Sonny Liston at The Pines Resort (New York) July 1962. According to the few that think Sonny was born in 1932. Does this look like a 30 year-old man. This content is protected
Everything I've read from the people who knew Liston said he was considerate and kind to the people around him. He was also funny. He was just the opposite when he was drinking and he drank a lot. He was a nasty drunk.
Bull****, Sonny Liston was actually Onomastos of Smyrna, who won the first Olympic boxing championship in 688BC. Millenia of fighting under the sun just made him very very tanned.
The best story about Charles Liston is that he was indeed born when the census says he was but that the boxer known as Sonny Liston wasn't Charles Liston. Rather he was Charles Liston's older brother.
People just want to believe what they want to believe even when confronted with solid evidence of the contrary. If you want to believe Liston was 76 years old when he fought Ali (and many seem to want to believe that nonsense) they will believe it, even if they have to conjure up silly completely unfounded conspiracy theories to maintain that story. Common sense says that very few human beings could adequately compete at the professional level in sports at an advanced age and more specifically would show a much more marked deterioration of skill than Liston did. It adds to the myth of his superhuman ability and its why people want to reject the more mundane i.e. likely explanation that when he died he was 40. That would mean that Liston was just a mere mortal like the rest of us, which of course he was.