Good info on the characters hanging around Liston: 4/6/1964 TAKING STOCK OF SONNY LISTON An investigation of boxing by a U.S. Senate subcommittee reveals that the ex-heavyweight champion was generous to a fault with the kind of friends he was supposed to have given up long ago. By Robert H. Boyle https://www.si.com/vault/1964/04/06/666616/taking-stock-of-sonny-liston
I like how they say Sonny had to “rid himself” of these characters. How was he realistically going to do that? They owned him! Bad men or not, they invested in a legitimate profitable enterprise called Sonny Liston who happened to be a person. Had they invested in a bar, how is the bar itself expected to rid itself of its owner? For all these characters used fronts to appear as more acceptable owners of the boxer you can see why they did it. If Sonny was aware of it, so what? Sonny owed them the position in boxing that he had. How was he going to buy them out? Even when he hit the big time he would have needed 100% of his purses (before Tax) to come close to doing that. It was not Sonny’s fault at all.
Given just how deep he was in it with the mob, I always found it odd nobody else raises the possibility that it wasn't just his losses that were fixed. The smartest guy to own if you're betting on round propositions is one that's already has a big punch and can fight. It makes things much, much more believable. Why would the mafia who, as mentioned, treated Sonny Liston as a franchise, keep a hands off approach to his fights until Clay (as is often assumed to be the case here)? Theres no business case for it I can see, and these guys were ruthless businessmen.
