♪ dramatic music ♪
♪♪♪
[sirens blaring]
♪♪♪
[Gandy] My partner and I got a call from dispatch.
It says, uh, "Any narcotics detectives in the area
of Autumn Wood Drive to come by."
♪♪♪
I went up to the bedroom.
There was sheriff's deputies running
over the place like ants.
They were everywhere.
♪♪♪
It didn't even look like Liston,
he'd been dead for so long.
He'd been dead four or five days.
He was bloated.
He was full of methane gas.
It really made me sick in my stomach,
because he was such a predominant figure
in--in sports world.
I just thought it was a terrible, disrespectful way
for him to go.
[camera shutter clicking]
♪ tense music ♪
♪♪♪
[Farrell] Sonny Liston was the greatest heavyweight
who ever lived, I have no doubt about that.
He was a bona fide monster.
[Assael] He punched with the force
of a government crash test.
[announcer] Westphal has never been knocked
on his feet until now.
Sonny Liston was the first intimidating fighter
with the mean scowl and the mean grin.
He was a real badass, a real menacing force.
The way Sonny won most of his fights was before he even got
into the ring, those eyes.
♪♪♪
[Collins] He was an ex-convict.
♪♪♪
- He was brutal. - [grunts]
He was mobbed up.
He was a symbol of the champ we didn't want.
♪♪♪
Sonny was in the epicenter of a perfect storm,
as far as what was going on in society.
♪♪♪
The Civil Rights Era was just starting,
and he was the guy in the middle
that took all the grief.
America needed to remind the broader white public
of the danger that was black folk,
and nobody represented that danger more than Sonny Liston.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] We don't know how Sonny Liston died,
and in the void created by the absence
of rational explanation, conspiracy filled it
like a foul air.
[Assael] The medical examiner called it natural causes.
But nobody around Sonny believed that.
Everybody believed he was murdered.
So many people wanted Sonny dead.
The only question is, who got to him first?
♪ tense music ♪
♪♪♪
[Collins] Nobody really knows when Sonny Liston was born.
He often gave the date of May 8th, 1932.
But he was probably older than that.
There were no records.
Not even the family Bible had his birth date in there.
So he was a mystery right from the start.
♪♪♪
Sonny was the 24th of 25 children.
His father, Tobe, was a sharecropper,
and with that many mouths to feed,
it must have been tough.
I mean, Sonny knew what it was to be hungry.
You know, he knew that.
♪♪♪
[Long] In Forrest City, Arkansas,
we were trying to survive.
Day-to-day survival.
'Cause, you know, poor people-- We were poor people.
So, and you know, we trying to live from day to day.
♪♪♪
[Collins] He didn't really get much of an education.
He never learned to read or write.
He was out in the fields working by time
he was eight years old.
♪♪♪
[Izenberg] The story-- and I think
it's more than apocryphal--
The mule dies, and his father says,
"You're the mule."
Hooks him up to the harness and he's plowing furrows with him.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] He was whipped by his father
to force him to work harder,
and Sonny had the marks to prove it.
♪♪♪
Getting beaten as a child, you know,
will really affect your outlook on how you see things.
If you had hoped for a better life,
you will live your life differently.
He didn't have hope for a better life.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] All Sonny knows is violence.
And if Sonny looks at the world around him, you know,
what does he see?
He sees violence towards black men, black children.
♪♪♪
[Jeffries] Jim Crow America was violent.
Jim Crow America was dangerous.
You could be walking down the street as a young man,
as a boy, as a woman, and literally your life
could be snuffed out.
Like, that's what Jim Crow was.
♪♪♪
Around 1946, Sonny's mother left to go north
in search of a better life.
She ended up in St. Louis, but Sonny was still back
on the plantation.
So, um, he got a bus ticket to go to St. Louis.
♪♪♪
[Jeffries] They called it black folk
in search of the promised land.
You get a couple million black folk literally looking
for a better way of life.
The reality, though, uh, was that promised land
was fabled.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] Sonny finds his mother.
Is the mother happy to see him?
Maybe a little. Maybe not.
Sonny is another mouth to feed,
and then he's on the streets.
He was at the dark side of St. Louis at the time,
the real poor section,
and he saw how the poor people got money.
They robbed and steal.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] Sonny Liston, after some minor infractions,
went to the big time.
He went to rob a gas station, he went to rob a restaurant,
and he used a gun in the commission of these crimes.
[Collins] Sonny always wore the yellow shirt.
Police knew they were looking for a guy
wearing a yellow shirt, and they got him.
♪♪♪
After Sonny was tried, he got, um, five years in jail.
That was the sentence for armed robbery at the time.
And he went to the penitentiary
in Jefferson, which was a really tough place.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] Time Magazine called it
the bloodiest 47 acres
in America. Gangs ruled it.
There were fights all the time.
Guards were afraid to patrol some of the d-blocks.
♪♪♪
Liston was brutalized early in prison.
I believe Liston had to fight for everything he got there.
And I think he took his share of beatings.
It was a Darwinian existence.
[Rigueur] His story becomes about survival.
Now, his story had always been about survival,
but it takes on a new element.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] Father Stevens, who was working at the prison
got him into the boxing program there.
♪♪♪
[Collins] Father Stevens was trying to do a good turn
for somebody he thought that might have a chance
to break away from a life of crime.
♪♪♪
[Izenberg] Boxing has always been
a step ladder for poor people
without other skills.
And Sonny fit that picture 100 percent.
♪♪♪
[Tyson] Sonny Liston saw boxing as a way out.
He didn't wanna live that life in prison no more.
He didn't want to live that life in the streets.
And that's why he excelled and did so well.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] Sonny was a prodigy. He was a revelation.
This is a guy who could be really an exceptional athlete.
A great fighter.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] And this is something good,
that he can hang his identity onto.
This is what his identity's all about.
Sonny had beaten up all the inmates that dared get in
the ring with him.
♪ dramatic music ♪
Father Stevens thought, "Well, let's see how he could
do with a pro.
So they brought in Thurman Wilson
who was considered the best heavyweight
in the neighborhood.
♪♪♪
He lasted two rounds with Sonny.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] The manager Mitchell who brought him in said,
"I don't think I should be managing Wilson.
I should look into handling Sonny Liston."
As with everything with Sonny Liston,
there's always a subtext, okay?
It turns out that Frank Mitchell
is connected to Johnny Vitale.
Johnny Vitale is in the mob.
♪♪♪
And before you know it, Sonny Liston is paroled.
He doesn't have to serve his full years.
[alarm ringing]
Also, Johnny Vitale, he can offer two things.
One is he could offer an outside job,
which is breaking people's legs.
[Majeski] Sonny was gonna be head breaking
against union breakers.
And it was racketeering, and it was picking up money
for the loan sharks.
[Roberts] But secondly, Johnny Vitale knows a guy by the name
of Frankie Carbo.
Frankie Carbo is the underworld
boss of boxing.
[man] Frankie Carbo, Mr. Gray, the Superintendent,
one of the most feared gunmen of the Prohibition Era
and the undisputed czar of the professional sport.
♪♪♪
[Collins] You couldn't get a big fight in most divisions
if you didn't have Carbo on your side.
That's just the way it was.
I mean, in a way, boxing has been corrupt forever.
So it wasn't anything new.
But Carbo was more powerful because he had an organization
behind him and he had a reputation as a murderer.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] Frankie Carbo would kill you on a dime.
Frankie was the real thing.
He was 100 percent gangster.
There was no question about that.
But Frankie Carbo loved boxing.
♪♪♪
[Collins] Sonny decided, you know, if I'm ever gonna make
anything out of my life, I gotta go with these guys
because they're the ones that can get me where I wanna go.
[Jeffries] He chooses this path,
and I don't know how many of us
would choose something different,
uh, given the exact same set of choices that we had.
♪♪♪
Before you turn professional, it's good to get an amateur
career--an amateur tryout, if you will.
So Sonny enters into the Golden Gloves tournament.
♪ dramatic music ♪
He won the Chicago Golden Gloves.
♪♪♪
[Collins] And then Sonny Liston went on to win
the national Golden Gloves,
and that really put him on the map.
And by September of 1953, he turned professional.
