Liston and Louis' friendship

Drugs.

 

Louis introduced Liston to heroin if that counts

 

Joe Louis was liked and idolized by members of the press. I think his real life has never been thoroughly examined in print. However, we do know that in the 1960s when Joe was living in Denver (near Liston's home) Joe became addicted to cocaine and suffered paranoid delusions, resulting in a stay at the state mental hospital in Pueblo, Colorado. One of the Joe Louis biographies makes reference to Liston's "corrupting influence" on Louis without providing any details.

 

Liston seriously idolised and wanted to emulate Joe - so that might’ve played it’s own significant part in drawing Joe to Liston.

I don’t know about blaming Liston for Joe’s addiction(s), there were other features to Joe’s life that conceivably drove him to the drugs anyway - IRS debt and addiction to pain killers to name two.

Liston’s past crimes, the same crimes, were often regurgitated in the press - obviously one reason for that was D’Amato constantly putting Liston’s past into question in order to shield his fighter Patterson - and Patterson wasn’t an innocent - he was also guilty of using Cus’s line on Liston though Floyd did soften it up later.

Many of Liston’s later “crimes” involved charges that were dismissed or not even laid in the first place. The cops were definitely trying to nab Liston based on little or nothing at all - but despite dismissed charges or no charges at all - the mud thrown still stuck.

Just because Louis toed the line, minding his Ps and Qs so as to preclude any possible reasons for not giving him a title shot doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have related to the mechanisms working against Liston - the very mechanisms Louis was warned of.

Of course if Liston had a wise and caring team as Louis had, it might’ve prevented any significant trouble for Liston in the first place - and the good fortune of having the support of Jack Blackburn & Co. surrounding him wouldn’t have been lost on Louis.

Was it quoted here recently? - I’m not sure but I just recently read again that Rocky Graziano stated that the things he (Rocky) was guilty of in his past made Liston look like a choir boy.

 

Maybe. It's plausible but unsubstantiated.

 

Louis wasn’t what it said on the tin.

 

What Louis and Liston had in common was fairly obvious. Even someone with the language skills of Shakespeare would struggle to explain what it's like to be heavyweight champion of the world. Joe and Sonny quietly shared that understanding. Both were fun-loving. They liked to party. They liked the company of women. Both had friends in the boxing and entertainment worlds -- especially Joe, who the whole world regarded as a hero. Each man possessed something the other wanted and needed. Sonny wished he had Joe's public image. Joe was always broke and Sonny was an easy touch for his friend.

 

I think it largely came down to the fact that Liston idolized Louis, Louis was poor, and Liston was not.

 

Blaming another man for YOU taking drugs? Think about that.

 

Has Joe Louis ever spoken up about Liston arguably using heroin? They were very close when he died, he must have known if he had.

 

There was also a mutual dislike of Muhammad Ali.

 

Liston was a convenient “fall guy” for everything, wasn’t he?

Despite all the contributing players in Maine - the superficial takeaway is that Sonny took a dive, never mind the rest of the chaotic mess.

 

Yes, Joe was heavily conditioned not to make waves and also to say the “right” things. Even post victory celebrations were prohibited.

Not that it would’ve been a “bad” Joe but I doubt we saw much of the “real” Joe. Damn, he hooked up with some fine women too.

They can run but they can’t hide, eh? A multi purposed axiom it seems.

I recently read the Champ Nobody Wanted - and it seems even black people wanted Patterson to beat Liston - because they figured Floyd to be a better representative of their race.

But really, why the onus on black people to necessarily have more outstanding representatives than whites?

It seems like a “referred” preference - in so far as a pristine black rep was better for the black in terms of how whites would view and treat them as a race in general.

Remove that consideration (the white consideration) and I think Sonny would’ve had his own reasonable and fair share of black people supporting him.

Anyway, the books free to read online. Great read imo - just a bit over 200 pages, knock it over in a day, easy - and perhaps become that little bit wiser re Sonny Liston.

https://archive.org/details/sonnyli...s.docyoung/mode/1up?q=the+champ+nobody+wanted