Original subtitles

♪ dramatic music ♪

♪♪♪

[sirens blaring]

♪♪♪

[Gandy] My partner and I got a call from dispatch.

It says, uh, "Any narcotics detectives in the area

of Autumn Wood Drive to come by."

♪♪♪

I went up to the bedroom.

There was sheriff's deputies running

over the place like ants.

They were everywhere.

♪♪♪

It didn't even look like Liston,

he'd been dead for so long.

He'd been dead four or five days.

He was bloated.

He was full of methane gas.

It really made me sick in my stomach,

because he was such a predominant figure

in--in sports world.

I just thought it was a terrible, disrespectful way

for him to go.

[camera shutter clicking]

♪ tense music ♪

♪♪♪

[Farrell] Sonny Liston was the greatest heavyweight

who ever lived, I have no doubt about that.

He was a bona fide monster.

[Assael] He punched with the force

of a government crash test.

[announcer] Westphal has never been knocked

on his feet until now.

Sonny Liston was the first intimidating fighter

with the mean scowl and the mean grin.

He was a real badass, a real menacing force.

The way Sonny won most of his fights was before he even got

into the ring, those eyes.

♪♪♪

[Collins] He was an ex-convict.

♪♪♪

- He was brutal. - [grunts]

He was mobbed up.

He was a symbol of the champ we didn't want.

♪♪♪

Sonny was in the epicenter of a perfect storm,

as far as what was going on in society.

♪♪♪

The Civil Rights Era was just starting,

and he was the guy in the middle

that took all the grief.

America needed to remind the broader white public

of the danger that was black folk,

and nobody represented that danger more than Sonny Liston.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] We don't know how Sonny Liston died,

and in the void created by the absence

of rational explanation, conspiracy filled it

like a foul air.

[Assael] The medical examiner called it natural causes.

But nobody around Sonny believed that.

Everybody believed he was murdered.

So many people wanted Sonny dead.

The only question is, who got to him first?

♪ tense music ♪

♪♪♪

[Collins] Nobody really knows when Sonny Liston was born.

He often gave the date of May 8th, 1932.

But he was probably older than that.

There were no records.

Not even the family Bible had his birth date in there.

So he was a mystery right from the start.

♪♪♪

Sonny was the 24th of 25 children.

His father, Tobe, was a sharecropper,

and with that many mouths to feed,

it must have been tough.

I mean, Sonny knew what it was to be hungry.

You know, he knew that.

♪♪♪

[Long] In Forrest City, Arkansas,

we were trying to survive.

Day-to-day survival.

'Cause, you know, poor people-- We were poor people.

So, and you know, we trying to live from day to day.

♪♪♪

[Collins] He didn't really get much of an education.

He never learned to read or write.

He was out in the fields working by time

he was eight years old.

♪♪♪

[Izenberg] The story-- and I think

it's more than apocryphal--

The mule dies, and his father says,

"You're the mule."

Hooks him up to the harness and he's plowing furrows with him.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] He was whipped by his father

to force him to work harder,

and Sonny had the marks to prove it.

♪♪♪

Getting beaten as a child, you know,

will really affect your outlook on how you see things.

If you had hoped for a better life,

you will live your life differently.

He didn't have hope for a better life.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] All Sonny knows is violence.

And if Sonny looks at the world around him, you know,

what does he see?

He sees violence towards black men, black children.

♪♪♪

[Jeffries] Jim Crow America was violent.

Jim Crow America was dangerous.

You could be walking down the street as a young man,

as a boy, as a woman, and literally your life

could be snuffed out.

Like, that's what Jim Crow was.

♪♪♪

Around 1946, Sonny's mother left to go north

in search of a better life.

She ended up in St. Louis, but Sonny was still back

on the plantation.

So, um, he got a bus ticket to go to St. Louis.

♪♪♪

[Jeffries] They called it black folk

in search of the promised land.

You get a couple million black folk literally looking

for a better way of life.

The reality, though, uh, was that promised land

was fabled.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] Sonny finds his mother.

Is the mother happy to see him?

Maybe a little. Maybe not.

Sonny is another mouth to feed,

and then he's on the streets.

He was at the dark side of St. Louis at the time,

the real poor section,

and he saw how the poor people got money.

They robbed and steal.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] Sonny Liston, after some minor infractions,

went to the big time.

He went to rob a gas station, he went to rob a restaurant,

and he used a gun in the commission of these crimes.

[Collins] Sonny always wore the yellow shirt.

Police knew they were looking for a guy

wearing a yellow shirt, and they got him.

♪♪♪

After Sonny was tried, he got, um, five years in jail.

That was the sentence for armed robbery at the time.

And he went to the penitentiary

in Jefferson, which was a really tough place.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] Time Magazine called it

the bloodiest 47 acres

in America. Gangs ruled it.

There were fights all the time.

Guards were afraid to patrol some of the d-blocks.

♪♪♪

Liston was brutalized early in prison.

I believe Liston had to fight for everything he got there.

And I think he took his share of beatings.

It was a Darwinian existence.

[Rigueur] His story becomes about survival.

Now, his story had always been about survival,

but it takes on a new element.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] Father Stevens, who was working at the prison

got him into the boxing program there.

♪♪♪

[Collins] Father Stevens was trying to do a good turn

for somebody he thought that might have a chance

to break away from a life of crime.

♪♪♪

[Izenberg] Boxing has always been

a step ladder for poor people

without other skills.

And Sonny fit that picture 100 percent.

♪♪♪

[Tyson] Sonny Liston saw boxing as a way out.

He didn't wanna live that life in prison no more.

He didn't want to live that life in the streets.

And that's why he excelled and did so well.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] Sonny was a prodigy. He was a revelation.

This is a guy who could be really an exceptional athlete.

A great fighter.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] And this is something good,

that he can hang his identity onto.

This is what his identity's all about.

Sonny had beaten up all the inmates that dared get in

the ring with him.

♪ dramatic music ♪

Father Stevens thought, "Well, let's see how he could

do with a pro.

So they brought in Thurman Wilson

who was considered the best heavyweight

in the neighborhood.

♪♪♪

He lasted two rounds with Sonny.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] The manager Mitchell who brought him in said,

"I don't think I should be managing Wilson.

I should look into handling Sonny Liston."

As with everything with Sonny Liston,

there's always a subtext, okay?

It turns out that Frank Mitchell

is connected to Johnny Vitale.

Johnny Vitale is in the mob.

♪♪♪

And before you know it, Sonny Liston is paroled.

He doesn't have to serve his full years.

[alarm ringing]

Also, Johnny Vitale, he can offer two things.

One is he could offer an outside job,

which is breaking people's legs.

[Majeski] Sonny was gonna be head breaking

against union breakers.

And it was racketeering, and it was picking up money

for the loan sharks.

[Roberts] But secondly, Johnny Vitale knows a guy by the name

of Frankie Carbo.

Frankie Carbo is the underworld

boss of boxing.

[man] Frankie Carbo, Mr. Gray, the Superintendent,

one of the most feared gunmen of the Prohibition Era

and the undisputed czar of the professional sport.

♪♪♪

[Collins] You couldn't get a big fight in most divisions

if you didn't have Carbo on your side.

That's just the way it was.

I mean, in a way, boxing has been corrupt forever.

So it wasn't anything new.

But Carbo was more powerful because he had an organization

behind him and he had a reputation as a murderer.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] Frankie Carbo would kill you on a dime.

Frankie was the real thing.

He was 100 percent gangster.

There was no question about that.

But Frankie Carbo loved boxing.

♪♪♪

[Collins] Sonny decided, you know, if I'm ever gonna make

anything out of my life, I gotta go with these guys

because they're the ones that can get me where I wanna go.

[Jeffries] He chooses this path,

and I don't know how many of us

would choose something different,

uh, given the exact same set of choices that we had.

♪♪♪

Before you turn professional, it's good to get an amateur

career--an amateur tryout, if you will.

So Sonny enters into the Golden Gloves tournament.

♪ dramatic music ♪

He won the Chicago Golden Gloves.

♪♪♪

[Collins] And then Sonny Liston went on to win

the national Golden Gloves,

and that really put him on the map.

And by September of 1953, he turned professional.

