Harvey Araton Reflects on the Odd Coupling of Ali-Liston II and Lewiston, Maine

Published

3 years ago

May 24, 2022

Rick Assad

Harvey Araton Reflects on the Odd Coupling of Ali-Liston II and Lewiston, Maine

It’s rarely the case, but in a few instances a heavyweight championship fight has been staged in a small town like Shelby, Montana, or Lewiston, Maine.

The latter was the case 57 years ago this week — May 25 to be exact — when Muhammad Ali faced Sonny Liston for the second time in 15 months.

In the initial meeting, Ali, then Cassius Clay, stunned the world by stopping and taking away the Big Bear’s title with a sixth-round technical knockout in Miami Beach.

In the rematch, Ali’s short right hand proved to be the knockout punch, but many called it the “Phantom Punch,” because few in the throng of 2,434 inside Lewiston’s St. Dominic’s Arena actually saw the blow land.

Looking back, just how did a town of around 40,000 inhabitants and 142 miles north of Boston, actually host the second meeting?

Longtime New York City sportswriter Harvey Araton penned a feature that ran on May, 19, 2015 in the New York Times on just how that unlikely hamlet of Lewiston, at least for one night, became the boxing capital of the world.

“For the old timers in Lewiston, that fight is the equivalent of hosting an Olympics, an event that for decades has defined its identity, even more so after the city fell into disrepair following the decline of its textile industry and the closing of its mills,” said Araton, who worked at the Staten Island Advance, the New York Post, and the New York Daily News preceding a 25-year stint at the New York Times including a decade and a half writing the “Sports of the Times” column.

“The filmmaker I met who talked about what Ali yelled at Liston as he lay on his back – “Get up and fight!” – and how it enhanced the fight’s legacy in Lewiston as it struggled to revive itself was just perfect for my story. I’d like to think it has also come to reflect the rise of the Somali immigrant community, what it has had to go through in order to find a home and to overcome the standard fear and loathing of immigrants to share its restorative efforts in the city.”

When Araton visited Lewiston on the fight’s 50th anniversary, the townsfolk were proud.

“There certainly was a nostalgic quality to the city of Lewiston with the retention of its old, industrial feel, but especially in the arena where the fight took place. Beyond the facelift it was given several years ago, more to its facade than anything else, it still resembles what I described in the story as a cross between an old barn and an airplane hangar,” he said. “And while I wouldn’t say time is frozen inside, you didn’t have to stretch your imagination too far to feel what fight night must have been like, all of it enhanced by the folks I found who actually attended. And who, 50 years after the fact, were surprisingly vivid in their recall.”

While Ali was famous before this matchup, he became even more recognizable after it.

“To a degree, yes, this fight, more than the first one with Liston, arguably made the new champ more of a household name, for several reasons (though I would go easy on the global aspect of it, given the technological disconnectedness of the time). First and foremost, the chaotic and controversial nature of the fight was unavoidable,” said Araton, the author, co-author or editor of nine books including “When The Garden Was Eden: Clyde, The Captain, Dollar Bill And the Glory Days Of The New York Knicks” and “Driving Mr. Yogi: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry And Baseball’s Greatest Gift.”

“Two, with the name “Muhammad Ali” stitched onto his white robe, that was unquestionably more of an attention-grabber than Clay (even if much of the media refused to call him Ali). Finally, for those (including my dad Gilbert) who were turned off by Ali’s brashness and preferred to think of the Miami bout as a fluke or even a setup to have Liston put him to sleep in the rematch, the quick work Ali made of Liston essentially suggested to fans everywhere (of what was then a far more popular sport than today) that they might want to get used to this mouthy showman. He was going to be around for a while.”

Araton, who received the prestigious Curt Gowdy Award in 2017 (given annually to print/digital and broadcasting members of the media), said he had to talk his editors into letting him write the piece.

“This one was self-generated all the way. I even had to do a bit of a sales pitch for my editors, who weren’t in love with retrospective pieces. By 2015, I knew I wasn’t going to be a full-time sports journalist for much longer. I had tired of the traveling, the late-nights at live events, the calls for a deadline column that uprooted a dinner plan or a day with my family,” he said. “There wasn’t for me a great sense of unfinished business, events I hadn’t had the good fortune of covering. But I had always wondered about that fight – how the hell did it wind up in Lewiston, of all places? I mean, there were obvious details about the Boston situation, but I wanted to know the full story. More than that, I was dying to find out if I could interview anyone who actually attended the fight. I really thought I’d be lucky to locate one or two. But lo and behold, there were several – including the former Bates students – who were either at the fight or connected to it, one way or another. And, of course, the story ultimately evolved to being about Lewiston as much as it was about the fight. That’s what I always loved about journalism: the idea is what merely gets you moving in the pursuit of a story.”