♪♪♪
Liston got the attention of the boxing world
very, very early, but you have to understand
that even with mob-controlled fighters,
especially if they're black fighters,
you have to go through a baptism of fire.
Nobody hands you anything.
He's tested right away from the very beginning.
He's not fighting real stumblebums.
♪♪♪
He won his first fight by knockout and then continued
the early series of bouts in St. Louis
winning by knockouts.
He was a straight-up fighter that came forward,
looked to seek and destroy you.
If he hit you with a good punch, he knocked you out.
♪♪♪
If you wanted to build a perfect heavyweight,
you would use Sonny Liston as your model.
He heralded in the era of giant heavyweights
without, in fact, being a giant heavyweight himself.
He was only a little bit over six feet tall,
and he weighed about 200 pounds.
[announcer] That's our newest youngster, the Sonny Liston.
[Farrell] Liston's reach was 86 inches,
which was the greatest reach of any heavyweight champion
in history with a possible exception of Primo Carnera.
[announcer] Trying to stay with the bigger Liston.
Harris gets hit with a left hook and goes down.
[cheers and applause]
He was enormously powerful through the shoulders.
He had long arms.
His fists were like huge hams.
His jab was his greatest weapon,
and it was the greatest jab any heavyweight's ever had.
Most fighters use jabs just to set the opponent up.
Usually it's not that hard.
But Sonny Liston used it as a weapon--boom--
to knock you out and knock you down.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] Sonny's left jab was a nose-cracking,
teeth-busting, jaw-dropping experience.
And they said getting hit by his jab was like getting hit
by a pole.
♪♪♪
Well, Sonny Liston had a big menacing tough guy reputation,
and that's what preceded him in the ring.
He intimidates the fighter.
The fighter's really beaten before he even
got in the ring.
Sonny could pull it off. I could pull it off.
Not a lot of people could pull it off.
♪♪♪
Sonny, uh, what advice would you give to a young lad
who came to you and said, "I want to become a boxer?"
What would you tell him as regards training and so forth?
Well, they always told me anything you wanna do,
do your best and be the best at it.
[Collins] I don't think the general public ever knew
the real Sonny Liston.
They knew the persona, the thug-like guy who just
knocked everybody out and was associated with the mob
and been in jail.
He wasn't really that. That was a front.
That was like what he needed to protect himself
and also to intimidate his opponents.
He was a very sensitive person.
He could be hurt easily.
♪ dramatic music ♪
[Long] Uncle Charles--we didn't call him Sonny at that time--
was really a soft and gentle person, seriously.
And so I didn't understand how they, you know,
I think at some point they called him the Bear.
But he was never like that with me.
♪♪♪
He wanted me to be a little bit above where he came from.
Is the term "surrogate parent"?
He was really close to me.
♪♪♪
[Izenberg] He was respectful of kids and old people,
'cause they posed no threat to him.
And most of all, he was very respectful of Geraldine.
He's a good man and he's a kind man
and worthy of a chance to contribute to society.
I am Mrs. Sonny Liston.
♪♪♪
[Izenberg] Geraldine was so different than Sonny.
I always wondered how they met.
So one day I asked her.
And she said to me, "Well, you know, Sonny picked me up."
I didn't know what she meant by that.
She said, "No, I mean he picked me up.
It was raining.
I was standing on a St. Louis street corner.
Sonny pulls up in this big car, puts me in the car,
and then says, 'A little lady like you should not be standing
out in the rain.'"
♪♪♪
[Reddish Jr.] Geraldine Liston was a beautiful lady
who loved her Charles.
I could hear her right now say, "Charles?"
And he'd, "Yes, dear?"
She was his blanket, I'll say.
She covered him and kept him warm.
And loved him.
♪♪♪
[Collins] Geraldine probably knew
that Sonny was running around with other women.
But there's a lot of women, they'd rather accept him
messing around on the side than lose him.
And I think that's pretty much where she was.
I think in a way they really loved each other.
♪♪♪
You know, there was one thing that Sonny was better at
than boxing, and that was compartmentalizing himself.
He could be a loving husband, he could be a womanizer,
he could be a criminal, he could be a boxer.
That's what he was a master at:
boxing and being able to lead so many different lives.
There were so many men inside that one man.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] By the mid-'50s, he's a boxer of some repute.
He's a leg breaker for the mob.
He's an alley dweller.
You know, Sonny never walked on well-lit streets.
Sonny moved around in darkness.
So there was a running battle between the police
and Sonny Liston. The police harassed him.
[Jeffries] He wasn't just some random black guy.
He was Sonny Liston-- gangster, criminal.
Once you lose that anonymity in the face of the police,
then you're really gonna catch hell.
♪♪♪
[Assael] He had a target on his back.
The St. Louis cops would roust him any time they could.
Sonny was headed towards a championship fight.
But he was also headed towards a whole lot of heat.
♪♪♪
[Collins] One night, uh, Sonny was, uh, leaving a party
and a policeman came over.
One thing led to another.
♪♪♪
The cop went to draw his gun,
and Sonny took it away from him,
dragged him back in the alley, and beat him up.
♪♪♪
The weird thing about that was he was arrested
and he was charged, but they only gave him
nine months in the workhouse.
This is a black man in St. Louis
beating up a cop and taking his gun.
That was an unheard of lenient sentence,
and you gotta figure that there was some people connected
behind that.
The mob makes their phone calls and makes sure
that if they need a fighter to be available
to the fight, he's not kept inside
for any length of time.
And after that point, Sonny was known as a cop hater.
♪♪♪
There's so much heat around Sonny.
A police captain named John Doherty
takes him to the edge of St. Louis,
puts a gun to his head, and says,
"Get the hell out of town."
♪♪♪
[Roberts] Frankie Carbo has henchmen
throughout the country.
In Philadelphia, his leading henchman--
his partner in crime-- was a guy by the name
of Blinky Palermo.
[Majeski] Blinky Palermo had
complete control of Philadelphia.
Had complete control of the commission.
Had complete control of the promotions.
They could do with as they wished in Philadelphia.
♪♪♪
In Philadelphia, Blinky Palermo
and Frankie Carbo gave him to Willie Reddish,
who was a legendary trainer.
♪♪♪
[Reddish Jr.] Gentleman walks in with Sonny Liston,
talks to my father and say, "Here he is, train him."
Simple as that.
♪♪♪
He didn't talk about hurting someone.
He didn't talk about dealing anything.
He was doing just what his job had given him.
To be a fighter.
With Willie Reddish, you know,
he had to work for the first time in his career.
He really had to train hard.
And that was the missing piece of the puzzle.
♪♪♪
[Farrell] They started putting him in with the elite fighters
of the heavyweight division-- the guys who nobody wanted,
and the guys who really would beat you.
And Liston just steamrolled every one of them.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] He defeats Julio Mederos, destroys Wayne Bethea
on national television.
Sixty-nine seconds after the fight started,
Sonny knocked out 16 of his teeth.
It was a spectacular knockout.
[announcer] Liston with another left hook,
a right, and another left. And Bethea is down!
[Majeski] He knocks out Nino Valdes.
He knocks out Mike DeJohn.
He knocks out Zora Folley.
He outpoints Eddie Machen.
They were tough guys for their time,
and Sonny walked right through them.
Sonny merely was in his own version of Heaven.
♪♪♪
He was getting paid money to knock people down,
and nobody could arrest him.
♪♪♪
And he got better and better and better.
♪♪♪
The most impressive fight, he fights a guy
named Cleveland Williams.
Sonny Liston and Cleveland Williams
is like Thor fighting Hercules.
You know, it was no holds barred.
These are the two hardest punching fighters
in the world at that time.
No one wanted to fight either one.
I remember both fighters just swinging,
swinging at the wind, going for it.
Trying to knock each other out.
Cleveland Williams almost knocked Sonny Liston
out of the ring.
He broke a rib.
He battered him.
He was lucky to make it through the round.
That was his epiphany.
I think he saw that, "If I'm gonna lose,
I'll be back in prison, I'll be back in poverty."
And I think his managers and trainers
read the riot act to him.
"Sonny, all you have is your ability as a fighter.
And you have to win."
[announcer] Liston moves in with lefts and rights.
Hammer blows to the head and body.
