A Birthday for Sonny Liston

Published

12 years ago

September 1, 2012

Springs Toledo

Helen Liston and Sonny, 1964.

“When I discover who I am, then I’ll be free.”

—Ralph Ellison

In the summer of 1962, Charles “Sonny” Liston and his wife Geraldine were living in the rectory of St. Ignatius Loyola in Denver, Colorado. Father Edward P. Murphy, the Jesuit who took them in, oversaw what the press was calling Sonny’s “rehabilitation.” The priest preferred “reorientation”—a change of direction. The heavyweight division’s number-one contender had been suspended indefinitely in forty-seven states after yet another run-in with the law. He had good reason to change. He would rise at dawn to do roadwork at the City Park golf course and trained at a nearby Air Force base. Weekends were spent at a Catholic retreat house in Fraser. Geraldine, who first met Sonny at a prison dance, said novenas for him at the church.

Father Murphy took it upon himself to teach his functionally-illiterate guest how to read, to heal some of the wounds on his personality. The wounds were old.

“We grew up like heathens,” Sonny said. “When I was a kid I had nothing but a lot of brothers and sisters, a helpless mother, and a father who didn’t care about a single one of us.” His mother’s name was Helen, called “Big Hela” by kinfolk. She married his father despite an age difference of about thirty years.

Tobe was his name, Tobin Liston. He was the son of a slave who lived in Choctaw County, Mississippi and who can be found in the 1860 U.S. Census listed among the property of one Martin Liston. Liston’s estate, including his slaves, was valued at $6,825, which placed him far below the planter class. He was just a small farmer who feared Abraham Lincoln and tended his cotton fields alongside four bent black people he wrongfully claimed as his own. Five years later, “the freedom war” ended and the 13^th Amendment grew from Lincoln’s grave like a blood-spattered rose. By 1870, Alexander Liston was renting a plot of land not far from his former master’s estate, now worth a paltry thousand dollars and owned by his widow.

Mississippi was not among the states that ratified the amendment that freed him. Resentment hovered in the thick, bleating air. Slavery was soon revived —slapdash like some dead thing that should’ve stayed dead— and black Americans were cast back into servitude as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, into a system designed to keep them in poverty. “The bossman got three-fourths of what you raised,” Helen said. “We had to raise what we ate and then buy shoes and clothes.”

There is no record of Alexander’s feelings about this or anything else, but we know that his son was angry; the son of his son angrier still.

Tobin moved his family and elderly father northward to Johnson Township in St. Francis County, Arkansas. He was, by all reports, a man whose hostility could not be contained in the meager five-foot-five frame God had given him. It spilled out in torrents of abuse and the oversized boy who didn’t pick cotton fast enough and whose silence was mistook for a simple mind, bore the brunt of it. Sonny wasn’t sentimental about his childhood: “The only thing I ever got from my old man was a beating,” he said.

Sonny, Father Murphy whispered, was “kicked around since he was born.” Precisely how long that was has been a long-standing mystery because no one could rightly say when he was born. The date of his birth was never recorded. They rarely were in rural areas during the Depression, especially when it came to poor black folk—unless they did it themselves.

There was a tree on the farm in Arkansas where father and son toiled under a sun oblivious to change. The birth dates of a new Liston generation were carved on that tree as if they had a right to hope. It was chopped down.

In 1950, Sonny was booked for robbery and told police he was born in 1928 or thereabouts. In 1953, he told Golden Gloves officials he was born in 1932 or thereabouts. During the Kefauver hearings in 1960, his massive shoulders strained his suit coat as he leaned into a microphone and said “I was born in 1933.” As champion, he chose May 8^th 1932 as his default DOB to fend off the swarming press. They scoffed. His publicity man snapped, “He’s over 21.” In the mid-sixties, when he was banned from fighting just about anywhere except Nevada and Sweden, Dan Daniel of The Ring said “he doubtless is more than 45 years of age.” Before long the Swedish press joined the chorus (“You’re 42 aren’t you?”). Sonny got fed up. Anyone, he started threatening, who doubted he was the age he claimed was calling his momma a liar. But momma only added to the confusion: “I think it was January 18^th in 1932. I know he was born in January, in 1932. It was cold in January.”