♪♪♪

Liston got the attention of the boxing world

very, very early, but you have to understand

that even with mob-controlled fighters,

especially if they're black fighters,

you have to go through a baptism of fire.

Nobody hands you anything.

He's tested right away from the very beginning.

He's not fighting real stumblebums.

♪♪♪

He won his first fight by knockout and then continued

the early series of bouts in St. Louis

winning by knockouts.

He was a straight-up fighter that came forward,

looked to seek and destroy you.

If he hit you with a good punch, he knocked you out.

♪♪♪

If you wanted to build a perfect heavyweight,

you would use Sonny Liston as your model.

He heralded in the era of giant heavyweights

without, in fact, being a giant heavyweight himself.

He was only a little bit over six feet tall,

and he weighed about 200 pounds.

[announcer] That's our newest youngster, the Sonny Liston.

[Farrell] Liston's reach was 86 inches,

which was the greatest reach of any heavyweight champion

in history with a possible exception of Primo Carnera.

[announcer] Trying to stay with the bigger Liston.

Harris gets hit with a left hook and goes down.

[cheers and applause]

He was enormously powerful through the shoulders.

He had long arms.

His fists were like huge hams.

His jab was his greatest weapon,

and it was the greatest jab any heavyweight's ever had.

Most fighters use jabs just to set the opponent up.

Usually it's not that hard.

But Sonny Liston used it as a weapon--boom--

to knock you out and knock you down.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] Sonny's left jab was a nose-cracking,

teeth-busting, jaw-dropping experience.

And they said getting hit by his jab was like getting hit

by a pole.

♪♪♪

Well, Sonny Liston had a big menacing tough guy reputation,

and that's what preceded him in the ring.

He intimidates the fighter.

The fighter's really beaten before he even

got in the ring.

Sonny could pull it off. I could pull it off.

Not a lot of people could pull it off.

♪♪♪

Sonny, uh, what advice would you give to a young lad

who came to you and said, "I want to become a boxer?"

What would you tell him as regards training and so forth?

Well, they always told me anything you wanna do,

do your best and be the best at it.

[Collins] I don't think the general public ever knew

the real Sonny Liston.

They knew the persona, the thug-like guy who just

knocked everybody out and was associated with the mob

and been in jail.

He wasn't really that. That was a front.

That was like what he needed to protect himself

and also to intimidate his opponents.

He was a very sensitive person.

He could be hurt easily.

♪ dramatic music ♪

[Long] Uncle Charles--we didn't call him Sonny at that time--

was really a soft and gentle person, seriously.

And so I didn't understand how they, you know,

I think at some point they called him the Bear.

But he was never like that with me.

♪♪♪

He wanted me to be a little bit above where he came from.

Is the term "surrogate parent"?

He was really close to me.

♪♪♪

[Izenberg] He was respectful of kids and old people,

'cause they posed no threat to him.

And most of all, he was very respectful of Geraldine.

He's a good man and he's a kind man

and worthy of a chance to contribute to society.

I am Mrs. Sonny Liston.

♪♪♪

[Izenberg] Geraldine was so different than Sonny.

I always wondered how they met.

So one day I asked her.

And she said to me, "Well, you know, Sonny picked me up."

I didn't know what she meant by that.

She said, "No, I mean he picked me up.

It was raining.

I was standing on a St. Louis street corner.

Sonny pulls up in this big car, puts me in the car,

and then says, 'A little lady like you should not be standing

out in the rain.'"

♪♪♪

[Reddish Jr.] Geraldine Liston was a beautiful lady

who loved her Charles.

I could hear her right now say, "Charles?"

And he'd, "Yes, dear?"

She was his blanket, I'll say.

She covered him and kept him warm.

And loved him.

♪♪♪

[Collins] Geraldine probably knew

that Sonny was running around with other women.

But there's a lot of women, they'd rather accept him

messing around on the side than lose him.

And I think that's pretty much where she was.

I think in a way they really loved each other.

♪♪♪

You know, there was one thing that Sonny was better at

than boxing, and that was compartmentalizing himself.

He could be a loving husband, he could be a womanizer,

he could be a criminal, he could be a boxer.

That's what he was a master at:

boxing and being able to lead so many different lives.

There were so many men inside that one man.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] By the mid-'50s, he's a boxer of some repute.

He's a leg breaker for the mob.

He's an alley dweller.

You know, Sonny never walked on well-lit streets.

Sonny moved around in darkness.

So there was a running battle between the police

and Sonny Liston. The police harassed him.

[Jeffries] He wasn't just some random black guy.

He was Sonny Liston-- gangster, criminal.

Once you lose that anonymity in the face of the police,

then you're really gonna catch hell.

♪♪♪

[Assael] He had a target on his back.

The St. Louis cops would roust him any time they could.

Sonny was headed towards a championship fight.

But he was also headed towards a whole lot of heat.

♪♪♪

[Collins] One night, uh, Sonny was, uh, leaving a party

and a policeman came over.

One thing led to another.

♪♪♪

The cop went to draw his gun,

and Sonny took it away from him,

dragged him back in the alley, and beat him up.

♪♪♪

The weird thing about that was he was arrested

and he was charged, but they only gave him

nine months in the workhouse.

This is a black man in St. Louis

beating up a cop and taking his gun.

That was an unheard of lenient sentence,

and you gotta figure that there was some people connected

behind that.

The mob makes their phone calls and makes sure

that if they need a fighter to be available

to the fight, he's not kept inside

for any length of time.

And after that point, Sonny was known as a cop hater.

♪♪♪

There's so much heat around Sonny.

A police captain named John Doherty

takes him to the edge of St. Louis,

puts a gun to his head, and says,

"Get the hell out of town."

♪♪♪

[Roberts] Frankie Carbo has henchmen

throughout the country.

In Philadelphia, his leading henchman--

his partner in crime-- was a guy by the name

of Blinky Palermo.

[Majeski] Blinky Palermo had

complete control of Philadelphia.

Had complete control of the commission.

Had complete control of the promotions.

They could do with as they wished in Philadelphia.

♪♪♪

In Philadelphia, Blinky Palermo

and Frankie Carbo gave him to Willie Reddish,

who was a legendary trainer.

♪♪♪

[Reddish Jr.] Gentleman walks in with Sonny Liston,

talks to my father and say, "Here he is, train him."

Simple as that.

♪♪♪

He didn't talk about hurting someone.

He didn't talk about dealing anything.

He was doing just what his job had given him.

To be a fighter.

With Willie Reddish, you know,

he had to work for the first time in his career.

He really had to train hard.

And that was the missing piece of the puzzle.

♪♪♪

[Farrell] They started putting him in with the elite fighters

of the heavyweight division-- the guys who nobody wanted,

and the guys who really would beat you.

And Liston just steamrolled every one of them.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] He defeats Julio Mederos, destroys Wayne Bethea

on national television.

Sixty-nine seconds after the fight started,

Sonny knocked out 16 of his teeth.

It was a spectacular knockout.

[announcer] Liston with another left hook,

a right, and another left. And Bethea is down!

[Majeski] He knocks out Nino Valdes.

He knocks out Mike DeJohn.

He knocks out Zora Folley.

He outpoints Eddie Machen.

They were tough guys for their time,

and Sonny walked right through them.

Sonny merely was in his own version of Heaven.

♪♪♪

He was getting paid money to knock people down,

and nobody could arrest him.

♪♪♪

And he got better and better and better.

♪♪♪

The most impressive fight, he fights a guy

named Cleveland Williams.

Sonny Liston and Cleveland Williams

is like Thor fighting Hercules.

You know, it was no holds barred.

These are the two hardest punching fighters

in the world at that time.

No one wanted to fight either one.

I remember both fighters just swinging,

swinging at the wind, going for it.

Trying to knock each other out.

Cleveland Williams almost knocked Sonny Liston

out of the ring.

He broke a rib.

He battered him.

He was lucky to make it through the round.

That was his epiphany.

I think he saw that, "If I'm gonna lose,

I'll be back in prison, I'll be back in poverty."

And I think his managers and trainers

read the riot act to him.

"Sonny, all you have is your ability as a fighter.

And you have to win."

[announcer] Liston moves in with lefts and rights.

Hammer blows to the head and body.

