page_title: Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston
section_title: Lewiston, Maine
hierarchical_section_title: Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston / Ali vs. Liston II / Lewiston, Maine
caption_attribution_description: Androscoggin Bank Colisée, at Lewiston, Maine, United States.
context_page_description: The two fights between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston for boxing's World Heavyweight Championship were among the most anticipated, watched and controversial fights in the sport's history. Sports Illustrated magazine named their first meeting, the Liston–Clay fight, as the fourth greatest sports moment of the twentieth century.
  The first bout was held on February 25, 1964 in Miami Beach, Florida. Clay, who was a 7–1 underdog, won in a major upset, when Liston gave up at the opening of the seventh round. Their second fight was in May 1965 in Lewiston, Maine, which Ali won with a first-round knockout.
context_section_description: The promoters needed a new location quickly, whatever the size, to rescue their closed circuit television commitment around the country. Governor John H. Reed of Maine stepped forward, and within a few hours, the promoters had a new site: Lewiston, Maine, a mill town with a population of about 41,000 located 140 miles (230 km) north of Boston. Inter-Continental obtained a permit and made an arrangement to work with local promoter Sam Michael. The venue selected was the Central Maine Youth Center (now called Androscoggin Bank Colisée), a junior hockey rink. Lewiston was the smallest city to host a heavyweight title bout since Jack Dempsey fought Tom Gibbons in Shelby, Montana (population 3,000) in 1923.  It remains the only heavyweight title fight held in the state of Maine.
  The fight was embraced by the Pine Tree State. Governor Reed announced to the press, "This is one of the greatest things to happen in Maine." Nevertheless, it would go down in history as a debacle.
  The atmosphere surrounding the fight was tense and sometimes ugly, largely due to the repercussions of Ali's public embrace of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X, who had a public and bitter falling out with Elijah Muhammad, had been assassinated several months before the fight, and the men arrested for the slaying were members of the Nation of Islam. Rumors circulated that Ali, who had publicly snubbed Malcolm after his break with Elijah Muhammad, might be killed by Malcolm's supporters in retaliation. The FBI took the threats seriously enough to post a 12-man, 24-hour guard around Ali. Liston's camp, in turn, claimed he had received a death threat from the Nation of Islam. The Fruit of Islam—the omnipresent, bow-tied paramilitary wing of the Nation of Islam—surrounding Ali only added to the sense of foreboding and hostility. Security for the fight was, for that time, unprecedented.
caption: The Androscoggin Bank Colisée, in Lewiston, Maine
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