Sonny Liston: His Life, Strife and the Phantom Punch
Sonny Liston was one of the most controversial boxers of all time, and while this revealing account doesn’t clear up any of the lingering questions about him, it does a thorough job of laying out who he was and why he engendered such fear and loathing. Liston won the heavyweight championship in 1962 from a completely overmatched Floyd Patterson and followed up with an equally stunning KO in the rematch. Then he lost to Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) and, in that rematch, went down in the first round from a Clay punch that many contend didn’t happen. Did Liston throw the fight? That question never went away, nor did the stains attached to Liston from having served time in prison and, later, from his rumored associations with organized crime. Even Liston’s death was shrouded in mystery. British journalist Steen conducted a number of interviews with Liston’s contemporaries and supports those with extensive secondary research. The resulting portrait shows a man who, for all his toughness in the ring, was manipulated and exploited by his entourage. Solid supplementary reading after Nick Tosches’ definitive The Devil and Sonny Liston (2000). --Wes Lukowsky