[Majeski] Sonny doesn't give up,

and he knocks him out in one

of the great fights of all time.

[announcer] One look at Williams' face,

and you know the end is near.

♪♪♪

Everybody was scared when he knocked out

Cleveland Williams.

At this point, Sonny was the best heavyweight in the world.

He had cleared out the dangerous part of

the heavyweight division, and he'd done it in a way

that was so unilateral that he was undeniable.

[announcer] And a fast right to the head puts Harris down.

♪♪♪

The fight is over.

Sonny Liston sets his sights

on the heavyweight championship.

Every guy who hit the canvas was one body to step over

on the way to a world title fight.

♪♪♪

[cheers and applause]

[announcer] Sonny, let's talk about your future now.

Who do you wanna fight in the ring in your next engagement?

The man who got the title.

He thought that the title would turn him

into somebody different.

He saw a chance to reinvent himself.

He had people who wanted to talk to him,

newspaper reporters who wanted to cover him,

because they knew where this was going.

♪♪♪

[Collins] The problem was

when he got close to getting a title fight,

that's when all the resistance started.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] We have a guy by the name of Kefauver,

senator from Tennessee, who's investigating

corruption in America.

This is an age where America was looking for corruption

all over the place, whether it was communists

or labor unions or what have you.

And Kefauver decides boxing is corrupt.

♪♪♪

[Lipsyte] Estes Kefauver saw

these hearings as an opportunity

to be on this very new thing called television.

You gotta remember, it's not like television today

where they'll put a camera in the grave

if they can get away with it.

This was a whole new idea.

Have you ever threatened any

manager or boxer

or promoter at any time?

I respectfully decline to answer the question

on the ground that I cannot be compelled to be a witness

against myself.

[Roberts] The spotlight is on Frankie Carbo.

It's on Blinky Palermo.

It's on the other henchmen in the mob involved with boxing.

And Sonny Liston's tied to all of them.

♪♪♪

So this is a problem.

Sonny Liston, at a time when he's becoming absolutely

the most famous fighter in the world,

is becoming known as absolutely the most criminally tied

fighter in the world.

[Collins] It hurt his reputation.

The stuff was already there.

But it broadcasted to a much wider audience.

[Assael] J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI are also obsessed--

I mean obsessed--with Sonny being a linchpin

between the mob and boxing.

This is evidenced by all the FBI reports where you could

see Hoover was following Sonny's career closely.

♪♪♪

[Collins] They didn't want a guy like Sonny Liston having

what was probably the most prestigious prize

in sports at the time.

♪♪♪

[Farrell] In order to fight for the heavyweight championship,

Sonny Liston would have had to fight Floyd Patterson.

And Patterson's an interesting figure

because he was a very, very popular champion.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] And he has one of the cagiest, most brilliant,

most insane managers in the history of the sport,

Cus D'Amato.

And Cus D'Amato did not want to expose this property of his

to Sonny Liston.

[Farrell] And he had a built-in excuse

since he could say, "Well, we don't want

the heavyweight title even potentially falling into

the hands of the mob."

[Collins] The time that Sonny lived and fought in

was a time of change in America.

He was caught in the crosshair of a huge upheaval

in this country.

♪♪♪

The Civil Rights era was starting.

A lot of changes were being made.

[Rigueur] We're seeing new kinds of protest,

uh, strategies like the sit-in movement.

[announcer] This is the scene of sit-downs in the past.

However now we are told the marchers have stopped here

and a song will be sung.

[Rigueur] Bus boycotts.

African-Americans pushing back against societal norms

that are telling them that they are less than.

I would rather die on the highways of Alabama

than make a butchery of my conscience.

Also civil rights organizations are picking

and choosing people that they see as model citizens

to essentially prove that African-Americans

are deserving of citizenship.

And so Floyd Patterson fits this idea.

Now we've heard this word "viciousness--"

that a fighter has to have a vicious attitude

before he goes into the ring.

Now, how do you feel about that?

Well, not in all cases, no.

I disagree with that.

In fact, I've only had the vicious attitude in one fight.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] Floyd Patterson was the Sidney Poitier of boxing.

You know, very soft spoken, guy you would want

to go out with.

He was involved with civil rights.

He was friendly with Jackie Robinson.

He was friendly with Nelson Rockefeller.

He was meeting senators.

[Jeffries] He's not a uppity negro.

He's just there to get along, uh, and he won't upset

the apple cart, if you will.

That's why the NAACP and others feel comfortable

with him as being sort of the face of this effort

to really desegregate-- integrate America.

♪♪♪

Sonny Liston's America's worst nightmare.

He is literally a dangerous negro.

And he's a dangerous negro who's unafraid of white people,

as demonstrated by his consistent and constant

encounters with the police.

[Tyson] He had a bad rap for always being mob connected.

He was like a black eye to the black community.

So nobody wanted to be associated with him.

No respectable person.

♪♪♪

[Rigueur] He's imposing, he's violent,

he's abrupt, he has no connection

to the civil rights movement.

And he's unapologetic about it.

[announcer] Sonny, what do you think

about the American Revolution in 1963?

Well, I think it's a simple matter,

but, um, a lot of peoples is carrying this thing

a little too far for what it is.

[Farrell] As he always said about the riots,

"I don't have a dog-proof ass."

He's not gonna get torn apart for somebody else.

♪♪♪

The reason why we don't really associate Sonny Liston

with the civil rights movement, uh, is because the civil rights

movement didn't associate itself with Sonny Liston.

Image was very important, and that's exactly what

Sonny Liston didn't have.

[Farrell] I know for a fact that JFK told Patterson

he needed not to fight Sonny Liston.

Which, if you think about it, is an enormous statement

coming from the President of the United States

in regard to a prize fight.

♪♪♪

[Reddish Jr.] He had earned his title.

He had earned the championship fight.

Of course he had been incarcerated as a youngster.

Absolutely.

They should have been encouraging him and giving him

a second chance,

so why deny him?

I thought it was a disgrace.

♪♪♪

Sonny, I understand that you have a statement to make

as far as fighters are concerned.

Well, I've fought all the top contenders,

and I've fought my way up to the number one spot,

so what do a man have to do to get a earnest shot

at the title?

[Farrell] The real reason that Cus D'Amato didn't want

Floyd Patterson to fight Sonny Liston is he was

absolutely sure--as sure as everyone else--

that Patterson had no chance to win.

Floyd didn't stand a chance.

He was, you know-- He was too light.

He was too weak. He was scared.

And there's no way you're gonna beat Sonny if you're scared.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] Cus D'Amato's goal with Floyd Patterson

is never to match him up against anybody

that's of any competence whatsoever.

The downfall of Floyd Patterson came

with a great televised double-header

where Patterson defended his title against the great

fighter Tom McNeeley.

♪♪♪

Tom McNeeley was nothing.

The fight was a sham.

On the same card, Sonny Liston fights

Bert Westphal.

Bert Westphal was a good fighter.

[announcer] Westphal has 12 K.O.s.

[Collins] Westphal tries to stand up to Sonny Liston.

Now he's mixing it in exchanges,

then finally Sonny finds the range.

[announcer] Westphal has never been knocked off his feet

until now.

[Roberts] Liston destroys him.

Liston is the champion.

Patterson's the great pretender.

[announcer] Albert Westphal knocked out by Sonny Liston,

who by virtue of this one-round K.O. tonight

has taken a long step toward a fight with Floyd Patterson.

Eventually, under mounting pressure,

Floyd felt that in order to have any integrity--

personal integrity--he had to fight Sonny Liston.

So he overrode D'Amato's concerns.

[Farrell] When Patterson finally agrees to fight Sonny,

it's seen as some supreme act of charity

instead of what it really was, which was, you know,

an obligation.

I personally think that he has every right

to fight for the championship despite his--

despite his unfortunate background.

♪♪♪

How excited was I when Sonny signed for the heavyweight

championship of the world?

Very excite--I just knew we were going to become

the heavyweight champion. I knew it.

That was his ambition in life.

[Farrell] Sonny wanted this title

because he thought it would complete him.

Even with all that had happened--

the congressional hearings, the dozens and dozens

of rousting by cops, the--the press--

it's one of the happiest times in his life.

