LISTON'S EDGE: A LETHAL LEFT Full article at this link: Download here. https://www.si.com/vault/1964/02/24/608246/listons-edge-a-lethal-left Sonny Liston is heavily favored to retain his championship, but it is a mistake to count Clay out until Sonny has nailed him. Clay is strong, and if he can avoid Liston's paralyzing left he can, just possibly, win Feb 24, 1964 Sports Illustrated Issue By Tex Maule LISTON'S EDGE: A LETHAL LEFT Sonny Liston is heavily favored to retain his championship, but it is a mistake to count Clay out until Sonny has nailed him. Clay is strong, and if he can avoid Liston's paralyzing left he can, just possibly, win By Tex Maule Angelo Dundee, who trains Clay, has devised an intelligent battle plan for him. "We have many assets," Dundee said as he watched Clay working in his Fifth Street Gym training quarters. "Clay has a style Liston has never seen before. He is much faster than Liston. He has the faculty of getting under Liston's skin and he will not be browbeaten by him. Cassius respects the champion, but really, deep down inside himself, Clay thinks he is unbeatable. And he can hit Sonny with every punch he has. Sonny isn't hard to hit. We can beat Liston with quantity and consistency. We can hit him with uppercuts. Left and right. Cassius is the only heavyweight in the world with a good left uppercut, and Liston can be hit easy with uppercuts. "If you built a prototype of what kind of fighter can whip Liston, you couldn't improve on Clay. He hits hard, he moves, he has every punch in the book. We can knock Liston out in the 11th or 12th round by wearing him down with the quantity of punches. If Cassius will do what he is told." He said the last words wistfully, for Clay is not known for his coachability. "It makes you want to cry," says Solomon McTier, who was a good heavyweight himself until he got a detached retina and Dundee made him quit. McTier is a big, quiet, thoughtful man who is a part of Clay's entourage and who has a vast respect for Cassius' physical ability. "You see this kid, the way he can go, the things he can do. He can be a great man if he only does what he is told. All he needs to be afraid of is Clay. If he keeps his cool and outboxes and outfoxes Liston—which he can do with ease—he can win without any trouble. He's the most wonderful boxer there is; Liston could be just another sparring partner for him. But he gets carried away. He's young and restless and foolish sometimes." In one memorable workout before this fight, Clay demonstrated just how effective he can be when he uses all his speed and his wide assortment of punches. On a Sunday afternoon he sparred a full six rounds with the two massive heavyweights Dundee had imported to impersonate Liston, Harvey Cody Jones and Dave Bailey, both of whom are tall, slab-muscled 215-pounders. Both hit very hard and both worked against Clay in deadly seriousness, doing their utmost to destroy him. In earlier workouts Clay had seemed listless, often careless. In this one he seemed determined to prove something to himself. He wasted no time on impromptu speeches to the crowd on the excellence of Cassius Clay and he eschewed the farcical interchange of slogans with Drew (Budini) Brown, his foil in the low vaudeville act with which he usually enlivens his training sessions. Clay's little-boy face was grim and cruel and he fought viciously. One felt that this was a true dress rehearsal for the main event. In it, Clay followed almost to perfection the Dundee war plan. He circled to the left, away from the biggest gun in the Liston arsenal, the left hook, moving with the fluid speed that always surprises observers. He hit in quick, deceptively easy-looking combinations, the long left jab very accurate. It was hard to realize how hard he was hitting until one saw the head of his sparring partner snap back from the force of the blow. At one point Jones came to the ropes between rounds with a thin smear of blood trickling from his nose, despite the protection of a face guard. Twice in the course of the six rounds Clay had his sparring partners dazed and ready for the kill. Each time he let up long enough for them to recover. Once he hit Dave Bailey with a snapping left uppercut that seemed to lift the big fighter from the canvas. Once he deliberately allowed himself to be trapped in a corner, then for a full minute, in a virtuoso display of defensive reflexes, bobbed and ducked and slipped punches without striking back and without being hit. Although Clay has enough power to stun the average heavyweight with a single punch, he dazed Jones and Bailey with the cumulative effect of a series of sharp punches. Charlie Powell, the onetime San Francisco 49er end turned boxer, testified to the growing effect of the Clay barrage. "When he first hit me," Powell said, describing the fight in which he was knocked out by Clay, "I thought to myself, I can take two of those to get in one of my own. But in a little while I found out I was getting dizzier and dizzier every time he hit me, and he hurt. Clay throws punches so easily you don't realize how much they shock you until it's too late." As impressive as Clay looked in his workout with Jones and Bailey, he still displayed the flaws that probably will lead to his defeat by Liston. Clay fought, as he always does, with his hands low, at the level of his belt. He leaned back from the counterattacks of his sparring partners, depending upon the speed of his reflexes to avoid their punches. Several times he was brushed by left hooks that he could have blocked had his hands been high. He changed now and then to a right-hand lead, which was effective against Jones and Bailey but which could be fatal against Liston, opening him up to a left hook over the right jab. Watching Clay back away from a flurry of punches with his hands down, arched back to let Bailey's counterpunch swish by an inch from his chin, Light Heavyweight Champion Willie Pastrano shook his head sadly.