He eventually went and got himself a birth certificate, telling the clerk, the press, and his momma that he was born on May 8^th 1932. He thought it would settle the matter. It didn’t. A reporter who had befriended him named Jack McKinney revealed the sad truth. Sonny, he said “was so sensitive on the issue of his age because he did not really know how old he was. When guys would write that he was 32 going on 50, it had more of an impact on him that anybody realized. Sonny didn’t know who he was.”

He never would. What began with the crash of a felled tree in Arkansas ended on a night unknown, when a bench in his bedroom crashed under two-hundred twenty pounds of dead weight. No one heard the tree fall. No one heard the bench crash. Both ends of his life, as loose and odd as expected, are all tied up in a big black bow.

Why then does his story seem unfinished?

Somewhere in the back of beyond, an enormous fist is still shaking, not with rage but with regret—the regret of not knowing.

…..

The 1940 U.S. Census reports have been released. Tobin Liston and his family come into view on a rented farm in backwater Smith Township on April 23^rd of that year. They moved there from backwater Johnson Township sometime between 1930 and 1934. Tobin was sixty-seven and working on the farm sixty hours a week despite his advanced age. Helen was minding the chores in and around the rented shack and it’s easy to conjure up a picture of her wiping her hands on an apron as she greets the census taker. It would have been her who gave the names and ages of the children: Leo (“17”), Annie (“15”) and Alcora (“13,” called “Cabbie”), and there, between eleven-year-old Curtis and two-year-old Wesley, “Charles L” appears on record for the first time.

His age is given as “10” which means that 1930 is the likeliest year of his birth. However, Helen seemed prone to count the years from birth inclusively. A pointer is found in the 1930 census. On April 28^th 1930, Curtis was listed at “6/12” months old (which strongly suggests that he was born in October 1929) and no child named Charles was listed in the Liston household. Ten years later, Curtis was indeed in his eleventh year as his mother claimed, though actually ten years old. Charles was probably in his tenth year, though nine years old.

If Curtis was born in October 1929, then Sonny’s default birthday of May 8^th can be put to the wind, barring the unlikely event that he survived a premature delivery in a shotgun shack in a backward county with no doctor in sight. It is almost certain that he was born no earlier than July 1930.

As time stretched away from that census taker’s visit to the farm, Helen began to lose track. She was in her sixties when she said he was born in January (either the “18^th”or the “8^th”). Nick Tosches found that another sibling’s birth was registered as January 8^th and supposed that she mixed them up. Late in life, Helen rummaged through her memory again and claimed he was born in 1927. She seems to have confused the year of Sonny’s birth with Alcora’s, which was 1927. But there’s another scrap of information, easily overlooked, that may end the mystery. Helen said that Sonny was born on July 22^nd. Looking past her confusion about the year, we come face-to-face with a summer day that isn’t easily explained away and that happens to fall within the allowable time frame for a viable pregnancy.

—It fits. Perhaps a mother’s memory can be counted on after all.

A birth date emerges out of the thick, bleating air of the Mississippi Delta. Its jagged script, barely legible anymore, is carved on a resurrected tree: 7-22-1930, Charles L.

__________________

Photograph by John Vachon from Look Magazine, 2/25/1964.

“Should Patterson Give Title Shot to Liston: Sonny’s ‘Rebirth’ to Help,” Larry Still (Jet, 8/10/61); Jack McKinney’s “He’s Mad and Getting Madder” (Sports Illustrated, 9/24/62), Jack Olsen’s “What’s Become of the Big Bear?” (SI, 5/13/68) and William Nack’s “O Unlucky Man” (SI, 2/4/91), Evans Kirkby’s article in the Milwaukee Journal (5/24/1965), A.S. Young’s Sonny Liston: The Champ Nobody Wanted, (1963), The Ring, September 1967, Nick Tosches’ The Devil and Sonny Liston (2000), UPI-AP “Sought Floyd Rematch” 1/6/71, Rob Sneed’s Sonny Liston: His Life, Strife, and the Phantom Punch (2008) and U.S. Census reports (1860, 1870, 1930, 1940) were resources for this essay.

