Entries tagged with "Sonny+Liston":
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On September 25, 1962 at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson (38-2-0) defended his title against the let's-get-down-to-business challenger Sonny Liston. Patterson, at 38-2, was an admirable champion in so many ways and an ideal boxing ambassador. Liston, the hard…
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On April 15, 1959 at the Auditorium in Miami Beach, Florida, big bad Sonny Liston fought big bad Cleveland Williams. Sonny's title reign was in the future, but he was destroying everyone who got in his way. Going into the first of their two fights, Liston was 23-1. Williams was 43-2 (his last loss was…
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The documentary "Mike Tyson Uncaged" dates from 1986, the year he became the youngest man in boxing history, at age 20, to win the heavyweight crown. No one knew at the time what was to come; it looked like he might he remain champion forever. But as unknown as his topsy-turvy future would turn out to…
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On May 25, 1965, at Central Maine Civic Center in Lewiston, Maine, Muhammad Ali, the recently crowned WBA/WBC heavyweight champion from Louisville, Kentucky, fought a rematch with the man he dethroned a year and a half earlier, big, bad Sonny Liston from St. Louis, Missouri, by way of Johnson Township.…
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ESPN's documentary “The Real Rocky,” directed by Jeff Feuerzeig and produced by Triple Threat TV’s Matthew McDonald, traces Chuck Wepner’s exploits in and out of the ring, including his battle with Sylvester Stallone, and is based on a series of interviews Feuerzeig conducted with the perennial…
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He went to work as a hired gun for Murder Incorporated, taking his orders Louis (Lepke) Buchalter, the only mob leader to be executed in the electric chair…
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An eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Chuck Wepner, commissioned by an old friend who owns a tire repair shop, is in the works…
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Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson fought two times. Their first fight was on Sept. 25, 1962, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Their second fight was on July 22, 1963, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Patterson…
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It was February 25, 1964. The fight was for the heavyweight championship of the world. In one corner you had the champ, boxing’s Darth Vader, the formidable Sonny Liston. In the opposite corner you had the young challenger, a poetry-spouting loudmouth from Louisville, Kentucky, named Cassius Clay (soon…
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My Buddhist nature wanted to tell him that all misery, all sorrow, lies in the past, that there is only becoming. To live today one must release the past…
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In 1943, he held up a tavern in Los Angeles, took a policeman’s slug in the gut, and did a four-year stretch in San Quentin prison…
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“The old beat writers were classically trained journalists. A fan must first learn to put words on paper before venturing near the ring…”
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If it got out that he and Presser were FBI informants, Hughes told his Bureau contact, “you might as well just kill us yourself…”
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The surly powder keg image of the Charlos is somewhere between prime Mike Tyson and a jacked up World Star version of a grim Sonny Liston…
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For 50 Krona ($5.78 American) you can buy the above-pictured autograph of ex-heavyweight boxer Richie Norden…
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Braverman said he was “thrown in...the nuthouse,” where he described the other inmates “making sounds like roosters and reading bibles upside down…”
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“The battle of David vs. Goliath came out the way you’d logically expect last night when Curley Lee was bombed into submission by gigantic Cleveland Williams”
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Saturday night at the Forum in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, Lucas Matthysse dealt Tewa Kiram the first loss of his professional career…
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Some dig deep into magic fairyland and somehow manage to rank fighters based on the idea of who would beat who—if they all were the same weight…
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There's nothing like an upset to make one believe. All the questionable decisions that cast doubt on the sport are rendered meaningless when an upset occurs. And when the upset is during a contest between world-class heavyweights, the satisfaction is that much greater. This sampling covers some of the…
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Rocky Marciano last fought on September 21, 1955, his sixth title defense, knocking out Archie Moore, "The most unappreciated fighter in the world…”
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Experience is to one’s vocation what seasoning is to a dish. Like wine, there’s just a bolder taste that only time can conjure…
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"There is philosophy in everything—including prizefighting. Life itself is a battle. It's dog eat dog; the survival of the fittest; kill or be killed..."
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The hands of the timid 15-year-old “Wisconsin Correspondent for Ring Magazine” were shaking much more than usual…
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Both men insulted their opponents but paid themselves compliments. They were all ego, all the time…
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From the 1950s through the 1990s, Bufano’s was a boxing hotbed, a big name in boxing circles. Now, it’s so small it fits only inside my head…
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Anyone meeting former heavyweight contender Chuck Wepner comes away feeling as if they have been friends with him for a very long time…
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It’s more accurate to say that Golovkin faced a great fighter, he tried his best, and he came up short. There is no shame in that…
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Liston was dogged by a miasma of sadness, unmitigated and beyond resolution, of tragedies past, and of tragedies to come…
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“Mae West replied, ‘No, I won't be in it. What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?’ So the Beatles wrote her a personal letter and she changed her mind…”
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For some, “better late than never” are the catchwords of the day. For others, the question “what’s the point?” seems more relevant…
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Boxing is here to stay. Much like any other sport, it has its stumbles, but the sport itself is too strong to wither away and die…
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Galento died of a heart attack on July 22, 1979, just three months before Wallace Cross was made a fellow inductee of the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame…
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There was never any chance of Henry climbing into the ring with Sonny Liston. “We don’t even want to meet him walking down the street...”
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Boxers have an aura of nobility and menace that titillated my soul. I’ve seen presidents, media moguls, and Hollywood stars, kowtow to champion fighters…
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Billy Joiner, a journeyman heavyweight in the 1960s, has a few fascinating tales to tell. Let him tell you in his own words…
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Archie Moore once described Marciano as "a bull with gloves." Perhaps the same could be said of Julio Mederos…
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There cannot be another Wild West without the bullets. There cannot be an ineffectual and inept repeat performance...
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After successive defeats by Boone Kirkman, Buster Mathis and Kirkman again, Irish Wayne’s dalliance with the big time was over…
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Ali’s moral and religious position cost him a three and a half year absence from the boxing ring during his prime years...
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To deem him great at this point is equivalent to Muhammad Ali claiming himself the greatest without first defeating Sonny Liston…
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On April 28, 1967, Muhammad Ali reported for but declined to submit to induction into the Armed Forces of the United States…
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Other heavyweight champions before Ali embodied the zeitgeist, John L. Sullivan and Jack Dempsey come to mind, but few led the charge…
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Around the time the Tropicana and the Dunes were headlining "Jayne Mansfield and a few sequins"— boxing in Nevada has been all Las Vegas…
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“We want the public to know there will probably be more deaths. But we don’t want them to take our sport. We’re willing to take our own chances...”
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Chojnacki was not the only boxer, nor even the only one from Milwaukee, to put up his dukes on his wedding day…
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“When they saw ‘Scrap Fighting Tonight’ in the paper, they didn’t care if I win, lose or draw. They just knew I’d put on a good show…”
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“I met Stallone when I was boxing commissioner. I met him at Bookbinder’s. He was making a new movie and asked me to be in it…”