This year marks the 50th anniversary of Charles ‘Sonny’ Liston’s death but even half a century on, his demise is shrouded in mystery.
Perhaps the most feared heavyweight champion of all time, Liston is ranked by boxing bible The Ring as the 10th greatest in the division of all time, and his fights with Muhammad Ali are among the most storied in history.
Yet the tale of his life is dark and his death even more haunting.
Liston was one of the last boxing greats with indisputable ties to the mob.
Many believe those connections caught up with him on that frigid day in Nevada in December 1970 when his wife, Geraldine, found him dead in their Las Vegas home.
Charles ‘Sonny’ Liston, pictured here (right) about to land a huge uppercut on Floyd Patterson in their fight in 1962, had a life and, more pertinently, death shrouded in mystery
Liston was a man of few words and in his day the most feared heavyweight in the world
Geraldine had been visiting her mother in St Louis over Christmas and was growing concerned when her husband failed to return her calls.
For almost two weeks she’d been unable to get in touch and, in a panic, flew back to Las Vegas.
The house was unlocked and eerily silent but there was a dreadful smell in the air. ‘I thought he must have cooked and left something on the stove’, she later explained.
She continued calling out for her husband and followed the stench upstairs where she was confronted by the horrifying sight of Liston’s bloated dead body lying at the foot of their bed wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts.
Dried blood had congealed under his nose and Geraldine quickly ushered their seven-year-old son Daniel downstairs away from the grim scene.
Judging by the pile of untouched newspapers and milk bottles that had been delivered, Liston was thought to have been dead for six days and his body was in a state of decomposition.
Bizarrely, Geraldine’s first reaction was to call a lawyer and only hours later did she ring the police. When they eventually arrived, the formalities were completed and Liston was pronounced dead.
Investigators conducted a thorough sweep of the property, located in the affluent neighbourhood of Paradise Palms, but found no signs of forced entry, weapons or signs that a struggle had taken place.
It was Liston’s wife Geraldine (right) who found him dead in their Las Vegas home in 1970
Alongside Liston’s corpse there was a small bag of marijuana and some vodka. In the kitchen, a small amount of heroin was found and a penny balloon, used to transport illegal drugs.
Many reports of Liston’s death stated that fresh needle marks were found in his arms, but that was denied by Geraldine, who claimed her spouse never used drugs.
Some have alleged that she may have removed a syringe from the scene as she was at the house with the attorney for a prolonged period of time before the police arrived.
The reports of needle marks were a particularly odd details and gave credence to the speculation that all was not as it seemed.
Liston was known to be terrified of needles, leading some of his closest friends to claim he’d never touch heroin for that very reason.
In 1989, his former trainer Johnny Tocco, told the Washington Post: ‘He wouldn’t even go to a doctor for a check-up, for fear some doctor would want to stick a needle in him.’
Liston had mob ties and even met the Kray twins, Reggie (centre left) and Ronnie (centre right)
Liston was once the most feared fighters in the United States and his death was huge news.
The highly-anticipated autopsy came back ruling that he’d died of lung congestion and heart failure, in other words ‘natural causes’.
Some morphine and codeine was found in his system but not enough to rule that there had been an overdose.
Liston’s death, as with much of his life, provided more questions than answers. It was not even known how old he was when he died.
Some believed him to be around 40 but other placed him closer to 50. There was no birth certificate and he was the 24th of 25 children from a household so poor that he was sent to work as an eight-year-old in Arkansas.
‘We hardly had enough food to keep from starving, no shoes, only a few clothes, and nobody to help us escape from the horrible life we lived,’ he would later lament. ‘We grew up like heathens.’
Liston had numerous brushes with the law and first discovered boxing while in prison. Here he is pictured while standing trial on a drink driving charge, on which he was acquitted, in 1965
The heavyweight had 15-inch hands and immense power, even his jab was concussive
Liston was unable to read or write and was bullied for it at school. The family moved to St Louis where the young man continued to veer away from education and started turning to crime.