Springs Toledo can be contacted at scalinatella@hotmail.com.

Comment on this article

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Springs Toledo

The Challenge of Playing Muhammad Ali

Published

8 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Thomas Hauser

There have been countless dramatizations of Muhammad Ali’s life and more will follow in the years ahead. The most heavily marketed of these so far have been the 1977 movie titled The Greatest starring Ali himself and the 2001 biopic Ali starring Will Smith.

The Greatest was fictionalized. Its saving grace apart from Ali’s presence on screen was the song “The Greatest Love of All” which was written for the film and later popularized by Whitney Houston. Beyond that, the movie was mediocre. “Of all our sports heroes,” Frank Deford wrote, “Ali needs least to be sanitized. But The Greatest is just a big vapid valentine. It took a dive.”

The 2001 film was equally bland but without the saving grace of Ali on camera. “I hated that film,” Spike Lee said. “It wasn’t Ali.” Jerry Izenberg was in accord, complaining, “Will Smith playing Ali was an impersonation, not a performance.”

The latest entry in the Ali registry is a play running this week off-Broadway at the AMT Theater (354 West 45th Street) in Manhattan.

The One: The Life of Muhammad Ali was written by David Serero, who has produced and directed the show in addition to playing the role of Angelo Dundee in the three-man drama. Serero, age 43, was born in Paris, is of Moroccan-French-Jewish heritage, and has excelled professionally as an opera singer (baritone) and actor (stage and screen).

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. The play is flawed. There are glaring factual inaccuracies in the script that add nothing to the dramatic arc and detract from its credibility.

On the plus side; Zack Bazile (pictured) is exceptionally good as Ali. And Serero (wearing his director’s hat) brings the most out of him.

Growing up, Bazile (now 28) excelled in multiple sports. In 2018, while attending Ohio State, he won the NCAA Long Jump Championship and was named Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year. He also dabbled in boxing, competed in two amateur fights in 2022, and won both by knockout. He began acting three years ago.

Serero received roughly one thousand resumes when he published notices for a casting call in search of an actor to play Ali. One-hundred-twenty respondents were invited to audition.

“I had people who looked like Ali and were accomplished actors,” Serero recalls. “But when they were in the room, I didn’t feel Ali in front of me. You have to remember; we’re dealing with someone who really existed and there’s video of him, so it’s not like asking someone to play George Washington.”

And Ali was Ali. That’s a hard act to follow.

Bazile is a near-perfect fit. At 6-feet-2-inches tall, 195 pounds, he conveys Ali’s physicality. His body is sculpted in the manner of the young Ali. He moves like an athlete because he is an athlete. His face resembles Ali’s and his expressions are very much on the mark in the way he transmits emotion to the audience. He uses his voice the way Ali did. He moves his eyes the way Ali did. He has THE LOOK.

Zack was born the year that Ali lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, so he has no first-hand memory of the young Ali who set the world ablaze. “But as an actor,” he says, “I’m representing Ali. That’s a responsibility I take very seriously. Everyone has an essence about them. I had to find the right balance – not too over the top – and capture that.”

Sitting in the audience watching Bazile, I felt at times as though it was Ali onstage in front of me. Zack has the pre-exile Ali down perfectly. The magic dissipates a bit as the stage Ali grows older. Bazile still has to add the weight of aging to his craft. But I couldn’t help but think, “Muhammad would have loved watching Zack play him.”

****

Twenty-four hours after the premiere of The One, David Serero left the stage for a night to shine brightly in a real boxing ring., The occasion was the tenth fight card that Larry Goldberg has promoted at Sony Hall in New York, a run that began with Goldberg’s first pro show ever on October 13, 2022.