[Majeski] Sonny doesn't give up,
and he knocks him out in one
of the great fights of all time.
[announcer] One look at Williams' face,
and you know the end is near.
♪♪♪
Everybody was scared when he knocked out
Cleveland Williams.
At this point, Sonny was the best heavyweight in the world.
He had cleared out the dangerous part of
the heavyweight division, and he'd done it in a way
that was so unilateral that he was undeniable.
[announcer] And a fast right to the head puts Harris down.
♪♪♪
The fight is over.
Sonny Liston sets his sights
on the heavyweight championship.
Every guy who hit the canvas was one body to step over
on the way to a world title fight.
♪♪♪
[cheers and applause]
[announcer] Sonny, let's talk about your future now.
Who do you wanna fight in the ring in your next engagement?
The man who got the title.
He thought that the title would turn him
into somebody different.
He saw a chance to reinvent himself.
He had people who wanted to talk to him,
newspaper reporters who wanted to cover him,
because they knew where this was going.
♪♪♪
[Collins] The problem was
when he got close to getting a title fight,
that's when all the resistance started.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] We have a guy by the name of Kefauver,
senator from Tennessee, who's investigating
corruption in America.
This is an age where America was looking for corruption
all over the place, whether it was communists
or labor unions or what have you.
And Kefauver decides boxing is corrupt.
♪♪♪
[Lipsyte] Estes Kefauver saw
these hearings as an opportunity
to be on this very new thing called television.
You gotta remember, it's not like television today
where they'll put a camera in the grave
if they can get away with it.
This was a whole new idea.
Have you ever threatened any
manager or boxer
or promoter at any time?
I respectfully decline to answer the question
on the ground that I cannot be compelled to be a witness
against myself.
[Roberts] The spotlight is on Frankie Carbo.
It's on Blinky Palermo.
It's on the other henchmen in the mob involved with boxing.
And Sonny Liston's tied to all of them.
♪♪♪
So this is a problem.
Sonny Liston, at a time when he's becoming absolutely
the most famous fighter in the world,
is becoming known as absolutely the most criminally tied
fighter in the world.
[Collins] It hurt his reputation.
The stuff was already there.
But it broadcasted to a much wider audience.
[Assael] J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI are also obsessed--
I mean obsessed--with Sonny being a linchpin
between the mob and boxing.
This is evidenced by all the FBI reports where you could
see Hoover was following Sonny's career closely.
♪♪♪
[Collins] They didn't want a guy like Sonny Liston having
what was probably the most prestigious prize
in sports at the time.
♪♪♪
[Farrell] In order to fight for the heavyweight championship,
Sonny Liston would have had to fight Floyd Patterson.
And Patterson's an interesting figure
because he was a very, very popular champion.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] And he has one of the cagiest, most brilliant,
most insane managers in the history of the sport,
Cus D'Amato.
And Cus D'Amato did not want to expose this property of his
to Sonny Liston.
[Farrell] And he had a built-in excuse
since he could say, "Well, we don't want
the heavyweight title even potentially falling into
the hands of the mob."
[Collins] The time that Sonny lived and fought in
was a time of change in America.
He was caught in the crosshair of a huge upheaval
in this country.
♪♪♪
The Civil Rights era was starting.
A lot of changes were being made.
[Rigueur] We're seeing new kinds of protest,
uh, strategies like the sit-in movement.
[announcer] This is the scene of sit-downs in the past.
However now we are told the marchers have stopped here
and a song will be sung.
[Rigueur] Bus boycotts.
African-Americans pushing back against societal norms
that are telling them that they are less than.
I would rather die on the highways of Alabama
than make a butchery of my conscience.
Also civil rights organizations are picking
and choosing people that they see as model citizens
to essentially prove that African-Americans
are deserving of citizenship.
And so Floyd Patterson fits this idea.
Now we've heard this word "viciousness--"
that a fighter has to have a vicious attitude
before he goes into the ring.
Now, how do you feel about that?
Well, not in all cases, no.
I disagree with that.
In fact, I've only had the vicious attitude in one fight.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] Floyd Patterson was the Sidney Poitier of boxing.
You know, very soft spoken, guy you would want
to go out with.
He was involved with civil rights.
He was friendly with Jackie Robinson.
He was friendly with Nelson Rockefeller.
He was meeting senators.
[Jeffries] He's not a uppity negro.
He's just there to get along, uh, and he won't upset
the apple cart, if you will.
That's why the NAACP and others feel comfortable
with him as being sort of the face of this effort
to really desegregate-- integrate America.
♪♪♪
Sonny Liston's America's worst nightmare.
He is literally a dangerous negro.
And he's a dangerous negro who's unafraid of white people,
as demonstrated by his consistent and constant
encounters with the police.
[Tyson] He had a bad rap for always being mob connected.
He was like a black eye to the black community.
So nobody wanted to be associated with him.
No respectable person.
♪♪♪
[Rigueur] He's imposing, he's violent,
he's abrupt, he has no connection
to the civil rights movement.
And he's unapologetic about it.
[announcer] Sonny, what do you think
about the American Revolution in 1963?
Well, I think it's a simple matter,
but, um, a lot of peoples is carrying this thing
a little too far for what it is.
[Farrell] As he always said about the riots,
"I don't have a dog-proof ass."
He's not gonna get torn apart for somebody else.
♪♪♪
The reason why we don't really associate Sonny Liston
with the civil rights movement, uh, is because the civil rights
movement didn't associate itself with Sonny Liston.
Image was very important, and that's exactly what
Sonny Liston didn't have.
[Farrell] I know for a fact that JFK told Patterson
he needed not to fight Sonny Liston.
Which, if you think about it, is an enormous statement
coming from the President of the United States
in regard to a prize fight.
♪♪♪
[Reddish Jr.] He had earned his title.
He had earned the championship fight.
Of course he had been incarcerated as a youngster.
Absolutely.
They should have been encouraging him and giving him
a second chance,
so why deny him?
I thought it was a disgrace.
♪♪♪
Sonny, I understand that you have a statement to make
as far as fighters are concerned.
Well, I've fought all the top contenders,
and I've fought my way up to the number one spot,
so what do a man have to do to get a earnest shot
at the title?
[Farrell] The real reason that Cus D'Amato didn't want
Floyd Patterson to fight Sonny Liston is he was
absolutely sure--as sure as everyone else--
that Patterson had no chance to win.
Floyd didn't stand a chance.
He was, you know-- He was too light.
He was too weak. He was scared.
And there's no way you're gonna beat Sonny if you're scared.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] Cus D'Amato's goal with Floyd Patterson
is never to match him up against anybody
that's of any competence whatsoever.
The downfall of Floyd Patterson came
with a great televised double-header
where Patterson defended his title against the great
fighter Tom McNeeley.
♪♪♪
Tom McNeeley was nothing.
The fight was a sham.
On the same card, Sonny Liston fights
Bert Westphal.
Bert Westphal was a good fighter.
[announcer] Westphal has 12 K.O.s.
[Collins] Westphal tries to stand up to Sonny Liston.
Now he's mixing it in exchanges,
then finally Sonny finds the range.
[announcer] Westphal has never been knocked off his feet
until now.
[Roberts] Liston destroys him.
Liston is the champion.
Patterson's the great pretender.
[announcer] Albert Westphal knocked out by Sonny Liston,
who by virtue of this one-round K.O. tonight
has taken a long step toward a fight with Floyd Patterson.
Eventually, under mounting pressure,
Floyd felt that in order to have any integrity--
personal integrity--he had to fight Sonny Liston.
So he overrode D'Amato's concerns.
[Farrell] When Patterson finally agrees to fight Sonny,
it's seen as some supreme act of charity
instead of what it really was, which was, you know,
an obligation.
I personally think that he has every right
to fight for the championship despite his--
despite his unfortunate background.
♪♪♪
How excited was I when Sonny signed for the heavyweight
championship of the world?
Very excite--I just knew we were going to become
the heavyweight champion. I knew it.
That was his ambition in life.
[Farrell] Sonny wanted this title
because he thought it would complete him.
Even with all that had happened--
the congressional hearings, the dozens and dozens
of rousting by cops, the--the press--
it's one of the happiest times in his life.
