parts: Bob Rafelson's Head, which came out in 1968, and something called Moonfire, which came out in 1970. He did a 1969 Braniff Airline commercial with Andy Warhol, in which he sat in unsmiling silence, ostensibly aboard a Braniff aircraft, while Warhol, in the next seat, spoke to him about the "inherent beauty" of soup cans.
Punctuated by only one arrest (for drunk driving, in February 1969), Sonny fought a dozen fights between March of 1968 and September of 1969. He won them all, eleven of them by knockouts. In December 1969, at Kirk Kerkorian's new International in Vegas, his former sparring partner Leotis Martin, a three to one underdog, knocked him out in the ninth.
There would be one more fight, with the Bayonne heavyweight Chuck Wepner, at the Jersey City Armory on June 29, 1970.
At the weigh in and press conference at the Oyster Bay Restaurant in Jersey City a few days b
efore the fight, a reporter asked Sonny if he would request a license to fight in New York, which had always been denied him.
"I’m on my way down," he snarled. "The hell with New York." Wepner recalled that it was a surly motherfucker who looked down impassively at Wepner's hand when he extended it for a pre-fight shake before the press.
"Well, the first few rounds, the fight was almost even," Chuck said.
I thought he was getting tired, and I started pressing him, and he really nailed me with that jab. He had a tremendous jab. And he started busting me up. After the fifth round, I was target practice. My one eye closed, my equilibrium was off. Broken nose, broken left cheekbone, seventy two stitches. They iced me down for two straight days. I was in shock for three days, I really was.
He could punch. And it got so bad near the end when the guy landed a jab - and he had a jab; he could step in and throw his shoulder, like, bang, with the shoulder right behind it, the way you're supposed to throw it - I could hear the bone shattering. The referee came in at the beginning of the ninth round and he said. "I gotta stop the fight, his eyes are all busted up.'' And I said. "I’m all right." And he said. "Well, how many fingers do I have up?" I couldn't see him, all I could see were blurs. Al Braverman had his hand on my shoulder. Al tapped me three times; I said, "Three." He said. "O.K., you're all right, you can see." I came out for the ninth round and got banged around, but actually in the ninth I landed some. He was getting tired, definitely. He was even getting tired of beating the shit out of me.
Braverman, in partnership with Gary Garafola, was Chuck's manager. He was an acquaintance of Ash Resnick and had worked with Liston in Vegas. As Chuck said,
Al Braverman was supposed to be the trainer but was really only the cut-man, and Gary was the manager. Gary had Frankie De Paula, a couple other guys, and he also owned the Rag Doll up in Union City.
That's how I signed with him. I go up there to the Rag Doll, and they got this go-go girl dancing, and she was a knockout. Gail. Pretty sure her name was Gail. So, Gary Garafola, who owned the place, says, "When does your contract run out?" I said. "It runs out in about a month or two." He says, "What are you gonna do?" I says, "I don't know." He says. "I’d like to sign you." I said. "I don't know." So, I'm looking at the girl. Gary says. "You like her?" I said. "Do I like her? She's beautiful." He said, "Do you want her?" I said, "Do I want her?" He says, "You wanna sign a contract with me, you can have any girl here you want." I said, "Are you serious?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "I want her." He says, "Go in the office, I'll send her in." So, I go in the office, they've got these great big desks there, and I knocked everything off, pushed it on the floor. Five minutes later, she walks in and says. "Hi. I'm Gail. Gary told me to come in." I said, "Yeah?" She says, "What do you want?" I said, "I want everything." I was loaded. Anyway, I come outta there, and I'm all perspiring and everything; I come out and Gary had the contract. He said, "Here's the contract." I said, "Give me the pen, boss, you got yourself a fighter."
Not long after the fight at the Armory, Garafola would be charged with the murder of his light heavyweight boxer Frankie De Paula. But Frankie's murder, Chuck said, "was over a broad. He was whacking somebody's wife, and they wanted him to stay away, and he didn't. I even told him." Gary was acquitted, went to the joint on another rap, and it was then that Braverman took over actively as Chuck's manager.
The Genovese team player that oversaw that part of Jersey was James Napoli, also known as Jimmy Nap. He was, in Chuck's memorable phrase, "the local guy from the what you call it. He had a lot to do with the fights. He was very involved in all the fights in them days."
The Armory fight went into the tenth round, and it ended only when Wepner, one of the great warhorses of boxing, could no longer see through his swollen and blood drenched eyes. The referee was Barney Felix, who had refereed the Liston Clay fight in Miami, six years earlier.
A few years later, Chuck would fight Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight championship.