Most of the fights on the six-bout card played out as expected. But two were tougher for the favorites than anticipated. Jacob Riley Solis was held to a draw by Daniel Jefferson. And Andy Dominguez was knocked down hard by Angel Meza in round three before rallying to claim a one-point split-decision triumph.

Serero sang the national anthem between the second and third fights and stilled the crowd with a virtuoso performance. Fans at sports events are usually restless during the singing of the anthem. This time, the crowd was captivated. Serero turned a flat ritual into an inspirational moment. People were turning to each other and saying “Wow!”

****

The unexpected happened in Tijuana last Saturday night when 25-to-1 underdog Bruno Surace climbed off the canvas after a second-round knockdown to score a shocking, one-punch, sixth-round stoppage of Jaime Munguia. There has been a lot of commentary since then about what happened that night. The best explanation I’ve heard came from a fan named John who wrote, “The fight was not over in the second round although Munguia thought it was because, if he caught him once, he would naturally catch him again. Plus he looked at this little four KO guy [Surace had scored 4 knockouts in 27 fights] the way all the fans did, like he had no punch. That is what a fan can afford to do. But a fighter should know better. The ref reminds you, ‘Protect yourself at all times.’ Somebody forgot that.”

photo (c) David Serero

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

Published

2 days ago

December 16, 2024

Arne K. Lang

L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

If asked to name a prominent boxing trainer who operates out of a gym in Los Angeles, the name Freddie Roach would jump immediately to mind. Best known for his work with Manny Pacquaio, Roach has been named the Trainer of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America a record seven times.

A mere seven miles from Roach’s iconic Wild Card Gym is the gym that Rudy Hernandez now calls home. Situated in the Little Tokyo neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles, the L.A. Boxing Gym – a relatively new addition to the SoCal boxing landscape — is as nondescript as its name. From the outside, one would not guess that two reigning world champions, Junto Nakatani and Anthony Olascuaga, were forged there.

As Freddie Roach will be forever linked with Manny Pacquiao, so will Rudy Hernandez be linked with Nakatani. The Japanese boxer was only 15 years old when his parents packed him off to the United States to be tutored by Hernandez. With Hernandez in his corner, the lanky southpaw won titles at 112 and 115 and currently holds the WBO bantamweight (118) belt. In his last start, he knocked out his Thai opponent, a 77-fight veteran who had never been stopped, advancing his record to 29-0 (22 KOs).

Nakatani’s name now appears on several pound-for-pound lists. A match with Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue is brewing. When that match comes to fruition, it will be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.

“Junto Nakatani is the greatest fighter I’ve ever trained. It’s easy to work with him because even when he came to me at age 15, his focus was only on boxing. It was to be a champion one day and nothing interfered with that dream,” Hernandez told sports journalist Manouk Akopyan writing for Boxing Scene.

Akin to Nakatani, Rudy Hernandez built Anthony Olascuaga from scratch. The LA native was rucked out of obscurity in April of 2023 when Jonathan Gonzalez contracted pneumonia and was forced to withdraw from his date in Tokyo with lineal light flyweight champion Kenshiro Teraji. Olascuaga, with only five pro fights under his belt, filled the breach on 10 days’ notice and although he lost (TKO by 9), he earned kudos for his gritty performance against the man recognized as the best fighter in his weight class.

Two fights later, back in Tokyo, Olascuaga copped the WBO world flyweight title with a third-round stoppage of Riku Kano. His first defense came in October, again in Japan, and Olascuaga retained his belt with a first-round stoppage of the aforementioned Gonzalez. (This bout was originally ruled a no-contest as it ended after Gonzalez suffered a cut from an accidental clash of heads. But the referee ruled that Gonzalez was fit to continue before the Puerto Rican said “no mas,” alleging his vision was impaired, and the WBO upheld a protest from the Olascuaga camp and changed the result to a TKO. Regardless, Rudy Hernandez’s fighter would have kept his title.)

