Among the best black-oriented up-from-the-bootstraps movies was Robert Townsend’s true-life Phantom Punch (2009), the searing tale named for Muhammad Ali’s love-tap that “knocked out” ill-fated heavyweight king Charles “Sonny” Liston in 1965. The fearsome Liston was effectively portrayed by brawny look-alike Ving Rhames.
This not-to-be-missed film was a thought-provoking tip of the iceberg. In 2012, I got an even straighter scoop from Paul Gallender’s meticulously detailed book Sonny Liston: The Real Story Behind the Liston-Ali Fights. And now, on Nov. 15, Showtime will air a documentary, "Pariah: The Lives and Death of Sonny Liston.”
The movie, book and documentary finally, and in uncompromising fashion, pull the covers off the troubled, controversial life a major black sports figure.
Due to his time as a strong-arm mob enforcer in St. Louis, Liston spent time in prison. There, as depicted in Phantom Punch, a white Catholic priest (played by Rick Roberts) taught him to box. In one scene, Rhames tells Roberts he’s behind bars “…because I knock ‘m… f... ers’ out.”
In addition to Liston’s suspected mob-ties, Gallender’s most startling revelation is that he was born in 1917 and actually was 47 when, as a huge favorite, lost his title to 22-year-old Cassius Clay in 1964. His book claims Liston took a dive in their 1965 return to Muhammad Ali (formerly Clay)—going down for the count from a “punch” nobody saw.
I first heard of Liston in the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir, Va., in 1959. I got the word from Sgt. Tommie “Sarge” Johnson, an early Liston confidante and trainer of the 1976 U.S. Olympic team. Later, I interviewed the soft-spoken Liston during his December 1962 tour of Milwaukee Children’s Hospital for the black weekly Milwaukee Star. He smiled when I mentioned Sarge Johnson as we discussed some of his biggest wins. But when I worked up the nerve to ask his age, he simply answered, “Older than you might think.”
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Interestingly enough, Joe Louis—the fabled Brown Bomber —once opined that “hittin’ Sonny was like throwin’ corn flakes at a battleship.” That’s how tough he was.
Throw the Fight?
Thus, many boxing experts agree Liston—whom Ali, in Gallender’s book, said, “looked as old as my father”—was forced to throw their second fight in Lewiston, Maine. Rhames, as Liston, disputes this in Phantom Punch when confronted by his oily white manager (Nicholas Turturro), who had to answer to the lead mobster (David Proval).
Following that infamous bout, a still potent Liston KO’d 13 of his next 14 foes before his suspicious death on Dec. 30, 1970, from a reported heroin overdose. His known fear of needles sparked rumors of foul play. His wife, Geraldine (Stacey Dash in Phantom Punch) found him dead six days later in their Las Vegas home, Jan. 5, 1971.
During Christmas week in 1962, as a youthful sports editor of The Star, I got a call that new heavyweight champ Liston was to visit crippled kids at Children’s Hospital. With a Star photographer, I rushed to the hospital.
Happily, no other local reporters were present, so I had myself a “scoop.” And Liston—dubbed the “big ugly bear” by Muhammad Ali—was all smiles as he greeted, coddled, soothed and whispered to a number of bed-ridden, crippled black kids of all ages.
Owing to his many siblings and a brutal, hardscrabble Arkansas childhood with an abusive father (excruciatingly detailed in the movie and book), Liston had an affinity for needy children. Touring the local hospital in a grey tweed overcoat with a black velvet collar, the intimidating, burly, 6-foot-tall, 215 lb. boxer had the look of a champion.
At one stop, he grinned broadly as his huge hands presented a large drawing of himself in a fighting pose to young, awe-struck crippled boy on his stomach. I was touched.
Three years earlier, as a new, wide-eyed lieutenant, I was accompanied by the older Sgt. Johnson to a closed-circuit telecast in Fort Belvoir’s movie theater showing heavyweight king Floyd Patterson vs. Sweden’s Ingemar Johansson in Yankee Stadium.
“Don’t be surprised if Johansson knocks out Floyd. The man can’t take a big punch,” Sarge said. I asked who he thought was the best heavyweight, if not the 195-lb. Patterson.
Without hesitation, he replied: “Sonny Liston. If he ever gets the chance, he’ll win by a knockout. I don’t care who he fights. Liston is the hardest puncher I ever saw.”
Patterson was an ex-champ in three rounds as Johansson scored seven knockdowns. Three years later, after regaining the title from Johansson, Floyd defended against Liston in Chicago. But he was KO’d by Sonny in one round, incisively relived in Phantom Punch. I predicted this outcome in advance on the front page of the Milwaukee Star.
In 1963, Liston again brutally dispatched Patterson in the first round in Las Vegas. Watching the closed-circuit telecast in Milwaukee’s Warner Theater, I never dreamed there ever would be an accurate, definitive film or book about the stoic, daunting Liston.
Finally, after many years following the “sweet science” and wondering what happened to this tragic pugilist, I saw 2009’s Phantom Punch and read 2012’s Sonny Liston: The Real Story. And the intricate mystery of the life and death of much-maligned and hated Charles “Sonny” Liston was solved.
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