Liston was convicted for armed robbery in his early twenties but his two-year stretch in prison was a blessing in disguise.
Father Alois Stevens, a Catholic priest who also ran the prison gym singled out Liston for his incredible physical prowess and introduced him to boxing.
‘He was the most perfect specimen of manhood I had ever seen,’ Stevens told Sports Illustrated.
‘Powerful arms, big shoulders. Pretty soon he was knocking out everybody in the gym. His hands were so large! I couldn’t believe it.’
When Liston was released on parole in 1953, he quickly became a professional. The problem was, nobody wanted to fight him.
He was a giant of a man, incredibly intimidating, just out of prison and even Muhammad Ali would later go on to say: ‘Of all the men I fought in boxing, Sonny Liston was the scariest.’
This is where the mob came in and Liston found himself caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. The only way he could find willing opponents was by allowing the mob to manage him and set up fights. But it came at enormous cost, both in terms of earnings, with his handlers controlling all income, and also his wider reputation.
‘The Big Bear’ was an imposing figure and many rivals simply would not face him
He never learned to read or write and turned to a life of crime from a young age
Of course, this reputation could be used as a marketing tool to sell fights and fuelled his rise to prominence, but it was exploited by the press who were all too eager to portray Liston as the antithesis to ‘white America’.
President John F Kennedy urged Floyd Patterson to find someone to fight with ‘better character’ when the two were preparing for their title showdown.
Despite the huge racial tensions at the time, Liston could not find great support among black Americans either.
Powerful advocates of the civil rights movement distanced themselves from the boxer, largely due to his connections with the criminal underworld.
The famous line: ‘The trouble with boxing today is that legitimate businessmen are horning in on our game’, was uttered by Frank ‘Blinky’ Palermo, Liston’s manager in his early years.
And the heavyweight also made ends meet as an enforcer for a mobster named John Vitale, despite supposedly working as his driver.
On a trip to the UK, he was even pictured meeting London’s infamous gangsters, the Kray twins.
Liston’s boxing contract was majority owned by Frankie Carbo, once a mob hitman and senior member of the Lucchese crime family who took charge of boxing for the mafia.
Liston went to prison for armed robbery, and was an enforcer for the mob when he came out
Mug shots of mobster Frank ‘Blinky’ Palermo, who was Liston’s manager early in his career
In the ring, Liston continued to make great strides, destroying Patterson to win the title and knocking him out again in the first round of their rematch.
He then came up against Ali, or Cassius Clay as he was then known. Liston was so widely feared that British champion Henry Cooper talked up facing Ali, but said if Liston won, he wouldn’t fight him.
Cooper’s manager Jim Wicks, said: ‘We don’t even want to meet Liston walking down the same street.’
Clay was regarded as a massive underdog, just 22 at the time, and many thought Liston unbeatable. One journalist in the Los Angeles times wrote: ‘The only thing at which Clay can beat Liston is reading the dictionary.’
The lead-up to the fight was peppered with entertaining jibes from Clay and he read out the following on CBS:
‘Clay comes out to meet Liston and Liston starts to retreat,
If Liston goes back an inch farther he’ll end up in a ringside seat.
Clay swings with a left, Clay swings with a right,
Just look at young Cassius carry the fight.
Liston keeps backing but there’s not enough room,
It’s a matter of time until Clay lowers the boom.
Then Clay lands with a right, what a beautiful swing,
And the punch raised the bear clear out of the ring.
Liston still rising and the ref wears a frown,
But he can’t start counting until Sonny comes down.
Now Liston disappears from view, the crowd is getting frantic
But our radar stations have picked him up somewhere over the Atlantic.
Who on Earth thought, when they came to the fight,
That they would witness the launching of a human satellite.
Hence the crowd did not dream, when they laid down their money,
That they would see a total eclipse of Sonny.’