Hernandez, 62, is the brother of the late Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez. A two-time world title-holder at 130 pounds who fought the likes of Azumah Nelson, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr., Chicanito passed away in 2011, a cancer victim at age 45.

Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez was one of the most popular fighters in the Hispanic communities of Southern California. Rudy Hernandez, a late bloomer of sorts – at least in terms of public recognition — has kept his brother’s flame alive with own achievements. He is a worthy honoree for the 2024 Trainer of the Year.

Note: This is the first in our series of annual awards. The others will arrive sporadically over the next two weeks.

Photo credit: Steve Kim

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

A Shocker in Tijuana: Bruno Surace KOs Jaime Munguia !!

Published

4 days ago

December 15, 2024

Arne K. Lang

A-Shocker-in-Tijuana-Bruno-Sarace-KOs-Jaime-Munguia

It was a chilly night in Tijuana when Jaime Munguia entered the ring for his homecoming fight with Bruno Surace. The main event of a Zanfer/Top Rank co-promotion, Munguia vs. Surace was staged in the city’s 30,000-seat soccer stadium a stone’s throw from the U.S. border in the San Diego metroplex.

Surace, a Frenchman, brought a 25-0-2 record and a 22-fight winning streak, but a quick glance at his record showed that he had scant chance of holding his own with the house fighter. Only four of Surace’s 25 wins had come by stoppage and only eight of his wins had come against opponents with winning records. Munguia was making the first start in the city of his birth since February 2022. Surace had never fought outside Europe.

But hold the phone!

After losing every round heading into the sixth, Surace scored the Upset of the Year, ending the contest with a one-punch knockout.

It looked like a short and easy night for Munguia when he knocked Surace down with a left hook in the second stanza. From that point on, the Frenchman fought off his back foot, often with back to the ropes, throwing punches only in spurts. Munguia worked the body well and was seemingly on the way to wearing him down when he was struck by lightning in the form of an overhand right.

Down went Munguia, landing on his back. He struggled to get to his feet, but the referee waived it off a nano-second before reaching “10.” The official time was 2:36 of round six.

Munguia, who was 44-1 heading in with 35 KOs, was as high as a 35/1 favorite. In his only defeat, he had gone the distance with Canelo Alvarez. This was the biggest upset by a French fighter since Rene Jacquot outpointed Donald Curry in 1989 and Jacquot had the advantage of fighting in his homeland.

Co-Main

Mexico City’s Alan Picasso, ranked #1 by the WBC at 122 pounds, scored a third-round stoppage of last-minute sub Yehison Cuello in a scheduled 10-rounder contested at featherweight. Picaso (31-0-1, 17 KOs) is a solid technician. He ended the bout with a left to the rib cage, a punch that weaved around Cuello’s elbow and didn’t appear to be especially hard. The referee stopped his count at “nine” and waived the fight off.

A 29-year-old Colombian who reportedly had been training in Tijuana, the overmatched Cuello slumped to 13-3-1.

Other Bouts of Note

In a ho-hum affair, junior middleweight Jorge Garcia advanced to 32-4 (26) with a 10-round unanimous decision over Uzbekistan’s Kudratillo Abudukakhorov (20-4). The judges had it 97-92 and 99-90 twice. There were no knockdowns, but Garcia had a point deducted in round eight for low blows.

Garcia displayed none of the power that he showed in his most recent fight three months ago in Arizona and when he knocked out his German opponent in 46 seconds. Abudukakhorov, who has competed mostly as a welterweight, came in at 158 1/4 pounds and didn’t look in the best of shape. The Uzbek was purportedly 170-10 as an amateur (4-5 per boxrec).

Super bantamweight Sebastian Hernandez improved to 18-0 (17 KOs) with a seventh-round stoppage of Argentine import Sergio Martin (14-5). The end came at the 2:39 mark of round seven when Martin’s corner threw in the towel. Earlier in the round, Martin lost his mouthpiece and had a point deducted for holding.

Hernandez wasn’t all that impressive considering the high expectations born of his high knockout ratio, but appeared to have injured his right hand during the sixth round.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!