He had the fight of his dreams.
[laughter]
[Izenberg] They make the fight. It's gonna be in Chicago.
So I've immediately decided I'm gonna go to Floyd's camp first.
He's the champion.
Let's see what he has to say.
♪♪♪
It was the county poor farm.
Rolling green hills.
Blossoms, birdies tweeting.
And little bunny rabbits hopping across the road.
And I said, "This is Floyd Patterson's
emotional home."
He's got two chances-- slim and none.
♪♪♪
Now I go to see Sonny Liston.
We walk down this concrete corridor
which is ten degrees colder than outside.
Sonny's taking these medicine balls to the stomach.
Boom, boom, boom.
And I'm looking at Sonny's face.
He all but yawned as the ball hit his stomach.
And I'm saying, "I thought there was two chances
for Floyd--slim and none. Slim just went out the door."
You feel that Liston is a capable opponent, I'm sure.
Sure, I feel that, uh, he's a bit above and beyond capable.
♪♪♪
[Lipsyte] Before the fight, Sonny Liston goes into
a Spartan condition.
He really kind of picked up the rhythm of his training.
They were longer, they were harder sessions.
He really looked leaner and harder and faster.
He gets himself into the best condition
he will ever be for the rest of his life.
♪♪♪
He's prime to fight and try to take the title.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston fight--
there's been very few other fights like it.
Very few in boxing history.
I mean, in boxing, you always want a good guy and a bad guy.
You want a black hat and a white hat,
and you want the white hat to win.
Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling,
representative of democracy versus Nazi fascism.
Well, the Patterson-Liston fight was the same thing.
I mean, it's good versus evil.
Fight, no. It was a morality play.
♪♪♪
When Liston goes into the ring,
figuratively wearing his black hat, he's booed.
It's almost as if you're in a movie.
[crowd booing]
[Izenberg] I remember when they came in the ring.
Liston was simply staring
across the ring at Patterson.
And Patterson was trying not to look,
but every once in a while, he looked.
And Cus D'Amato's saying, "I have faith in you.
You can do it."
It's a miracle he wasn't struck by lightning,
because he didn't have any faith in him.
♪ dramatic music ♪
[Farrell] Sonny Liston didn't come out looking
to knock Floyd's head off.
That's just not the way he fought.
Liston was really a very, very complete fighter.
He took opportunities as they presented themselves,
and if you see the fight, you see that actually
Patterson appears to be the more aggressive initially.
♪♪♪
Once he was on the inside, you know,
Liston just took him apart.
And Liston just moves in, catches him with a left,
catch him with another left.
♪♪♪
[announcer] Solid left to the cheekbone
dropped the champion.
[Tyson] Floyd just went down.
He just couldn't take the punishment and go down.
It was too much power for him.
Fight? There was no fight.
It--It was a slaughter.
And Sonny Liston wins the heavyweight championship
of the world.
[Majeski] When he became heavyweight champ,
I think the perception was he's gonna be the title holder
for the next 20 years.
Nobody's gonna beat this man.
[Roberts] The stadium was eerily quiet, almost funereal.
In a way, it was a funeral. A funeral for Patterson.
A funeral for our visions of what the boxing heavyweight
champion should represent and should be.
It was not a great beginning for the championship career
of Sonny Liston.
[announcer] And the new champion
is inarticulate in victory.
♪ dramatic music ♪
♪♪♪
[Izenberg] Sonny came into this fight with a second goal.
He wanted respect.
Take a look at his life. When was he respected?
When his father was hitching him up to a plow?
When the mob was using him?
So after the fight, he was absolutely euphoric
because he knew Philadelphia would welcome him
with open arms and his life would change.
♪♪♪
[Long] It was mainly for his image.
You get to be the heavyweight champ and you're not looked at
as a criminal anymore.
♪♪♪
[Collins] Jack McKinney was a boxing writer
for the Philadelphia Daily News,
and he was the only writer in Philadelphia
that Sonny trusted.
He called City Hall in Philadelphia
to get some sort of greeting for Sonny.
♪♪♪
He had all these plans that he told Jack about
that, you know, he was gonna turn his life around.
He thought he could be a role model for young men
and children. Sonny loved children.
♪♪♪
[Izenberg] The plane lands, he straightens his tie,
and he's ready.
♪♪♪
[Collins] Walked into the airport.
♪♪♪
There was nobody there to meet him.
♪♪♪
And he didn't say anything.
But Jack looks over at him and he said
there was like a little lump in his throat.
♪♪♪
It finally sunk in that it didn't matter what he did.
He would never shake his past
and he would never be fully accepted.
And I think that moment where his life could have gone
in one direction, it went in the other.
♪♪♪
[Reddish Jr.] I received a phone call from Sonny Liston
that night and he told me, "Come on over."
♪♪♪
We just stayed up all night and talked.
♪♪♪
All he wanted to do was to be accepted
as a normal human being.
♪♪♪
He was heartbroken.
♪♪♪
Well, that's life.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] The tragedy of Sonny Liston's reign
as heavyweight champion of the world is nothing changed.
The FBI impounded the money to the fight.
The police arrest him for going too slow through a park.
Sonny Liston is still the despised,
the hated, the hassled.
He's not accepted.
[Assael] You know, this was not the press's finest era.
♪♪♪
Every invective, every insult you could imagine
being thrown at a black man in America was thrown at Sonny.
♪♪♪
[Long] I was hurt, really hurt.
You know, he'd come through all of the other stuff
he'd been through and then to get this far and then have to--
it took him back, I thought.
♪♪♪
And that didn't feel good at all to me.
Mm-mm.
♪♪♪
[Collins] He wasn't a bad guy, deep down inside.
He'd done bad things.
But he wanted, actually, to be a good person.
And after that, I don't think he really gave a damn.
The public is not with me now,
but they'll have to swing along until somebody else come along
to beat me.
He accepted it. He tried to escape it.
He went to Vegas.
And we know what happened in Vegas.
♪♪♪
Vegas, why hasn't he thought of this before?
It was a perfect town for him.
♪ exciting music ♪
Far from being dogged by rumors about the mob.
The mob ran Vegas.
It was an institutional supply of showgirls for him.
His friend Joe Louis was there.
You know, he loved the casinos.
Sonny loved Vegas, and Vegas loved Sonny.
It was a marriage made in Heaven.
♪♪♪
When Sonny comes off the airplane,
he's met by a jowly figure in a shiny suit
driving a Thunderbird named Ash Resnik,
who'll become a very central figure in his life.
♪♪♪
My father came to Las Vegas on the advice of a mobster
named Charlie "The Blade" Tourine,
who probably was instrumental in setting him up
at the Thunderbird, which was my father's first
casino job in Las Vegas.
♪♪♪
Every casino had some mob influence back in the '60s.
So you have to remember the people who came to Las Vegas
to join the legal gambling industry had generally
come from illegal gambling elsewhere.
♪♪♪
[Assael] Ash fills an important role.
The reason is that in Philly, Carbo and Palermo
both go to jail.
♪♪♪
Ash is here in Vegas.
He knows everybody.
The important fights are moving here.
[Izenberg] Sonny took an immediate liking to him,
and he took an immediate liking to Sonny.
And that relationship would blossom into something
very different.
But at this point, that could have been the most
significant thing that happened to Sonny while he was in Vegas
on that trip.
♪ dramatic music ♪
♪♪♪
[Farrell] The Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston rematch
was held at the Las Vegas convention center.
Liston, who was disliked before the first fight, if anything,
was more disliked now.
Since he'd entrenched himself, he was now the champion.
And I think Patterson-- who was deeply beloved
before the fight--if anything was now held as a, you know,
sort of last beacon of hope.
[announcer] Floyd is down for the third time.
Lightning has struck again in the same round
as the first fight.
The only difference in the fight, really,
was it lasted four seconds longer.
Two minutes and ten seconds and, boop, that's it.
[announcer] Sonny Liston again knocks out Floyd Patterson
in one round to successfully defend
his world heavyweight title.
The one thing significant about Patterson-Liston II
is we got a glimpse of the future of professional sports.
At the end of the fight, a guy by the name
of Cassius Clay jumps in the ring and puts on a performance.
