I had this book bought for me recently & have just finished reading it. The death of Liston is one of the sport's great mysteries of course... I know that the death of Liston has been mentioned once or twice on here (!) but was wondering what the forum thought of this book, in terms of the likelihood of it being historically accurate, or a load of conspiracy theory rubbish? I would welcome any views/feedback/thoughts...
Sonny Liston was a saint. A saint I tell you! All of those armed robberies, assaults, dui’s, those were all just misunderstandings. Every single one of them over the years was nothing more than Liston (who was 73 when he won the title, and 86 when he lost it by taking a dive) trying to help little old ladies cross the street and rescuing kittens out trees. It was a frame I tells ya, A FRAME UP! Had the mob, the black muslims, and the FBI not joined forces to bring him down Sonny would still be alive (Hed be 138 years old) and still be champion!
I haven't read it yet. I'll put it on my list. Thanks for the tip. Hard to tell if it was a murder or not. I've read that he was shooting drugs with Joe Louis, his hero, in Vegas. If Joe had turned up dead on the edge of his bed at home around that time, nobody would've been shocked. (Well, some may have, but the murder angle probably would've been dismissed.) But Liston ran with a bad crowd his whole life, so who knows. How did you like it? Was it well-written?
Him liking children doesn't mean we are blind to his other faults ,apparently he raped a woman, and was a very mean drunk.Hell of a fighter though . H2H there aren't many I'd pick to beat him.
I read it sometime back. It’s well written and it is researched, but the conclusion that he was murdered isn’t substantially supported. It comes down to ‘he mixed with shady characters’ (lots of people do who aren’t murdered) and ‘was a shady character himself’ (again, true, but doesn’t mean he was killed. It paints an interesting picture of Las Vegas in the 1960s and how crooked all the interests — cops, casinos, drug dealers, etc. — were at that time. And Sonny fit right in. The ‘evidence’ that Sonny was murdered comes down largely to ‘this guy said that that guy said’ and really doesn’t tie together to make a compelling case for the thesis.
Like I wrote before on two previous occasions, I trained a former local Police Sgt, that had been a Watch Commander, for 27 years named Pete, now deceased. I was training him to be a Special Security Officer at the hospital that I was employed at in 1985. He told me that he had arrested one Charles Sonny Liston for Assault With A Deadly Weapon, following a game of Poker, Liston had won, then two African American males jumped Sonny from behind. Liston beat both of them up, one had to be transported to the hospital with a concussion. It was confirmed to be Liston, after an ID check. As Liston was going to the Police Station to be booked, he began to tell Pete about both Ali fights, and how he threw the first one in 1964, so that the bigger gate would happen in the rematch. Sonny did say though, that he feared the Black Muslims who were sitting at ringside. So he went on to be kayoed by Ali in round 1 on May 25 1965. Pete, like all of us was an avid boxing fan. They then began to talk about how hard it was to get a fight with Floyd Patterson, they talked about both of those fights. this happened in 1969, just right before Liston was kayoed by Leotis Martin in Dec 1969. Mysteriously Sonny was released as both victims refused to press charges.
Haven't read the book but I've seen and read quite a bit on Sonny's death. There's no hard evidence that he was murdered just conjecture and the supposition that Sonny didn't use needles, coupled with his associations with unsavory characters. It's possible he could have received a hot shot but it's now an unsolvable mystery,, which fits the narrative of the entire life of Charles Sonny Liston.
Interesting story. Believable. More seemed like he quit in the first fight as opposed to throwing it. And the second one well we all saw that and are all still confused by it.