He had the fight of his dreams.

[laughter]

[Izenberg] They make the fight. It's gonna be in Chicago.

So I've immediately decided I'm gonna go to Floyd's camp first.

He's the champion.

Let's see what he has to say.

♪♪♪

It was the county poor farm.

Rolling green hills.

Blossoms, birdies tweeting.

And little bunny rabbits hopping across the road.

And I said, "This is Floyd Patterson's

emotional home."

He's got two chances-- slim and none.

♪♪♪

Now I go to see Sonny Liston.

We walk down this concrete corridor

which is ten degrees colder than outside.

Sonny's taking these medicine balls to the stomach.

Boom, boom, boom.

And I'm looking at Sonny's face.

He all but yawned as the ball hit his stomach.

And I'm saying, "I thought there was two chances

for Floyd--slim and none. Slim just went out the door."

You feel that Liston is a capable opponent, I'm sure.

Sure, I feel that, uh, he's a bit above and beyond capable.

♪♪♪

[Lipsyte] Before the fight, Sonny Liston goes into

a Spartan condition.

He really kind of picked up the rhythm of his training.

They were longer, they were harder sessions.

He really looked leaner and harder and faster.

He gets himself into the best condition

he will ever be for the rest of his life.

♪♪♪

He's prime to fight and try to take the title.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston fight--

there's been very few other fights like it.

Very few in boxing history.

I mean, in boxing, you always want a good guy and a bad guy.

You want a black hat and a white hat,

and you want the white hat to win.

Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling,

representative of democracy versus Nazi fascism.

Well, the Patterson-Liston fight was the same thing.

I mean, it's good versus evil.

Fight, no. It was a morality play.

♪♪♪

When Liston goes into the ring,

figuratively wearing his black hat, he's booed.

It's almost as if you're in a movie.

[crowd booing]

[Izenberg] I remember when they came in the ring.

Liston was simply staring

across the ring at Patterson.

And Patterson was trying not to look,

but every once in a while, he looked.

And Cus D'Amato's saying, "I have faith in you.

You can do it."

It's a miracle he wasn't struck by lightning,

because he didn't have any faith in him.

♪ dramatic music ♪

[Farrell] Sonny Liston didn't come out looking

to knock Floyd's head off.

That's just not the way he fought.

Liston was really a very, very complete fighter.

He took opportunities as they presented themselves,

and if you see the fight, you see that actually

Patterson appears to be the more aggressive initially.

♪♪♪

Once he was on the inside, you know,

Liston just took him apart.

And Liston just moves in, catches him with a left,

catch him with another left.

♪♪♪

[announcer] Solid left to the cheekbone

dropped the champion.

[Tyson] Floyd just went down.

He just couldn't take the punishment and go down.

It was too much power for him.

Fight? There was no fight.

It--It was a slaughter.

And Sonny Liston wins the heavyweight championship

of the world.

[Majeski] When he became heavyweight champ,

I think the perception was he's gonna be the title holder

for the next 20 years.

Nobody's gonna beat this man.

[Roberts] The stadium was eerily quiet, almost funereal.

In a way, it was a funeral. A funeral for Patterson.

A funeral for our visions of what the boxing heavyweight

champion should represent and should be.

It was not a great beginning for the championship career

of Sonny Liston.

[announcer] And the new champion

is inarticulate in victory.

♪ dramatic music ♪

♪♪♪

[Izenberg] Sonny came into this fight with a second goal.

He wanted respect.

Take a look at his life. When was he respected?

When his father was hitching him up to a plow?

When the mob was using him?

So after the fight, he was absolutely euphoric

because he knew Philadelphia would welcome him

with open arms and his life would change.

♪♪♪

[Long] It was mainly for his image.

You get to be the heavyweight champ and you're not looked at

as a criminal anymore.

♪♪♪

[Collins] Jack McKinney was a boxing writer

for the Philadelphia Daily News,

and he was the only writer in Philadelphia

that Sonny trusted.

He called City Hall in Philadelphia

to get some sort of greeting for Sonny.

♪♪♪

He had all these plans that he told Jack about

that, you know, he was gonna turn his life around.

He thought he could be a role model for young men

and children. Sonny loved children.

♪♪♪

[Izenberg] The plane lands, he straightens his tie,

and he's ready.

♪♪♪

[Collins] Walked into the airport.

♪♪♪

There was nobody there to meet him.

♪♪♪

And he didn't say anything.

But Jack looks over at him and he said

there was like a little lump in his throat.

♪♪♪

It finally sunk in that it didn't matter what he did.

He would never shake his past

and he would never be fully accepted.

And I think that moment where his life could have gone

in one direction, it went in the other.

♪♪♪

[Reddish Jr.] I received a phone call from Sonny Liston

that night and he told me, "Come on over."

♪♪♪

We just stayed up all night and talked.

♪♪♪

All he wanted to do was to be accepted

as a normal human being.

♪♪♪

He was heartbroken.

♪♪♪

Well, that's life.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] The tragedy of Sonny Liston's reign

as heavyweight champion of the world is nothing changed.

The FBI impounded the money to the fight.

The police arrest him for going too slow through a park.

Sonny Liston is still the despised,

the hated, the hassled.

He's not accepted.

[Assael] You know, this was not the press's finest era.

♪♪♪

Every invective, every insult you could imagine

being thrown at a black man in America was thrown at Sonny.

♪♪♪

[Long] I was hurt, really hurt.

You know, he'd come through all of the other stuff

he'd been through and then to get this far and then have to--

it took him back, I thought.

♪♪♪

And that didn't feel good at all to me.

Mm-mm.

♪♪♪

[Collins] He wasn't a bad guy, deep down inside.

He'd done bad things.

But he wanted, actually, to be a good person.

And after that, I don't think he really gave a damn.

The public is not with me now,

but they'll have to swing along until somebody else come along

to beat me.

He accepted it. He tried to escape it.

He went to Vegas.

And we know what happened in Vegas.

♪♪♪

Vegas, why hasn't he thought of this before?

It was a perfect town for him.

♪ exciting music ♪

Far from being dogged by rumors about the mob.

The mob ran Vegas.

It was an institutional supply of showgirls for him.

His friend Joe Louis was there.

You know, he loved the casinos.

Sonny loved Vegas, and Vegas loved Sonny.

It was a marriage made in Heaven.

♪♪♪

When Sonny comes off the airplane,

he's met by a jowly figure in a shiny suit

driving a Thunderbird named Ash Resnik,

who'll become a very central figure in his life.

♪♪♪

My father came to Las Vegas on the advice of a mobster

named Charlie "The Blade" Tourine,

who probably was instrumental in setting him up

at the Thunderbird, which was my father's first

casino job in Las Vegas.

♪♪♪

Every casino had some mob influence back in the '60s.

So you have to remember the people who came to Las Vegas

to join the legal gambling industry had generally

come from illegal gambling elsewhere.

♪♪♪

[Assael] Ash fills an important role.

The reason is that in Philly, Carbo and Palermo

both go to jail.

♪♪♪

Ash is here in Vegas.

He knows everybody.

The important fights are moving here.

[Izenberg] Sonny took an immediate liking to him,

and he took an immediate liking to Sonny.

And that relationship would blossom into something

very different.

But at this point, that could have been the most

significant thing that happened to Sonny while he was in Vegas

on that trip.

♪ dramatic music ♪

♪♪♪

[Farrell] The Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston rematch

was held at the Las Vegas convention center.

Liston, who was disliked before the first fight, if anything,

was more disliked now.

Since he'd entrenched himself, he was now the champion.

And I think Patterson-- who was deeply beloved

before the fight--if anything was now held as a, you know,

sort of last beacon of hope.

[announcer] Floyd is down for the third time.

Lightning has struck again in the same round

as the first fight.

The only difference in the fight, really,

was it lasted four seconds longer.

Two minutes and ten seconds and, boop, that's it.

[announcer] Sonny Liston again knocks out Floyd Patterson

in one round to successfully defend

his world heavyweight title.

The one thing significant about Patterson-Liston II

is we got a glimpse of the future of professional sports.

At the end of the fight, a guy by the name

of Cassius Clay jumps in the ring and puts on a performance.

