Word: liston
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Cassius Clay looks ahead. Not to his next $1,000,000, of course: that is already assured if Sonny Liston can only learn how to drive a Cadillac in a straight line. But after Liston, what? Champion Clay thought he had just the thing: Canada's George Chuvalo, 27, a slabsided, 208-lb. heavyweight who had won 29 out of 39 fights, 23 by knockouts. Chuvalo seemed to be a pressagent's dream: broken-nosed, granite-chinned, he had never been knocked off his feet ("Belt him in the face," said one admirer, "and all he does...
...took him only one round to find a brand-new challenger. Discredited as he was by two quick knockouts at the hands of Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, 30, is still one of the most interesting fighters ever to climb into a ring: a problem child, a moody, monkish man who at 21 became the youngest heavyweight champion ever, without even becoming a real heavyweight. Floyd weighed 182¼; lbs. when he knocked out Archie Moore in 1956; for last week's fight he weighed 197¼ lbs., the heaviest of his career-and the bulge of fat around...
...head; the skin around his kidneys was covered with bloody welts. "I kept telling myself, 'You can't be knocked out, you can't be knocked out,' " he said afterward. He talked longingly about a title fight with Clay and another shot at Liston, and chided sportswriters who predicted that Chuvalo would put him down as soon as he tapped him on his china chin. "I proved that I could take a punch much better than you gentlemen gave me credit for," he said. "I would say that I am deserving of a chance to fight...
Could Patterson beat Clay? Or Liston? Maybe not. But he had at least won his right to one more big payday...
...driver having trouble parking his yellow Cadillac looked familiar, and Denver police moved in for a closer look. Sure enough, there was Sonny Liston, apparently full of yuletide cheer, or so the cops thought. It took ten bulls to wrestle the Big Bear off to city jail, and another two or three deputies to wring out his fingerprints. The prints were hardly necessary. He was nabbed last March for speeding and for packing a concealed pistol, for which he was fined $600 and given a suspended jail sentence. This time the rap is drunken driving, and if convicted...