♪♪♪
At the time, the public thought Cassius Clay
was crazy because he jumped in the ring
threatening Sonny Liston after the Patterson fight.
You've gotta remember nobody challenged Sonny Liston.
Now, here's this up and coming young fighter jumping in,
tell him, "I want you. I want you.
You ugly."
You know, he didn't know what to think.
♪♪♪
[Izenberg] This is really a low-class burlesque.
However, um, nobody went broke
underestimating the mentality
of the American boxing fan.
So they ate it up.
The media fell in love with him.
He was an easy story, this, you know,
a narcissistic loudmouth.
It's like covering Trump.
Well, let me finish. Let me talk.
This boy's modest. I'm the greatest.
He's not a talker.
I'm gonna fight Sonny Liston right after
I annihilate Henry Cooper.
And as soon as I annihilate Henry Cooper,
I want that big ugly bear right in, uh,
right here on Miami Beach.
[Collins] Cassius Clay bugged Sonny Liston
even before the fight was signed.
It was part of his psychological warfare.
He had a bus that he took to Sonny's house
in the middle of the night screaming and yelling.
[Roberts] "You gotta fight me! You gotta fight me!
I'm the champion!"
Lights are going off around the neighborhood.
It pulls the police out there.
Last thing Sonny Liston wants at his house are the police.
He did anything he could think of to rattle Sonny.
And let's face it, he was pretty creative.
♪♪♪
He hunts Sonny Liston down in Vegas.
Sonny Liston is shooting craps.
Cassius Clay shows up and says, "You can't even shoot craps!
You're a loser!"
It just pissed Sonny Liston off.
You don't mess with Sonny Liston
when he's about to throw the dice.
So he got slapped for his trouble.
♪♪♪
All of a sudden he said, "Yeah, we're gonna fight.
I'm gonna kill you."
Sonny Liston took the fight because he thought he could
destroy Cassius Clay.
Don't you have any respect for him at all
as a fighter?
As a fighter?
I think he should be locked up for impersonating a fighter.
[Roberts] The promotion of the fight
began as a classic promotion.
Sonny Liston was very comfortable wearing
the black hat by this time.
He knew that was the only one he was going to wear.
But then suddenly rumors appear that Cassius Clay
has secretly joined the Nation of Islam.
The Nation of Islam at this time is viewed
as an anti-white hate organization.
[Assael] I'd be like Rocky Marciano saying, "I'm a member
of the Ku Klux Klan."
It shocks white America.
It shocks a lot of black America.
[Jeffries] The only thing scarier to white America
than the black brute
is the black brute who is articulate and smart.
And that's what, to white America,
the Nation of Islam was.
We know that we're going to lose a few,
but we know that God going to kill all of you.
[cheering]
[Jeffries] The head of the Nation of Islam
was Elijah Muhammad.
But it's Malcolm X-- his principal recruit--
uh, who has the charisma.
♪♪♪
[Rigueur] He provides a very stark contrast
with the respectability model
of middle class civil rights organizations.
Malcolm X is saying,
"Violence is as American as apple pie."
That's our motto.
We want freedom by any means necessary.
[Rigueur] He is speaking a language of the dispossessed.
He is speaking a language of people
that have felt powerless.
This is kind of going into this narrative
that Clay has grown up with.
♪♪♪
When Malcolm X starts showing up and seeming
buddy-buddy with Cassius Clay,
it scares the hell out of promoters.
[Kilroy] They wanted to keep--to keep him quiet.
They didn't want him to say he belonged
to the Nation of Islam because they were afraid no one
would come to their fight,
or no one would go to Closed Circuit.
♪♪♪
[Jeffries] This gives Liston the chance
to be the hero that he had never been before.
If he wins, he will be thanked by white America
for shutting that dude up.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] The Liston-Clay fight in Miami
in February of 1964
was a pivotal moment, really, in American history.
America was--was changing.
Changing in fundamental ways.
In November, the President of the United States--
John F. Kennedy--had been assassinated.
♪♪♪
The country had gone into a period of mourning.
♪♪♪
Then in February, there was a glacial shift
in American culture.
In music, the Beatles arrive from Great Britain.
Everybody recognized something's changing.
There's a new wave coming in.
Then you have this young brash--
a fighter like no other, Cassius Clay.
So the Liston-Clay fight has to be viewed
in this continuum.
♪♪♪
Malcolm X goes into Clay's locker room and says to Clay,
"This is the cross and the crescent--
Christianity versus the Nation of Islam."
♪♪♪
So he's sure that this fight's going to be important.
And sure enough, he's right.
♪♪♪
[Kilroy] Everybody was talking about it.
It was one of the biggest sporting events in history,
not only in the United States, all over the world.
♪♪♪
Most of the people-- 75 percent of them--
thought Sonny Liston would destroy Cassius Clay.
He may end up in the morgue.
♪♪♪
Liston is prepared for a quick knockout.
Liston comes after him. He can't get him.
Cassius Clay's not throwing any punches at first.
He's just moving.
[announcer] Cassius Clay's on the move, as we see,
looking to get Sonny to lunge.
♪ dramatic music ♪
Cassius Clay was outthinking Sonny Liston.
Liston was fighting to the death,
but he wasn't fighting Sonny. He was running through Sonny.
And that threw Sonny off.
But as he got close to the bell,
he threw a flurry of punches that all landed.
And that was to let Liston know
that he had something too.
♪♪♪
And I'm saying, "That son of a bitch.
I can't believe he's doing this to Liston.
It's gotta be a trap.
Liston's gotta be setting a trap."
[Roberts] But then Clay starts hitting him.
Hitting him a little bit harder.
Right crosses, right leads.
[announcer] Sonny rattled, Sonny rattled.
Cassius has him hurt!
And all of a sudden there's puffiness under Liston's eye.
And then suddenly in the third round, boom.
[announcer] He has a cut below the eye
and he's getting hit with all the punches in the book.
Liston had never been cut before in a fight.
[Izenberg] Whoever was there
saw the blood and then we went--
[gasps]
It was like the room was a giant vacuum
and suddenly sucked all the air out of it.
And then when the bell rang and Liston was still upright--
[sighs] All the air went out again.
Now, the fourth round was a, uh, notorious round.
Clay started to feel a burning sensation in his eye.
And it got worse.
He told Angelo Dundee, his trainer,
"Cut the gloves off. I can't see.
We're going home."
[Roberts] The question in Clay's corner is,
what happened?
Can we get this guy out fighting again?
[Collins] What got in Clay's eyes is a matter of debate.
Boxers use liniment sometimes on themselves
to--muscle aches and stuff like that.
The original theory was some of that had got on Liston's glove
and accidentally got into Clay's eyes.
I don't think that's what happened.
Other fighters who had fought Liston--Cleveland Williams,
Eddie Machen--had complained that something had gotten
in their eyes--Monsel's solution in their eyes.
The belief was--and that we have some evidence--
that Liston's gloves were loaded.
Now, all hell breaks loose in that corner.
That was not a corner of great decorum ever anyway,
with Bundini and with Angelo.
[announcer] That's Angelo Dundee
that he was arguing with, Joe.
Angelo now is telling him off a little bit
while he gets him ready.
[Collins] Angelo Dundee was an old pro.
He knew what to do.
He said, "Cut this bullshit out.
Go out there and run."
[Roberts] And that led to the dramatic round five.
The belief was Clay's gonna get killed.
[announcer] His eyes are bothering him.
They're yelling from Cassius Clay's corner.
[Rahmen Muhammad] Bundini was working the corner.
And Bundini was saying, "Keep a yard stick out there!
Keep a yard stick--"
That mean keep the left hand out.
'Cause Sonny was trying to come at him,
but literally the man was blind.
♪♪♪
Liston hits him a lot.
♪♪♪
Liston just can't hurt him,
can't knock him out.
And by the end of the round, the last minute of the round,
Clay's eyes had cleared and Clay just takes him apart.
Hits him with everything.
Hits him with hooks.
Hits him with jabs.
Hits him with right hand leads.
[bell rings]
[Collins] When Liston flopped his butt down on the stool
at the end of the sixth round,
he said, "That's it."
Willie Reddish didn't know what he was saying.
He put the mouthpiece in to go out for the next round.