♪♪♪

At the time, the public thought Cassius Clay

was crazy because he jumped in the ring

threatening Sonny Liston after the Patterson fight.

You've gotta remember nobody challenged Sonny Liston.

Now, here's this up and coming young fighter jumping in,

tell him, "I want you. I want you.

You ugly."

You know, he didn't know what to think.

♪♪♪

[Izenberg] This is really a low-class burlesque.

However, um, nobody went broke

underestimating the mentality

of the American boxing fan.

So they ate it up.

The media fell in love with him.

He was an easy story, this, you know,

a narcissistic loudmouth.

It's like covering Trump.

Well, let me finish. Let me talk.

This boy's modest. I'm the greatest.

He's not a talker.

I'm gonna fight Sonny Liston right after

I annihilate Henry Cooper.

And as soon as I annihilate Henry Cooper,

I want that big ugly bear right in, uh,

right here on Miami Beach.

[Collins] Cassius Clay bugged Sonny Liston

even before the fight was signed.

It was part of his psychological warfare.

He had a bus that he took to Sonny's house

in the middle of the night screaming and yelling.

[Roberts] "You gotta fight me! You gotta fight me!

I'm the champion!"

Lights are going off around the neighborhood.

It pulls the police out there.

Last thing Sonny Liston wants at his house are the police.

He did anything he could think of to rattle Sonny.

And let's face it, he was pretty creative.

♪♪♪

He hunts Sonny Liston down in Vegas.

Sonny Liston is shooting craps.

Cassius Clay shows up and says, "You can't even shoot craps!

You're a loser!"

It just pissed Sonny Liston off.

You don't mess with Sonny Liston

when he's about to throw the dice.

So he got slapped for his trouble.

♪♪♪

All of a sudden he said, "Yeah, we're gonna fight.

I'm gonna kill you."

Sonny Liston took the fight because he thought he could

destroy Cassius Clay.

Don't you have any respect for him at all

as a fighter?

As a fighter?

I think he should be locked up for impersonating a fighter.

[Roberts] The promotion of the fight

began as a classic promotion.

Sonny Liston was very comfortable wearing

the black hat by this time.

He knew that was the only one he was going to wear.

But then suddenly rumors appear that Cassius Clay

has secretly joined the Nation of Islam.

The Nation of Islam at this time is viewed

as an anti-white hate organization.

[Assael] I'd be like Rocky Marciano saying, "I'm a member

of the Ku Klux Klan."

It shocks white America.

It shocks a lot of black America.

[Jeffries] The only thing scarier to white America

than the black brute

is the black brute who is articulate and smart.

And that's what, to white America,

the Nation of Islam was.

We know that we're going to lose a few,

but we know that God going to kill all of you.

[cheering]

[Jeffries] The head of the Nation of Islam

was Elijah Muhammad.

But it's Malcolm X-- his principal recruit--

uh, who has the charisma.

♪♪♪

[Rigueur] He provides a very stark contrast

with the respectability model

of middle class civil rights organizations.

Malcolm X is saying,

"Violence is as American as apple pie."

That's our motto.

We want freedom by any means necessary.

[Rigueur] He is speaking a language of the dispossessed.

He is speaking a language of people

that have felt powerless.

This is kind of going into this narrative

that Clay has grown up with.

♪♪♪

When Malcolm X starts showing up and seeming

buddy-buddy with Cassius Clay,

it scares the hell out of promoters.

[Kilroy] They wanted to keep--to keep him quiet.

They didn't want him to say he belonged

to the Nation of Islam because they were afraid no one

would come to their fight,

or no one would go to Closed Circuit.

♪♪♪

[Jeffries] This gives Liston the chance

to be the hero that he had never been before.

If he wins, he will be thanked by white America

for shutting that dude up.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] The Liston-Clay fight in Miami

in February of 1964

was a pivotal moment, really, in American history.

America was--was changing.

Changing in fundamental ways.

In November, the President of the United States--

John F. Kennedy--had been assassinated.

♪♪♪

The country had gone into a period of mourning.

♪♪♪

Then in February, there was a glacial shift

in American culture.

In music, the Beatles arrive from Great Britain.

Everybody recognized something's changing.

There's a new wave coming in.

Then you have this young brash--

a fighter like no other, Cassius Clay.

So the Liston-Clay fight has to be viewed

in this continuum.

♪♪♪

Malcolm X goes into Clay's locker room and says to Clay,

"This is the cross and the crescent--

Christianity versus the Nation of Islam."

♪♪♪

So he's sure that this fight's going to be important.

And sure enough, he's right.

♪♪♪

[Kilroy] Everybody was talking about it.

It was one of the biggest sporting events in history,

not only in the United States, all over the world.

♪♪♪

Most of the people-- 75 percent of them--

thought Sonny Liston would destroy Cassius Clay.

He may end up in the morgue.

♪♪♪

Liston is prepared for a quick knockout.

Liston comes after him. He can't get him.

Cassius Clay's not throwing any punches at first.

He's just moving.

[announcer] Cassius Clay's on the move, as we see,

looking to get Sonny to lunge.

♪ dramatic music ♪

Cassius Clay was outthinking Sonny Liston.

Liston was fighting to the death,

but he wasn't fighting Sonny. He was running through Sonny.

And that threw Sonny off.

But as he got close to the bell,

he threw a flurry of punches that all landed.

And that was to let Liston know

that he had something too.

♪♪♪

And I'm saying, "That son of a bitch.

I can't believe he's doing this to Liston.

It's gotta be a trap.

Liston's gotta be setting a trap."

[Roberts] But then Clay starts hitting him.

Hitting him a little bit harder.

Right crosses, right leads.

[announcer] Sonny rattled, Sonny rattled.

Cassius has him hurt!

And all of a sudden there's puffiness under Liston's eye.

And then suddenly in the third round, boom.

[announcer] He has a cut below the eye

and he's getting hit with all the punches in the book.

Liston had never been cut before in a fight.

[Izenberg] Whoever was there

saw the blood and then we went--

[gasps]

It was like the room was a giant vacuum

and suddenly sucked all the air out of it.

And then when the bell rang and Liston was still upright--

[sighs] All the air went out again.

Now, the fourth round was a, uh, notorious round.

Clay started to feel a burning sensation in his eye.

And it got worse.

He told Angelo Dundee, his trainer,

"Cut the gloves off. I can't see.

We're going home."

[Roberts] The question in Clay's corner is,

what happened?

Can we get this guy out fighting again?

[Collins] What got in Clay's eyes is a matter of debate.

Boxers use liniment sometimes on themselves

to--muscle aches and stuff like that.

The original theory was some of that had got on Liston's glove

and accidentally got into Clay's eyes.

I don't think that's what happened.

Other fighters who had fought Liston--Cleveland Williams,

Eddie Machen--had complained that something had gotten

in their eyes--Monsel's solution in their eyes.

The belief was--and that we have some evidence--

that Liston's gloves were loaded.

Now, all hell breaks loose in that corner.

That was not a corner of great decorum ever anyway,

with Bundini and with Angelo.

[announcer] That's Angelo Dundee

that he was arguing with, Joe.

Angelo now is telling him off a little bit

while he gets him ready.

[Collins] Angelo Dundee was an old pro.

He knew what to do.

He said, "Cut this bullshit out.

Go out there and run."

[Roberts] And that led to the dramatic round five.

The belief was Clay's gonna get killed.

[announcer] His eyes are bothering him.

They're yelling from Cassius Clay's corner.

[Rahmen Muhammad] Bundini was working the corner.

And Bundini was saying, "Keep a yard stick out there!

Keep a yard stick--"

That mean keep the left hand out.

'Cause Sonny was trying to come at him,

but literally the man was blind.

♪♪♪

Liston hits him a lot.

♪♪♪

Liston just can't hurt him,

can't knock him out.

And by the end of the round, the last minute of the round,

Clay's eyes had cleared and Clay just takes him apart.

Hits him with everything.

Hits him with hooks.

Hits him with jabs.

Hits him with right hand leads.

[bell rings]

[Collins] When Liston flopped his butt down on the stool

at the end of the sixth round,

he said, "That's it."

Willie Reddish didn't know what he was saying.

He put the mouthpiece in to go out for the next round.