"I would have to say that Liston was a lot tougher to fight. Ali didn't hit like Liston. Liston was the only man that ever hurt me." Dave Anderson of the New York Times called the Jersey City fight between Liston and Wepner "a bloody sacrifice that evoked more sympathy for the loser than prestige for the winner."
Wepner's take was supposed to be fifty percent of the $37,600 gate, and from his take, he was supposed to pay out Sonny's guarantee of thirteen grand.
As he recalled, it was an even five grand, paid out to him in cash some days later at the office of the fight's promoter Willie Gilzenberg of Newark. "I gave Al a third. I wound up with thirty something hundred." Three thousand and change left from what had started out as fifty percent of a thirty seven thousand dollar gate. "Yeah. It was my biggest payday to date. By far."
Paul Venti, the knockdown timekeeper at the fight, shared a big musty dressing room with Sonny.
I didn't see Sonny Liston when I changed into my referee clothes, but when I went back after the show was over, Sonny was using a different corner from where I was. He got into his street clothes - brown suit, no tie, fedora - and I didn't want to bother him; I was in a different end of the room. And I was sitting on the stool of a piano that was there, and I was changing. So, now the guys came in from Bayonne, and they went over to Sonny.
Sonny was completely alone, Venti said, and the guys from Bayonne numbered either three or four.
"They had this white envelope, and they told Sonny, 'There you go, Seven grand. That's all we could come up with."'
"'No, no, no,' he says, 'I came here with a deal to get fifteen thousand."'
While the above board guarantee was stipulated at thirteen grand, there may have been an understanding of an additional two grand to be paid under the table, a practice far from uncommon.
"No, that's all we can give you. We're losing money on this whole thing. If you don't take it, then go home with nothing."
He took a deep breath. When he took a deep breath - I remember it like yesterday - I moved away. I figured, hey, were gonna have some fireworks here, and these guys are kinda crazy from Bayonne. They're always at ringside.
And, so, Sonny took a deep breath. "Count it," they told him.
He looked through the money. He looked again. And he looked at the guys. Stuck it in his inside pocket and walked out.
Three men flew with Sonny from Las Vegas to the fight and back. Two of those men are still living, and both of them recalled that Sonny left town with either thirteen grand, as one of them swears, or fifteen grand, as the other remembered while conceding that, yes, it might have been thirteen. Ten grand of that money, one of them said, went to pay off a losing bet that Sonny had made on Jerry Quarry, another heavyweight in another fight, a dozen days before. (Quarry, who was twenty-five and white, had beaten Floyd Patterson in 1967. Although it was not yet public knowledge at the time of Sonny's bet. Quarry was to be the opponent of Muhammad Ali several months later in the fight that would mark Ali's return to the ring after an absence of more than three years. It is interesting that Ali showed up during the Wepner fight and purposely disrupted it, aggressively drawing attention from the fight in the ring to his own loud presence.)
Paul Venti's mind is lucid, and he is a very honest man. The same can rightly be said for the other two gentlemen. Could it be that, after leaving the Armory, Sonny might have taken it upon himself to have collected what was due him? There were in his corner no more of those guys, as Chuck would have it, from the what you call it. The very fact that he had been treated as recounted in Venti's story evinces as much: that he was now a man without true intercessor, rabbi, or cumpari.
Venti, who was born in 1920, has been in the fight racket for a long, long time. "Frankie Carbo and Palermo," he said, "were running the fight game out of their cells. They were in jail, and they had a phone service at their disposal, and they made matches. They were running the Garden out of jail." (Lowell Powell agreed. "They could arrange anything.")
Things changed, Venti said, and
things stayed the same. "Today you've got about six, seven organizations, and they don't have to tell you who their champions are. If you don't protect them, you just don't work again. It's happening today. They don't want a lopsided decision, but if it's close, they expect you to lean."
I remembered the rumors at the time of the fight. Liston, it was whispered, was going to go down for the Hudson County money. "I wish," Wepner said with a laugh. "Maybe they didn't get the message through to him. I wish they had."
Johnny Tocco remembered sitting in a hotel coffee shop with Sonny a few days before the fight.
A couple of shady-looking characters came in and motioned Sonny over. So, Sonny told me he'll be right back, and then he left. He was gone for hours.
When I see him, I ask him who those guys were, and he just mumbled something. The next day, one of those guys comes up to me, shakes my hand, and says something like: "If your guy loses, don't feel bad. Chucks' a real popular guy here."
Well, I went up to Sonny, and I said. "Hey, is something going on? Who are those guys? Sonny, are you just here for a payday? If somethin's goin' on, I want to know about it."
Sonny said, "Aw, go to sleep. I'm going to knock this guy out."