Sonny spit it out and he said, "I said that's it."
And that was the end of the fight.
[bell rings]
[announcer] They might be stopping it.
That might be all, ladies and gentlemen.
I think it was unacceptable that Sonny Liston didn't get
off the stool.
He should have carried on.
[Lipsyte] If you're heavyweight champion,
you die trying.
But he just kind of sat there.
He gave up.
Why did he give up?
And this, of course, is the mystery
at the heart of it all.
Did he give up because he was in such
terrible agony he couldn't move?
Did he give up because he suddenly realized
he couldn't win this fight?
Did he give up because he had been paid
to dump it at some point?
Um, who knows?
♪♪♪
[Farrell] There were two Clay-Liston fights.
The first fight was the real fix.
And let me talk about that a little bit.
The mob isn't in the boxing business to do anything
other than to make money.
The odds were eight to one.
They could make a tremendous amount of money
betting against Liston.
That was where the money really was.
You know, a guy who would have had to go years and years
fighting fights that didn't interest the public.
Or you cash him in--this old guy--right away.
This is really boxing 101.
[Roberts] I think it's utter nonsense to say
that first fight was fixed.
If Sonny was trying to fix the fight,
why was he loading up his gloves before round four?
He was loading up the gloves to blind Clay
to win the fight.
[Rahmen Muhammad] Sonny wanted to kill that man.
I guarantee and just about put my life on it.
That wasn't no fix.
That was a good ass whooping.
♪ dramatic music ♪
♪♪♪
[Long] When Sonny lost the title, it made me feel
really, really, really sad.
♪♪♪
I mean, I cried. I actually cried.
So, my uncle got beat up?
You know, that's the term I could remember using.
♪♪♪
Beat my uncle Charles up? Oh, no.
That didn't go well at all with me.
♪♪♪
I was anticipating Sonny holding onto that title
for at least five, six years.
Make himself $30, 40 million,
whatever the case may be,
and live a good life.
But that wasn't the plan.
♪♪♪
[Assael] Sonny didn't have a friend after that fight.
Maybe Ash.
But otherwise, Sonny didn't have a friend.
I mean, Sonny was toxic.
I mean, really radioactive.
Reporters--who are looking to descend on him anyway--
came at him hard like a group of vultures.
The press was saying Sonny was a dog.
Sonny was a quitter.
Sonny threw the fight. I mean, there were--
You know, they couldn't explain it.
It only added to his bad reputation,
not as an individual, but as a fighter.
And it was probably the worst thing he did in his career.
♪♪♪
[Lipsyte] The second fight was booked to be in Boston.
The Kennedys pushed it out of Boston
because of the criminality around Liston.
So it ended up in Lewiston, Maine.
[Izenberg] Lewiston, Maine.
Small town on the Canadian border
known for having a bedspread factory there.
That's pretty much all it had.
♪♪♪
There was so much tension around that fight.
There was two controversial characters fighting
and, you know, a lot of stuff was going on.
♪♪♪
[Izenberg] In the months following that first fight,
Elijah Muhammad gave Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.
Muhammad means "worthy of all praises,"
and Ali means "most high."
Yes, sir, I wanna be called by that name.
I write autographs with that name.
I wanna be known all over the world as that name.
You want us to call you what name?
That is the furthest thing from
sort of the minds of white folk
when it comes to black respectability.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] Shortly after that, Malcolm X was thrown out
of the Nation of Islam by Elijah Muhammad.
That tension between the two factions
just continues to build
with Elijah Muhammad and others really pushing this
idea that Malcolm is a traitor and deserves no fate
other than death.
Malcolm X and anybody else who attacks or talks about
attacking Elijah Muhammad will die.
Just when you think the social issues that are swirling
around boxing can't get any more raw,
Malcolm X gets assassinated.
♪♪♪
Some thought that the Nation was behind his assassination.
So to have Ali still fighting under the banner of the Nation
adds this whole other overlay to that fight.
So there was a real kind of undercurrent
of existential terror up in Lewiston, Maine.
All sorts of rumors floating around before this fight,
that there are people who had supported Malcolm
that were going to come to the fight and assassinate
Muhammad Ali.
♪♪♪
There were rumors going around that white women
were going to be smuggling hand guns into the arena
for their black lovers to kill Cassius in the ring.
And so they abled these cops and state troopers,
they were opening up women's purses looking for guns,
while at the same time nobody was guarding the doors
or the windows, and local kids were climbing in.
It was--it was crazy.
[Izenberg] Sonny's plan was very simple.
He would knock Ali out in the first round.
He would put such pressure on him that Ali
would have to fall.
♪ dramatic music ♪
[Majeski] Liston got more cheers than Ali.
They finally said, "Well, between these two,
the lesser of the evils is Sonny Liston.
So we'll cheer this ex-convict who lost his title
on the stool rather than root for a guy who says
he's a black Muslim separatist."
The challenger, Sonny Liston.
[cheers and applause]
[announcer] Sonny Liston very popular with the folks here
in Lewiston, Maine. No kidding about that.
[Majeski] He enjoyed that.
He sort of basked in that kind of glory
for the first time in his life.
But then what happens is the Kennedy assassination
of boxing. Everybody's got an idea.
Nobody has the truth.
When the fight started, it didn't last very long.
♪♪♪
There was hardly an exchange when Liston went down.
I was at ringside and I didn't really understand
what was going on.
I was sitting next to Howard Cosell who had
a monitor, so we replayed it 100 times right away
to watch it again.
And maybe by the 100th time, I saw the punch.
I don't know.
[Collins] He did clip him with a right hand.
How hard it is, only Sonny Liston knew.
I think the punch that Muhammad Ali hit Sonny Liston
with in the second fight, I think it was enough
to knock him down, especially if he didn't
see the punch.
[Rahmen Muhammad] I told Muhammad Ali to punch,
then he knocked Sonny Liston out.
It was them kind of punches you use in karate.
You know, when you're punching in karate,
you turn it when you hit.
You know, it's a twist.
Yow!
Popped him right on the jawbone.
And the punch was so fast and so quick.
I didn't know the punch was gonna knock him out.
But it did.
♪♪♪
[Lipsyte] Now it turns into theatre.
Ali, he's challenging Liston, "Get up, chump!
Get up and fight!"
♪♪♪
[Majeski] Liston rolls over.
Attempts to get up and rolls over again.
♪♪♪
Ali is shouting and screaming.
Jersey Joe Walcott loses complete control of the fight.
Finally Liston does get up. They start exchanging blows.
[Izenberg] Suddenly Nat Fleischer--
the editor of The Ring magazine--
stands on a chair and goes--
Fleisher yells over to Jersey Joe Walker,
"Stop the fight. It's over.
The count--He's counted out."
Walcott stops the fight. Utter absolute confusion.
[Izenberg] A full-throated roar begins.
Fix, fix, fix, fix.
And I heard that for an hour, probably, while I was writing.
And still the heavyweight
champion of the world,
Muhammad Ali.
[announcer] One of the most controversial
of all title fights.
[Farrell] There was a real "fuck you" element here.
I mean, I think it was a kind of standard wise guy move.
♪♪♪
The fix is the first fight.
That's the money-making fight.
The second fight is picking up the few remaining
chips off the table and going home.
[Assael] Why fix the fight?
Well, that's where the secret percentage theory comes in,
which is that Sonny had agreed to an under-the-table deal
to get a cut of Ali's future earnings if he went down.
It's exactly what a mobster would have done
and it's exactly, I think, what Sonny did do.
The other reason that I think that theory is persuasive
is the role of Ash Resnick. He was there at the fight.
Think about it. That's exactly the kind
of deal Ash was an expert at making.
♪♪♪
[Kilroy] It's not true.
♪♪♪
All the stuff about Sonny Liston having a part
of Ali's purse, that never happened.
Who would make an agreement like that?
That's crazy.
[Assael] Another rumor was that the Nation of Islam
was sending contract crew killers to shoot Sonny
unless Sonny took a dive.
♪♪♪
My mother says that Geraldine virtually disappeared
for a few days before the fight and she didn't know what was
wrong or how to get, uh, in touch with her.
And then when she did see her,
she said she'd literally gone white.
The black Muslims somehow got to Sonny.