Sonny spit it out and he said, "I said that's it."

And that was the end of the fight.

[bell rings]

[announcer] They might be stopping it.

That might be all, ladies and gentlemen.

I think it was unacceptable that Sonny Liston didn't get

off the stool.

He should have carried on.

[Lipsyte] If you're heavyweight champion,

you die trying.

But he just kind of sat there.

He gave up.

Why did he give up?

And this, of course, is the mystery

at the heart of it all.

Did he give up because he was in such

terrible agony he couldn't move?

Did he give up because he suddenly realized

he couldn't win this fight?

Did he give up because he had been paid

to dump it at some point?

Um, who knows?

♪♪♪

[Farrell] There were two Clay-Liston fights.

The first fight was the real fix.

And let me talk about that a little bit.

The mob isn't in the boxing business to do anything

other than to make money.

The odds were eight to one.

They could make a tremendous amount of money

betting against Liston.

That was where the money really was.

You know, a guy who would have had to go years and years

fighting fights that didn't interest the public.

Or you cash him in--this old guy--right away.

This is really boxing 101.

[Roberts] I think it's utter nonsense to say

that first fight was fixed.

If Sonny was trying to fix the fight,

why was he loading up his gloves before round four?

He was loading up the gloves to blind Clay

to win the fight.

[Rahmen Muhammad] Sonny wanted to kill that man.

I guarantee and just about put my life on it.

That wasn't no fix.

That was a good ass whooping.

♪ dramatic music ♪

♪♪♪

[Long] When Sonny lost the title, it made me feel

really, really, really sad.

♪♪♪

I mean, I cried. I actually cried.

So, my uncle got beat up?

You know, that's the term I could remember using.

♪♪♪

Beat my uncle Charles up? Oh, no.

That didn't go well at all with me.

♪♪♪

I was anticipating Sonny holding onto that title

for at least five, six years.

Make himself $30, 40 million,

whatever the case may be,

and live a good life.

But that wasn't the plan.

♪♪♪

[Assael] Sonny didn't have a friend after that fight.

Maybe Ash.

But otherwise, Sonny didn't have a friend.

I mean, Sonny was toxic.

I mean, really radioactive.

Reporters--who are looking to descend on him anyway--

came at him hard like a group of vultures.

The press was saying Sonny was a dog.

Sonny was a quitter.

Sonny threw the fight. I mean, there were--

You know, they couldn't explain it.

It only added to his bad reputation,

not as an individual, but as a fighter.

And it was probably the worst thing he did in his career.

♪♪♪

[Lipsyte] The second fight was booked to be in Boston.

The Kennedys pushed it out of Boston

because of the criminality around Liston.

So it ended up in Lewiston, Maine.

[Izenberg] Lewiston, Maine.

Small town on the Canadian border

known for having a bedspread factory there.

That's pretty much all it had.

♪♪♪

There was so much tension around that fight.

There was two controversial characters fighting

and, you know, a lot of stuff was going on.

♪♪♪

[Izenberg] In the months following that first fight,

Elijah Muhammad gave Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.

Muhammad means "worthy of all praises,"

and Ali means "most high."

Yes, sir, I wanna be called by that name.

I write autographs with that name.

I wanna be known all over the world as that name.

You want us to call you what name?

That is the furthest thing from

sort of the minds of white folk

when it comes to black respectability.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] Shortly after that, Malcolm X was thrown out

of the Nation of Islam by Elijah Muhammad.

That tension between the two factions

just continues to build

with Elijah Muhammad and others really pushing this

idea that Malcolm is a traitor and deserves no fate

other than death.

Malcolm X and anybody else who attacks or talks about

attacking Elijah Muhammad will die.

Just when you think the social issues that are swirling

around boxing can't get any more raw,

Malcolm X gets assassinated.

♪♪♪

Some thought that the Nation was behind his assassination.

So to have Ali still fighting under the banner of the Nation

adds this whole other overlay to that fight.

So there was a real kind of undercurrent

of existential terror up in Lewiston, Maine.

All sorts of rumors floating around before this fight,

that there are people who had supported Malcolm

that were going to come to the fight and assassinate

Muhammad Ali.

♪♪♪

There were rumors going around that white women

were going to be smuggling hand guns into the arena

for their black lovers to kill Cassius in the ring.

And so they abled these cops and state troopers,

they were opening up women's purses looking for guns,

while at the same time nobody was guarding the doors

or the windows, and local kids were climbing in.

It was--it was crazy.

[Izenberg] Sonny's plan was very simple.

He would knock Ali out in the first round.

He would put such pressure on him that Ali

would have to fall.

♪ dramatic music ♪

[Majeski] Liston got more cheers than Ali.

They finally said, "Well, between these two,

the lesser of the evils is Sonny Liston.

So we'll cheer this ex-convict who lost his title

on the stool rather than root for a guy who says

he's a black Muslim separatist."

The challenger, Sonny Liston.

[cheers and applause]

[announcer] Sonny Liston very popular with the folks here

in Lewiston, Maine. No kidding about that.

[Majeski] He enjoyed that.

He sort of basked in that kind of glory

for the first time in his life.

But then what happens is the Kennedy assassination

of boxing. Everybody's got an idea.

Nobody has the truth.

When the fight started, it didn't last very long.

♪♪♪

There was hardly an exchange when Liston went down.

I was at ringside and I didn't really understand

what was going on.

I was sitting next to Howard Cosell who had

a monitor, so we replayed it 100 times right away

to watch it again.

And maybe by the 100th time, I saw the punch.

I don't know.

[Collins] He did clip him with a right hand.

How hard it is, only Sonny Liston knew.

I think the punch that Muhammad Ali hit Sonny Liston

with in the second fight, I think it was enough

to knock him down, especially if he didn't

see the punch.

[Rahmen Muhammad] I told Muhammad Ali to punch,

then he knocked Sonny Liston out.

It was them kind of punches you use in karate.

You know, when you're punching in karate,

you turn it when you hit.

You know, it's a twist.

Yow!

Popped him right on the jawbone.

And the punch was so fast and so quick.

I didn't know the punch was gonna knock him out.

But it did.

♪♪♪

[Lipsyte] Now it turns into theatre.

Ali, he's challenging Liston, "Get up, chump!

Get up and fight!"

♪♪♪

[Majeski] Liston rolls over.

Attempts to get up and rolls over again.

♪♪♪

Ali is shouting and screaming.

Jersey Joe Walcott loses complete control of the fight.

Finally Liston does get up. They start exchanging blows.

[Izenberg] Suddenly Nat Fleischer--

the editor of The Ring magazine--

stands on a chair and goes--

Fleisher yells over to Jersey Joe Walker,

"Stop the fight. It's over.

The count--He's counted out."

Walcott stops the fight. Utter absolute confusion.

[Izenberg] A full-throated roar begins.

Fix, fix, fix, fix.

And I heard that for an hour, probably, while I was writing.

And still the heavyweight

champion of the world,

Muhammad Ali.

[announcer] One of the most controversial

of all title fights.

[Farrell] There was a real "fuck you" element here.

I mean, I think it was a kind of standard wise guy move.

♪♪♪

The fix is the first fight.

That's the money-making fight.

The second fight is picking up the few remaining

chips off the table and going home.

[Assael] Why fix the fight?

Well, that's where the secret percentage theory comes in,

which is that Sonny had agreed to an under-the-table deal

to get a cut of Ali's future earnings if he went down.

It's exactly what a mobster would have done

and it's exactly, I think, what Sonny did do.

The other reason that I think that theory is persuasive

is the role of Ash Resnick. He was there at the fight.

Think about it. That's exactly the kind

of deal Ash was an expert at making.

♪♪♪

[Kilroy] It's not true.

♪♪♪

All the stuff about Sonny Liston having a part

of Ali's purse, that never happened.

Who would make an agreement like that?

Who would make an agreement like that?

That's crazy.

[Assael] Another rumor was that the Nation of Islam

was sending contract crew killers to shoot Sonny

unless Sonny took a dive.

♪♪♪

My mother says that Geraldine virtually disappeared

for a few days before the fight and she didn't know what was

wrong or how to get, uh, in touch with her.

And then when she did see her,

she said she'd literally gone white.

The black Muslims somehow got to Sonny.

