May 25, 1965, 60 years ago: A fight is held for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. It's not the greatest such fight. But it might be the most controversial. Certainly, it is the strangest.
Arguably, the most significant sports building in Maine is The Colisée in Lewiston, about 36 miles north of Portland. Not because it was home to the Maine Nordiques, a farm team of hockey's Quebec Nordiques, from 1973 to 1977. Not because it hosted the Lewiston Maineiacs of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League from 2003 to 2011, before they moved to Sherbrooke from whence they came. Not because it hosted the Portland Pirates in the 2013-14 season while the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland was being renovated. Not because it is now home to another team named the Maine Nordiques, of the North American Hockey League.
Ali, born Cassius Clay, had taken the title from Liston on February 25, 1964 in Miami Beach. Shortly thereafter, he announced his name change and his conversion to Islam. Both men were shrouded in controversy: Ali due to his association with the Nation of Islam, Liston due to his status as an ex-convict and his suspected ties to organized crime. Lewiston was chosen as a site because boxing's governing bodies were committed to a New England venue, but nobody else in the 6-State region (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut) seemed to want it.
To make matters worse, the fight, originally scheduled for November 16, 1964, had to be delayed, as Ali needed surgery due to a hernia. So it was delayed to May 25, 1965, allowing all the simmering resentments to come to a near boil. There was even talk that the fight was fixed -- though both men's fans were suggesting it was fixed for the other.
The referee was former Champion Jersey Joe Walcott. Both fighters were booed upon their introductions. Midway through the 1st round, Liston threw a left jab, and Ali went over it with a fast right, knocking the former Champion flat on his back. Liston rolled over, got to his right knee, and then fell on his back again.
Walcott had a hard time getting Ali to go to a neutral corner. Ali initially stood over Liston, yelling, "Get up, sucker!" At this point, Neil Leifer of Sports Illustrated took the picture above, one of the most famous photographs in sports history.
When Walcott got back to Liston, and looked at the knockdown timekeeper, Francis McDonough, to pick up the count, Liston had fallen back on the canvas. Walcott never did pick up the count. He said he could not hear McDonough, who did not have a microphone. Also, McDonough did not bang on the canvas or motion a number count with his fingers. McDonough, however, claimed Walcott was looking at the crowd and never at him.
After Liston arose, Walcott wiped off his gloves. He then left the fighters to go over to McDonough. Waltcott later said McDonough had told him, "I counted him out. The fight is over." Nat Fleischer, editor of The Ring magazine, had no authority over the fight, but he backed McDonough up, saying the fight should be over. Walcott then rushed back to the fighters, who had resumed boxing, and stopped the fight, awarding Ali a knockout victory.
It remains one of the quickest heavyweight title knockouts in history. Many in the small crowd had not even settled in their seats when the fight was stopped. The official time of the stoppage was announced as 1:00 into the first round, which was wrong. Liston went down at 1:44, got up at 1:56, and Walcott stopped the fight at 2:12.
McDonough and Fleischer were wrong in their interpretation of how the rule should have been applied. Under the rule, the timekeeper is supposed to start the count at the time of a knockdown. The referee's duty is to get the boxer scoring the knockdown to a neutral corner, pick up the count from the timekeeper. and continue it aloud for the knocked down boxer.
Nevertheless, Liston was down for 12 seconds -- 2 seconds fewer than Gene Tunney was down in his "Long Count" fight with Jack Dempsey in 1927. But Liston was no Tunney. He was more like the Mike Tyson of his era: Show him that you're not afraid of him, and that you can hit him, and he would fold, or even start cheating. In his 1st fight with Ali, he tainted his gloves to try to blind Ali. In the 2nd fight, he never got the chance to cheat.
Some people wondered if Ali had even hit Liston, or if Liston had gone down on his own, quitting the way he'd quit on his stool between the 6th and 7th rounds of their 1st fight. The suggestion was that he lost on purpose for more money from gamblers -- in ring parlance, "took a dive." The film shows this not to be the case: It clearly shows that Ali's punch was no "Phantom Punch." Instead, it had lifted Liston off the canvas entirely. Liston didn't dive: He fell, from being hit.
James Braddock was Heavyweight Champion from 1935 to 1937. He said of Ali, "I have a feeling that this guy is a lot better than any of us gave him credit for. It isn't the knockout punch that sticks in my mind as much as a punch he let go earlier... It was a right to Liston's jaw, and it shook him to his shoetops. For all we know, it could have been the one that set up the knockout."
Rocky Marciano was Heavyweight Champion from 1952 to 1955. After seeing the replay, he said, "I didn't think it was a powerful punch when I saw the fight from ringside. Now, I think Clay, seeing the opening, snapped the punch the last six inches." But he still didn't think the punch was hard enough to be a knockout, only a knockdown.
Liston had 16 more fights, winning 15 of them, 14 by knockout. So the suggestion that "He was never the same fighter" is ridiculous. But he never got another shot at the title, not even after Ali was stripped of it in 1967, following his refusal to accept being drafted into the U.S. Army. Of course, by then, Liston was officially 35 years old -- but Walcott had been 37 when he won the title. Liston died in 1970, also under mysterious circumstances.
McDonough died in 1968, Fleischer in 1972, Walcott in 1994.
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