[Rahmen Muhammad] Hogwash.
The whole story is this.
I got a letter from the honorable Elijah Muhammad
and told me, said just don't get Cassius Clay.
Try to get Sonny to be a Muslim too.
♪♪♪
So I tried to get to Sonny, but they wouldn't let me
get to him.
♪♪♪
[Assael] After the second fight, Sonny's a dead man.
♪♪♪
He's not only just reviled, right?
I mean, he can't even get a job.
Boxing commissions won't license him.
So the way Sonny sees this, you know,
let Joe Louis be America's hero.
Let Ali be a voice of a generation.
You know, fuck it.
♪♪♪
Sonny moves into this neighborhood
called Paradise Palms thanks to Ash Resnick who gets him
a sweet little deal on a bungalow on a winding street.
♪♪♪
[Gentry] That was a very exclusive
neighborhood at the time,
and people were just so up in arms not only that my father
would arrange to have the home sold to a black person
but to Sonny Liston, of all people.
♪♪♪
[Assael] He suddenly right there on the fairway
of the Stardust country club, he's able to go running
in the mornings, waving at his famous neighbors.
Going to a little golf club in the afternoon
where he might run into Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin
or Sammy, you know, drinking cocktails.
♪♪♪
On the face of it, Vegas was great.
The problem was that, you know,
Sonny didn't have any nest egg. He was cut up.
He probably didn't even know how much of himself he owned.
[Roberts] Sonny's money has been going
a lot of different places.
And it's not going to him. He's not a wealthy man.
All he knows is fighting, so you keep fighting.
That's what fighters do.
Fighters keep fighting until they can't fight anymore.
Until they get defeated too many times
or they die.
♪♪♪
[announcer] How about Mrs. Liston?
What does she think about all this fighting
and your activities?
Well, she think that I should have got another--
picked out another sport.
What other sport?
Anything except for fighting.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] The so-called comeback
was really a sad downward arc.
He was--he was on the skids. It was over.
He was--it became clearer and clearer he was not
going to make it back.
♪♪♪
[announcer] Yeah, right by Martin! Oh!
Liston was not the fighter he had once been.
I think there's no question about that.
♪♪♪
[Kilroy] It was over then.
Sonny became the perfect opponent,
fighting here, fighting there, picking up the payday.
♪♪♪
[Collins] Sonny had one last fight.
He fought a guy called the Bayonne Bleeder.
Chuck Wepner.
♪♪♪
[Farrell] Sonny's last fight against Chuck Wepner
is very, very interesting.
He factors into the story I think in a major way.
♪♪♪
Liston was not brought into that fight to win.
♪♪♪
I believe the Wepner fight was a deal that went
terribly, terribly wrong.
♪♪♪
In the first round, Sonny Liston comes out
and throws a left hook, and Chuck Wepner's eye breaks open
above his right eyebrow, and there's a cut,
and it starts bleeding.
And every time he hit Wepner, Wepner would open up
another cut.
It was a gory, bloody mess.
♪♪♪
As the rounds went by,
Liston couldn't find a place to fall.
Wepner is increasingly beat up,
and eventually the fight
gets stopped because of the cuts.
Liston won the fight.
So it's a series of miscommunications
where nobody does exactly what they're supposed to do.
[glass shatters]
The mob lost a lot of money,
and there were dire consequences.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] Soon after that, he's pretty much down to his own.
Where does Sonny Liston go? What does Sonny Liston do?
He went back to where he was at the beginning of the career.
To the St. Louis streets.
He went back to the west side of Las Vegas.
Same element, different location.
♪♪♪
He was always involved in a criminal culture,
whether by choice or necessity.
Sonny went to what he knew best.
♪♪♪
[Jeffries] The west side of Vegas
was not very different at all
from other black communities across America.
Uh, high concentration of poverty,
uh, low job opportunities, and rife with crime,
uh, in part because they became areas where crime,
uh, became tolerated.
♪♪♪
Sonny Liston had a beautiful home on the golf course--
Las Vegas golf course.
But he also was there on the west side quite a bit.
♪♪♪
Sonny came to the west side to let his hair down,
to be with his people.
The fact he did something with nothing
is what they respected him for.
Whereas on the strip, they just look at him
as a loser to Ali.
♪♪♪
Every morning he would go to Friendly Liquor Store
and buy two bottles of wine before he--
to start his day out.
And we'd had 16 murders in one year
in that one bar alone.
Uh, when the police got a call at Friendly's,
they answered those calls in force with shotguns.
It was a dangerous place.
♪♪♪
The people that he was hanging out with were killers.
They would kill you in a heartbeat.
Of course now, he wore a .38 on his ankle,
so he was pretty well in with the crew.
One of the more colorful figures that Sonny was hanging
out with was a jazz musician named Red Rodney--
Robert Chudnick.
Somebody who was there at the founding of bebop.
Played with Charlie Parker.
He was a jazz musician by day, a heroin dealer
and head of a criminal gang by night.
♪♪♪
Sonny was no stranger to hanging around
with two-bit gangsters.
The problem is that he was the king of the west side,
but he was also the king of the things that were done
on the west side.
And that began to pull him into the darkness that he wouldn't
get out of.
It turned out my dad and Sonny were doing some kind
of dealing together--heroin.
♪♪♪
My dad saw that Sonny kind of liked me.
We had a little rapport together and so I went with him
a few times to pick up some money on collections.
He let me go with them.
He knew that guys his age made fun of him behind his back
'cause he was dumb, you know, and he didn't read or write,
this and that.
♪♪♪
But kids weren't like that.
They considered me a kid, you know.
♪♪♪
I never felt afraid of him.
Then.
♪♪♪
[Assael] The thing about Sonny dealing drugs on the west side
is it couldn't have happened at a worse time.
America's public enemy number one in the United States
is drug abuse.
In order to fight and defeat this enemy,
it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive.
[Assael] Nixon's policy in Vietnam
had caused his poll numbers to sink
and he needed something to rescue him.
So he launched an all-out offensive on drugs,
which meant the number of drug cops in Vegas
was starting to climb.
♪♪♪
[Gandy] All of the narcotics divisions were beefing up.
We were getting influxed with money for the war on drugs.
And everybody was just so well-known.
It was just a matter of time before they brought him down.
♪♪♪
In February, 1969, myself and two other agents
from the L.A. office of the Bureau of Narcotics
and Dangerous Drugs had an arrest warrant
for one of the bigger traffickers
in the west side of Las Vegas-- Earl Cage.
♪♪♪
[Gandy] Earl Cage was very, very dangerous.
In fact, we think that he killed one of our informants,
but we couldn't prove it.
He was a very dangerous man.
♪♪♪
[Alden] We went over to his residence to arrest him.
We made forced entry.
The first person I saw was the former heavyweight champion
of the world, Sonny Liston.
On the other side of the bed was the defendant, Earl Cage.
And I'm thinking, "Now what?
We got a serious problem here."
And then two detectives came in, and they said,
"Sonny, you come with us.
We're gonna take care of this.
You come with us."
♪♪♪
Sonny was released that evening.
He was the only person that wasn't charged
and subsequently convicted.
♪♪♪
If I were Earl Cage, I would definitely think that
Sonny was the one that did me in.
♪♪♪
[Gandy] But Earl was slick.
He would wait until the time was just right to get you
so there was no suspicion.
♪♪♪
[Assael] But what was more dangerous for Sonny
than crossing somebody like Earl Cage
was talking about the cut he had
of Ali's future earnings-- the secret percentage theory.
And the reason is that
Ali-Frazier was about to happen--
The biggest fight purse in boxing history,
$5 million.
And Sonny was walking around the west side
telling people that he had a cut of it.
♪♪♪
[Geran] We first started hearing
about Sonny Liston owning a percentage
of Muhammad Ali's contract from the barbershop.
He was getting a shoe shine, and the shoe shine man
was taunting him about his loss to Ali.
Sonny just started boasting about,
"Ali works for me.
I own a percentage of him. You know?
I'm the one who really won."
[Assael] There were a lot of people
who didn't want the curtain lifted
on what happened in his second fight with Ali.
There were a lot of people who had an invested interest
in shutting Sonny up.
Around that time, people saw Sonny and Ash fighting.