[Rahmen Muhammad] Hogwash.

The whole story is this.

I got a letter from the honorable Elijah Muhammad

and told me, said just don't get Cassius Clay.

Try to get Sonny to be a Muslim too.

♪♪♪

So I tried to get to Sonny, but they wouldn't let me

get to him.

♪♪♪

[Assael] After the second fight, Sonny's a dead man.

♪♪♪

He's not only just reviled, right?

I mean, he can't even get a job.

Boxing commissions won't license him.

So the way Sonny sees this, you know,

let Joe Louis be America's hero.

Let Ali be a voice of a generation.

You know, fuck it.

♪♪♪

Sonny moves into this neighborhood

called Paradise Palms thanks to Ash Resnick who gets him

a sweet little deal on a bungalow on a winding street.

♪♪♪

[Gentry] That was a very exclusive

neighborhood at the time,

and people were just so up in arms not only that my father

would arrange to have the home sold to a black person

but to Sonny Liston, of all people.

♪♪♪

[Assael] He suddenly right there on the fairway

of the Stardust country club, he's able to go running

in the mornings, waving at his famous neighbors.

Going to a little golf club in the afternoon

where he might run into Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin

or Sammy, you know, drinking cocktails.

♪♪♪

On the face of it, Vegas was great.

The problem was that, you know,

Sonny didn't have any nest egg. He was cut up.

He probably didn't even know how much of himself he owned.

[Roberts] Sonny's money has been going

a lot of different places.

And it's not going to him. He's not a wealthy man.

All he knows is fighting, so you keep fighting.

That's what fighters do.

Fighters keep fighting until they can't fight anymore.

Until they get defeated too many times

or they die.

♪♪♪

[announcer] How about Mrs. Liston?

What does she think about all this fighting

and your activities?

Well, she think that I should have got another--

picked out another sport.

What other sport?

Anything except for fighting.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] The so-called comeback

was really a sad downward arc.

He was--he was on the skids. It was over.

He was--it became clearer and clearer he was not

going to make it back.

♪♪♪

[announcer] Yeah, right by Martin! Oh!

Liston was not the fighter he had once been.

I think there's no question about that.

♪♪♪

[Kilroy] It was over then.

Sonny became the perfect opponent,

fighting here, fighting there, picking up the payday.

♪♪♪

[Collins] Sonny had one last fight.

He fought a guy called the Bayonne Bleeder.

Chuck Wepner.

♪♪♪

[Farrell] Sonny's last fight against Chuck Wepner

is very, very interesting.

He factors into the story I think in a major way.

♪♪♪

Liston was not brought into that fight to win.

♪♪♪

I believe the Wepner fight was a deal that went

terribly, terribly wrong.

♪♪♪

In the first round, Sonny Liston comes out

and throws a left hook, and Chuck Wepner's eye breaks open

above his right eyebrow, and there's a cut,

and it starts bleeding.

And every time he hit Wepner, Wepner would open up

another cut.

It was a gory, bloody mess.

♪♪♪

As the rounds went by,

Liston couldn't find a place to fall.

Wepner is increasingly beat up,

and eventually the fight

gets stopped because of the cuts.

Liston won the fight.

So it's a series of miscommunications

where nobody does exactly what they're supposed to do.

[glass shatters]

The mob lost a lot of money,

and there were dire consequences.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] Soon after that, he's pretty much down to his own.

Where does Sonny Liston go? What does Sonny Liston do?

He went back to where he was at the beginning of the career.

To the St. Louis streets.

He went back to the west side of Las Vegas.

Same element, different location.

♪♪♪

He was always involved in a criminal culture,

whether by choice or necessity.

Sonny went to what he knew best.

♪♪♪

[Jeffries] The west side of Vegas

was not very different at all

from other black communities across America.

Uh, high concentration of poverty,

uh, low job opportunities, and rife with crime,

uh, in part because they became areas where crime,

uh, became tolerated.

♪♪♪

Sonny Liston had a beautiful home on the golf course--

Las Vegas golf course.

But he also was there on the west side quite a bit.

♪♪♪

Sonny came to the west side to let his hair down,

to be with his people.

The fact he did something with nothing

is what they respected him for.

Whereas on the strip, they just look at him

as a loser to Ali.

♪♪♪

Every morning he would go to Friendly Liquor Store

and buy two bottles of wine before he--

to start his day out.

And we'd had 16 murders in one year

in that one bar alone.

Uh, when the police got a call at Friendly's,

they answered those calls in force with shotguns.

It was a dangerous place.

♪♪♪

The people that he was hanging out with were killers.

They would kill you in a heartbeat.

Of course now, he wore a .38 on his ankle,

so he was pretty well in with the crew.

One of the more colorful figures that Sonny was hanging

out with was a jazz musician named Red Rodney--

Robert Chudnick.

Somebody who was there at the founding of bebop.

Played with Charlie Parker.

He was a jazz musician by day, a heroin dealer

and head of a criminal gang by night.

♪♪♪

Sonny was no stranger to hanging around

with two-bit gangsters.

The problem is that he was the king of the west side,

but he was also the king of the things that were done

on the west side.

And that began to pull him into the darkness that he wouldn't

get out of.

It turned out my dad and Sonny were doing some kind

of dealing together--heroin.

♪♪♪

My dad saw that Sonny kind of liked me.

We had a little rapport together and so I went with him

a few times to pick up some money on collections.

He let me go with them.

He knew that guys his age made fun of him behind his back

'cause he was dumb, you know, and he didn't read or write,

this and that.

♪♪♪

But kids weren't like that.

They considered me a kid, you know.

♪♪♪

I never felt afraid of him.

Then.

♪♪♪

[Assael] The thing about Sonny dealing drugs on the west side

is it couldn't have happened at a worse time.

America's public enemy number one in the United States

is drug abuse.

In order to fight and defeat this enemy,

it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive.

[Assael] Nixon's policy in Vietnam

had caused his poll numbers to sink

and he needed something to rescue him.

So he launched an all-out offensive on drugs,

which meant the number of drug cops in Vegas

was starting to climb.

♪♪♪

[Gandy] All of the narcotics divisions were beefing up.

We were getting influxed with money for the war on drugs.

And everybody was just so well-known.

It was just a matter of time before they brought him down.

♪♪♪

In February, 1969, myself and two other agents

from the L.A. office of the Bureau of Narcotics

and Dangerous Drugs had an arrest warrant

for one of the bigger traffickers

in the west side of Las Vegas-- Earl Cage.

♪♪♪

[Gandy] Earl Cage was very, very dangerous.

In fact, we think that he killed one of our informants,

but we couldn't prove it.

He was a very dangerous man.

♪♪♪

[Alden] We went over to his residence to arrest him.

We made forced entry.

The first person I saw was the former heavyweight champion

of the world, Sonny Liston.

On the other side of the bed was the defendant, Earl Cage.

And I'm thinking, "Now what?

We got a serious problem here."

And then two detectives came in, and they said,

"Sonny, you come with us.

We're gonna take care of this.

You come with us."

♪♪♪

Sonny was released that evening.

He was the only person that wasn't charged

and subsequently convicted.

♪♪♪

If I were Earl Cage, I would definitely think that

Sonny was the one that did me in.

♪♪♪

[Gandy] But Earl was slick.

He would wait until the time was just right to get you

so there was no suspicion.

♪♪♪

[Assael] But what was more dangerous for Sonny

than crossing somebody like Earl Cage

was talking about the cut he had

of Ali's future earnings-- the secret percentage theory.

And the reason is that

Ali-Frazier was about to happen--

The biggest fight purse in boxing history,

$5 million.

And Sonny was walking around the west side

telling people that he had a cut of it.

♪♪♪

[Geran] We first started hearing

about Sonny Liston owning a percentage

of Muhammad Ali's contract from the barbershop.

He was getting a shoe shine, and the shoe shine man

was taunting him about his loss to Ali.

Sonny just started boasting about,

"Ali works for me.

I own a percentage of him. You know?

I'm the one who really won."

[Assael] There were a lot of people

who didn't want the curtain lifted

on what happened in his second fight with Ali.

There were a lot of people who had an invested interest

in shutting Sonny up.

Around that time, people saw Sonny and Ash fighting.

