Word: liston
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This is the dream of Charles ("Sonny"') Liston, 29. It is a tortured dream, peopled with shadows: hoodlums, lawyers, judges, cops, commissioners, pugs, promoters, priests, Senators and sportswriters. It is a fragile dream. But there is a chance of its coming true. Last week the terms of the contract were agreed on (55% for the champion, 12½% for the challenger) and the promotional drums were booming for what promised to be the richest bout in boxing history. This summer, probably in June at New York's Yankee Stadium, Sonny Liston will fight Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight...
...Grunt & a Click. Challenger Liston is the most controversial figure to fight for the heavyweight championship since Jack ("Li'l Arthur") Johnson, the first of the great Negro champions and a man whose full-blown arrogance inspired fans to cry for "a great white hope." Semiliterate, surly and suspicious, Liston starts telephone conversations with "It's your dime, start talking," ends them without warning, on a grunt and a click. Brazen and tough, he has been arrested 19 times since 1950, convicted twice (armed robbery, assaulting a police officer), spent a total of three years in prison...
...police in St. Louis, Liston is an incorrigible troublemaker. "He's a bad man," says Detective Sergeant James Reddick. "He hangs out with a bunch of dogs." To his onetime comanager, Monroe Harrison, he is "vicious all the way." To some sportswriters, he is too mean to be permitted in the ring. Wrote Gene Ward in the New York Daily News: "The world has too many hoodlums in high places as it is." Yet to the Rev. Edward P. Murphy, a Denver Catholic priest who befriended him, Liston is "a man of tremendous potential...
...fashionable explanation for criminal acts is a troubled childhood. Liston's was all of that. One of 25 children born to an Arkansas cotton farmer and his two wives, Sonny has hated authority as long as he can remember. "I caught a whupping from my father every day. If he missed a day, I'd have to go to him and ask, 'Why didn't you whup me?' " His mother walked out and went to St. Louis. At twelve, Sonny ran away to join her. "She put me in school," says Liston...
What Counts. "A boxing match is like a cowboy movie,'' says Liston. "There's got to be good guys, and there's got to be bad guys. That's what people pay for." Liston is a certified bad guy, but when he squares off against Patterson in June, only one thing will count: How well can he fight...