Ash had to be careful.
There are FBI memos that call Ash the linchpin between
corruption and boxing-- the mob and boxing.
I mean, the feds were actively going after Ash.
♪♪♪
[Gentry] My father was always concerned about
his associations.
And I'm sure my father didn't want to be around him
at the time.
♪♪♪
[Assael] Ash didn't want anything to do with Sonny,
but remember, a lot of people didn't want to have anything
to do with Sonny at that point.
Increasingly even including Geraldine who was scared about
how far off the edge he was going.
He was getting into cocaine more and more.
He was getting into everything more and more.
And he didn't have anything to anchor him anymore.
♪♪♪
It was about late 1970, and my dad and Sonny had
a falling out somehow.
He said, "Look, I don't want Sonny coming around
and we're not seeing him anymore.
Don't go over there."
And so he had to go out of town,
and then Sonny came over the next night.
He just went right by me, pushed me out of the way,
went into my dad's room, and I could hear a lot
of things banging around in there.
He was opening drawers, looking through stuff.
Uh, I don't know if he found anything,
but after a while he just left.
My dad came back a couple of days later
and I told him what happened, and he was really pissed, man.
He said, "Mark, I have to tell you.
I have to stress this.
Do not go over to Sonny's house anymore.
His days are numbered. I'm telling you."
That's the way he said it.
♪♪♪
[Izenberg] I'm in Vegas for another fight.
And I walk up to the Stardust
and I see Sonny putting a tip
down on the table and all these dirty dishes.
So I go in and Sonny says, "Hey, how you been?
How you doing?"
I said, "Fine, how are you?"
"Good," He said. "Did you eat yet?"
And I said, "No."
And he said, "I didn't eat, either.
Let's have breakfast."
That showed me how lonely at that point of his life
Sonny Liston was.
And actually, probably was the last time we ever spoke.
♪♪♪
[Assael] December, 1970.
Sonny's getting even more out of control.
♪♪♪
Geraldine goes to visit her family in St. Louis.
It's the last time she sees him alive.
♪♪♪
Geraldine comes home from vacation.
♪♪♪
Smells something. Doesn't know what it is.
Goes from one room to another. Follows the smell
up to their bedroom...
♪♪♪
...where she finds her husband slumped backwards
and in advanced state of decomposition.
♪♪♪
She races out of the house
and to the nearby home of a friend.
They come back to the house at around nine.
♪♪♪
It's not until midnight they make
the first call to the police.
♪♪♪
[Gandy] There was sheriff's deputies
running over the place like ants.
They were everywhere.
It was gruesome.
He had obviously been dead for four or five days,
'cause he was literally full of methane gas.
It was real bad.
♪♪♪
I don't really know how to explain it.
Uh, here one of your childhood heroes
laying there bloated, you know.
And I just thought it was a terrible disrespectful way
for him to go and not be found, that's all.
I just, uh-- It was startling.
♪♪♪
Mmm.
How he died.
He died alone. I just kept thinking he was
by himself, you know?
And what happened to him?
I just always wonder what happened.
Sonny Liston, the fighter that Muhammad Ali
used to call the big ugly bear was found dead today
in his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.
He had been dead about a week before his wife returning
from a trip found the body.
Investigators say there was no sign of foul play,
but they found some substances they think may be drugs.
♪♪♪
[Collins] Geraldine not calling the police until three hours
after finding Sonny's body is strange.
There are a lot of theories.
Um, one was that there was quite a stash of heroin
at Sonny's house and they needed to get it out of there.
[Gandy] But the police had found
a balloon of heroin downstairs.
It seemed strange that she wouldn't have disposed of it
to save Sonny's reputation, if nothing else.
I don't know where she went or who she talked to or what,
but that seems very strange to me.
♪♪♪
[Roberts] An athlete dies at a young age.
Why?
There's some heroin found in his system.
Now the question is, did Sonny take drugs?
There are innumerous friends of Sonny that would have come
forward and did come forward and said,
"He would never have shot heroin."
He was petrified of needles.
♪ dramatic music ♪
♪♪♪
Well, if there's heroin in his system,
did somebody else shoot him full of heroin?
♪♪♪
Now we get in, well, if somebody else did,
was it murder?
♪♪♪
If it was murder, why did they murder Sonny Liston?
[Farrell] Depending on what your point of view is
and what your agenda is, that will determine
how you feel he was killed.
♪♪♪
I've been told that Liston was killed because
of the Wepner fight.
The mob lost a lot of money, and I know that it's something
that everybody involved would have done.
Another person who wanted to see him dead was Red Rodney,
who was a cautious criminal.
The last thing he wanted to see was Sonny Liston
shooting his mouth off about the drug gang
that he was running.
♪♪♪
[Rodney] I remembered that my dad and Sonny had
a falling out somehow.
My dad was real pissed.
So, you know, I asked him, I said,
"Did you have anything to do with that?
Or do you know about that?"
And he goes, "No." That's that.
But he left town a couple of days later
because he knew the cops would be coming around.
But I don't think he had anything to do with that.
I really don't.
♪♪♪
[Assael] There is a theory-- a extremely persuasive one.
A former police informant walks into the Vegas Metro
Police Department with a story about a hero cop
who broke bad.
The very first thing he said was,
"That cop killed Sonny Liston."
♪♪♪
This informant said Ash Resnick wanted Sonny dead.
Ash hired the cop to kill Sonny Liston.
The more he talks, the more detail he gives.
♪♪♪
The investigators didn't want to believe him
because it was the guy that they all considered a hero cop.
It was Larry Gandy.
♪♪♪
Killing people really does something to you.
And it scars you for life.
It made me sick that somebody would accuse me
of killing somebody for hire.
I am not a contract killer.
And never would be.
♪♪♪
I sought out Larry Gandy who was the man who was
supposedly the hitman on my father's behalf.
And he said he'd never met my father.
I don't believe that my father was capable of hurting anyone.
Especially someone he revered as much as he loved Sonny.
[Gandy] I think Sonny Liston was killed because of the raid
that went bad on Earl Cage's house.
He had motive, opportunity, and means.
♪♪♪
Rumor, rumor, rumor, story, story, story.
That's the story of Sonny's life.
♪♪♪
[Assael] The medical examiner just figured natural causes
was the easiest way to just end it.
And that's what happened.
There was no homicide investigation.
Sonny's death was Sonny's death.
He was given a funeral, a send-off,
with a procession up the Las Vegas strip.
Dead and buried.
♪♪♪
I don't know.
I really don't know whether Sonny, um, overdosed
or was murdered.
It's much easier to deal
with the idea that there were,
you know, powerful forces
that finally did in
this powerful man.
I think that's easier than just saying,
"Hey, you know, we're-- we're all complicit
in the Sonny Liston story."
♪♪♪
[Jeffries] I think there's enough
culpability to go around.
♪♪♪
America is responsible, not just white America
but black America as a whole for really shaping the life
and determining to a certain extent the fortune and fate
of Sonny Liston.
♪♪♪
[Izenberg] And the people on the sidelines can say,
"Well, he should have changed after this.
He should have changed."
Nobody tried to hitch me up to a mule in Arkansas
when I was 11 years old.
Nobody had me hitchhike all the way to St. Louis
to meet my sister and mother
who I hadn't seen in three years.
And nobody said, "How else can I make a living?"
So this is who he was, and this is what he was.
♪♪♪
[Jeffries] I don't think it's a wonder
that he died when he did.
I think it's a wonder that he didn't die earlier.
I don't think it's a wonder that he didn't hold on
to the championship longer than he did.
I think it's a wonder that he made it
that far to hold it at all.
♪♪♪
[Majeski] Sonny Liston's fate was sealed in the womb.
He reached the stars, and when he grabbed the star,
it burnt him up.
There was nothing left in Liston to give.
♪♪♪
[Tyson] Sonny Liston should be remembered as a great fighter.
Once he's champ, he's always champ.
That's always gonna be his identity.
People will always call him champ.
♪♪♪
[Reddish Jr.] Charles Sonny Liston.
♪♪♪
He was a man amongst men.
♪♪♪
And that's the story.
♪♪♪
I tell the world, "I'm glad he came through my way one time."
♪♪♪