Ash had to be careful.

There are FBI memos that call Ash the linchpin between

corruption and boxing-- the mob and boxing.

I mean, the feds were actively going after Ash.

♪♪♪

[Gentry] My father was always concerned about

his associations.

And I'm sure my father didn't want to be around him

at the time.

♪♪♪

[Assael] Ash didn't want anything to do with Sonny,

but remember, a lot of people didn't want to have anything

to do with Sonny at that point.

Increasingly even including Geraldine who was scared about

how far off the edge he was going.

He was getting into cocaine more and more.

He was getting into everything more and more.

And he didn't have anything to anchor him anymore.

♪♪♪

It was about late 1970, and my dad and Sonny had

a falling out somehow.

He said, "Look, I don't want Sonny coming around

and we're not seeing him anymore.

Don't go over there."

And so he had to go out of town,

and then Sonny came over the next night.

He just went right by me, pushed me out of the way,

went into my dad's room, and I could hear a lot

of things banging around in there.

He was opening drawers, looking through stuff.

Uh, I don't know if he found anything,

but after a while he just left.

My dad came back a couple of days later

and I told him what happened, and he was really pissed, man.

He said, "Mark, I have to tell you.

I have to stress this.

Do not go over to Sonny's house anymore.

His days are numbered. I'm telling you."

That's the way he said it.

♪♪♪

[Izenberg] I'm in Vegas for another fight.

And I walk up to the Stardust

and I see Sonny putting a tip

down on the table and all these dirty dishes.

So I go in and Sonny says, "Hey, how you been?

How you doing?"

I said, "Fine, how are you?"

"Good," He said. "Did you eat yet?"

And I said, "No."

And he said, "I didn't eat, either.

Let's have breakfast."

That showed me how lonely at that point of his life

Sonny Liston was.

And actually, probably was the last time we ever spoke.

♪♪♪

[Assael] December, 1970.

Sonny's getting even more out of control.

♪♪♪

Geraldine goes to visit her family in St. Louis.

It's the last time she sees him alive.

♪♪♪

Geraldine comes home from vacation.

♪♪♪

Smells something. Doesn't know what it is.

Goes from one room to another. Follows the smell

up to their bedroom...

♪♪♪

...where she finds her husband slumped backwards

and in advanced state of decomposition.

♪♪♪

She races out of the house

and to the nearby home of a friend.

They come back to the house at around nine.

♪♪♪

It's not until midnight they make

the first call to the police.

♪♪♪

[Gandy] There was sheriff's deputies

running over the place like ants.

They were everywhere.

It was gruesome.

He had obviously been dead for four or five days,

'cause he was literally full of methane gas.

It was real bad.

♪♪♪

I don't really know how to explain it.

Uh, here one of your childhood heroes

laying there bloated, you know.

And I just thought it was a terrible disrespectful way

for him to go and not be found, that's all.

I just, uh-- It was startling.

♪♪♪

Mmm.

How he died.

He died alone. I just kept thinking he was

by himself, you know?

And what happened to him?

I just always wonder what happened.

Sonny Liston, the fighter that Muhammad Ali

used to call the big ugly bear was found dead today

in his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.

He had been dead about a week before his wife returning

from a trip found the body.

Investigators say there was no sign of foul play,

but they found some substances they think may be drugs.

♪♪♪

[Collins] Geraldine not calling the police until three hours

after finding Sonny's body is strange.

There are a lot of theories.

Um, one was that there was quite a stash of heroin

at Sonny's house and they needed to get it out of there.

[Gandy] But the police had found

a balloon of heroin downstairs.

It seemed strange that she wouldn't have disposed of it

to save Sonny's reputation, if nothing else.

I don't know where she went or who she talked to or what,

but that seems very strange to me.

♪♪♪

[Roberts] An athlete dies at a young age.

Why?

There's some heroin found in his system.

Now the question is, did Sonny take drugs?

There are innumerous friends of Sonny that would have come

forward and did come forward and said,

"He would never have shot heroin."

He was petrified of needles.

♪ dramatic music ♪

♪♪♪

Well, if there's heroin in his system,

did somebody else shoot him full of heroin?

♪♪♪

Now we get in, well, if somebody else did,

was it murder?

♪♪♪

If it was murder, why did they murder Sonny Liston?

[Farrell] Depending on what your point of view is

and what your agenda is, that will determine

how you feel he was killed.

♪♪♪

I've been told that Liston was killed because

of the Wepner fight.

The mob lost a lot of money, and I know that it's something

that everybody involved would have done.

Another person who wanted to see him dead was Red Rodney,

who was a cautious criminal.

The last thing he wanted to see was Sonny Liston

shooting his mouth off about the drug gang

that he was running.

♪♪♪

[Rodney] I remembered that my dad and Sonny had

a falling out somehow.

My dad was real pissed.

So, you know, I asked him, I said,

"Did you have anything to do with that?

Or do you know about that?"

And he goes, "No." That's that.

But he left town a couple of days later

because he knew the cops would be coming around.

But I don't think he had anything to do with that.

I really don't.

♪♪♪

[Assael] There is a theory-- a extremely persuasive one.

A former police informant walks into the Vegas Metro

Police Department with a story about a hero cop

who broke bad.

The very first thing he said was,

"That cop killed Sonny Liston."

♪♪♪

This informant said Ash Resnick wanted Sonny dead.

Ash hired the cop to kill Sonny Liston.

The more he talks, the more detail he gives.

♪♪♪

The investigators didn't want to believe him

because it was the guy that they all considered a hero cop.

It was Larry Gandy.

♪♪♪

Killing people really does something to you.

And it scars you for life.

It made me sick that somebody would accuse me

of killing somebody for hire.

I am not a contract killer.

And never would be.

♪♪♪

I sought out Larry Gandy who was the man who was

supposedly the hitman on my father's behalf.

And he said he'd never met my father.

I don't believe that my father was capable of hurting anyone.

Especially someone he revered as much as he loved Sonny.

[Gandy] I think Sonny Liston was killed because of the raid

that went bad on Earl Cage's house.

He had motive, opportunity, and means.

♪♪♪

Rumor, rumor, rumor, story, story, story.

That's the story of Sonny's life.

♪♪♪

[Assael] The medical examiner just figured natural causes

was the easiest way to just end it.

And that's what happened.

There was no homicide investigation.

Sonny's death was Sonny's death.

He was given a funeral, a send-off,

with a procession up the Las Vegas strip.

Dead and buried.

♪♪♪

I don't know.

I really don't know whether Sonny, um, overdosed

or was murdered.

It's much easier to deal

with the idea that there were,

you know, powerful forces

that finally did in

this powerful man.

I think that's easier than just saying,

"Hey, you know, we're-- we're all complicit

in the Sonny Liston story."

♪♪♪

[Jeffries] I think there's enough

culpability to go around.

♪♪♪

America is responsible, not just white America

but black America as a whole for really shaping the life

and determining to a certain extent the fortune and fate

of Sonny Liston.

♪♪♪

[Izenberg] And the people on the sidelines can say,

"Well, he should have changed after this.

He should have changed."

Nobody tried to hitch me up to a mule in Arkansas

when I was 11 years old.

Nobody had me hitchhike all the way to St. Louis

to meet my sister and mother

who I hadn't seen in three years.

And nobody said, "How else can I make a living?"

So this is who he was, and this is what he was.

♪♪♪

[Jeffries] I don't think it's a wonder

that he died when he did.

I think it's a wonder that he didn't die earlier.

I don't think it's a wonder that he didn't hold on

to the championship longer than he did.

I think it's a wonder that he made it

that far to hold it at all.

♪♪♪

[Majeski] Sonny Liston's fate was sealed in the womb.

He reached the stars, and when he grabbed the star,

it burnt him up.

There was nothing left in Liston to give.

♪♪♪

[Tyson] Sonny Liston should be remembered as a great fighter.

Once he's champ, he's always champ.

That's always gonna be his identity.

People will always call him champ.

♪♪♪

[Reddish Jr.] Charles Sonny Liston.

♪♪♪

He was a man amongst men.

♪♪♪

And that's the story.

♪♪♪

I tell the world, "I'm glad he came through my way one time."

♪♪♪