Muhammad Ali taunted Liston repeatedly ahead of their first fight despite being the underdog
Ultimately, Liston failed to answer the call at the start of the seventh round, spitting out his mouthguard and leaving his challenger to celebrate the victory.
But it was the rematch between the pair that has become legendary.
In 1965, the pair locked horns once more. This time, it only lasted 104 seconds and Liston was sent sprawling to the canvas by ‘the phantom punch’.
A seemingly innocuous shot had felled the powerful former champion and he rolled on the ground, stumbling, apparently trying to get back up.
‘You’re supposed to be so bad! Nobody will believe this!’ Ali yelled, and the moment was captured in one of the most famous sporting pictures ever taken, of the champion standing over Liston imploring him to rise.
Plenty of spectators in the ringside seats didn’t even see the punch and there was a cacophony of boos as chaos reigned and Liston was eventually deemed to have been counted out.
This was the so-called ‘phantom punch’ that floored Liston and sparked furious debate in 1965
The picture of Ali standing over Liston, beckoning him to get up, is an iconic photograph
The video replay has split opinion and debate rages on over whether it was a legitimate knockout or fixed fight.
Even Geraldine had her suspicions, later admitting: ‘I think Sonny gave that second fight away. I don’t know whether he was paid [but] that’s my belief, and I told him.’
Liston was at his lowest ebb, unloved at by fans, the media and general public and now regarded by many as having thrown the fight.
But his career was then revived, albeit against lesser opposition, as he claimed 14 wins in a row before suffering a nasty KO loss to Leotis Martin, ruining any hopes he had of fighting for a world title once more.
He beat Chuck Wepner in June 1970, six months before his death in what would prove to be his final fight.
Theories abounded about Liston’s demise. Rob Steen, who wrote Liston’s biography, told the BBC: ‘The whole Liston story is so shrouded in mystery.
‘There’s so many people who died who might have been able to shed a little bit of light on it. But I don’t think anyone ever really believed he had a heart attack.’
Liston, pictured here agreeing to fight Patterson (left) in 1962, knocked out the former champion twice, in the first round of both their encounters
‘My inclination is that he was bumped off because he was of no use to the mob anymore. He knew things that may have come out, or indeed have come out over the years, and they decided it was too big a risk having him around.’
‘After the second Ali fight, when his life was in a bit of turmoil, he was apparently less than respectful to a particular member of the mob from Cleveland. This guy was very angry that he had not been shown sufficient respect by Liston and that was the trigger. That made the powers that be decide that they didn’t need him around anymore.’
Liston was certainly not afraid to stand up to powerful characters.
David Remnick in his book King of the World retold a well worn anecdote, of the boxer bumping into Moe Dalitz, a powerful leader in the mob in Las Vegas.
He wrote: ‘As a joke, Liston made a fist at Dalitz and cocked it.
‘If you hit me, you’d better kill me, because if you don’t, I’ll make one telephone call and you’ll be dead in 24 hours,’ the mobster replied.
Liston showed off a rare jovial side on a visit to Scotland in 1963 with a ‘Highland Fling’
There is another school of thought that Liston was supposed to throw his last bout against Wepner but refused to follow orders, infuriating his handlers.
Another possibility is that the heavyweight was simply not profitable for his bosses any more and knew too much about boxing’s criminal underbelly, putting them in a vulnerable position.
Although his death did not carry the hallmarks of a traditional mob hit, some have suggested that Liston had a heroin overdose forced upon him, explaining how the fear of needles might have been irrelevant.
And there are other, more mundane angles of speculation.
Liston had been in a car accident the week before his death and could have mixed the medication to dull his pain with alcohol or other substances with lethal effect.
The strands of speculation fly off in different directions and even with the clear lens of hindsight, truth of Liston’s downfall remains evasive.
The ‘Big Bear’ lived an extraordinary life of which the final mysterious chapter continues to confound.
While the passing of time has enabled an appreciation of Liston’s career, darkness still obscures the truth about his death almost 50 years on.
Liston’s life was extraordinary and his death still throws up more questions than answers