Like so many at that time, Araton listened to the fight on the radio. “I mentioned my father earlier – he wasn’t much of a sports fan but he grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, had a cousin who was a boxer and loved a good boxing match. And as I also mentioned, he didn’t care much for Ali, while I, like so many other kids, found him compelling, especially compared to the dour, menacing Liston,” he noted. “So that night, he set up the radio on the kitchen table in our Staten Island housing projects apartment, as he typically did for a big fight that wasn’t on TV. I had just turned 13, apparently old enough to be teased: “Liston’s gonna give it to him good.”

“Just as the start of the fight approached, I had to hit the bathroom, and after taking care of business in there, I emerged to see him pulling the plug from the socket and returning the radio to the shelf where he kept it. “Go to bed, it’s over,” he said. I was confused – “whaddaya mean, it’s over?” He huffed, “Clay knocked him out.” I went off to my room happily.”

The fight lasted one round and some thought it was fixed. Jimmy Cannon, the legendary sportswriter sitting ringside said of the knockout punch: “It couldn’t have squashed a grape.”

“I asked that question to all I interviewed who’d attended the fight. Most told me they managed to miss the moment of the punch – looked away, or sipped a beer, or whatever,” said Araton, “But one guy, a former IRS agent named Bob Pacios, insisted he’d had a clear and elevated line of vision from behind Ali and saw Liston step into the blow to the side of his face. He even diagrammed what he saw on a napkin. So, I’ll go with what he testified, while also factoring in that Liston did get up and the fight sort of continued as the ref, Jersey Joe Walcott, went over to consult the timekeeper. Which, I suppose, could obfuscate the hardcore belief that he took a dive. Also, while Ali was no knockout artist, he certainly was a very large man with lightning-fast hands. In other words, the one-punch takeout was plausible.”

Araton never covered any of Ali’s fights, but he did see him up close on one occasion.

“I met him once at the baggage claim at one of the New York-area airports, can’t remember which one, or the year, but it was well after he’d been afflicted by Parkinson’s,” he said. “I was waiting for my bag, minding my business, when I noticed him standing with his wife, Lonnie, at the carousel right next door – of course with people gawking all around him. I just had to go over and say something, anything. I introduced myself as a New York Times sports columnist, and a fan, and mentioned one of my mentors in the newspaper business – Vic Ziegel, who’d covered prime Ali for the New York Post. He smiled, made a fist and said something to the extent of, ‘You tell him I’m looking for him!’”

Araton said he did see the three-time heavyweight champion from a distance.

“Having covered the Atlanta Summer Olympics in 1996, I was also in the stadium when he appeared with the torch, in what had to be the greatest ceremonial sports moment of our times,” he said. “It takes no special insight to call Ali a great historical figure, incredibly courageous, transcendent of his sport, all sports and pretty much everything else. But also a man with some troubling contradictions – tough to stomach, for instance, how he demeaned Joe Frazier, even when rationalized for the purpose of selling the fights. And shame on the press for laughing along, or even portraying Frazier as a tool of the white establishment.”

Araton went on: “When Ali died, I was wrapping up my 25 years at the Times (as I’d anticipated before doing the Lewiston piece the previous year) and was covering the NBA finals in the California Bay Area. My older son, Alex, was quite upset by the news. He was, after all, the son of a sports columnist who happened to be fascinated with the Ali legend. He kept texting me, encouraging me to write something, while I reminded him that the Times tributes had all been prepared well in advance of Ali’s death, as almost all are for the truly great ones. But when he insisted, I finally relented, and stayed up into the wee hours to finish a piece that I posted on a blog site I had created but seldom used.

“Strangely enough, once posted to the blog site, it appeared on my Twitter feed and a media critic for Sports Illustrated included it on a list of Ali tributes he liked. That provided it with far more readers than I’d imagined it would get. Which gets back to my earlier point of how Ali as a phenomenon was much easier to propagate globally by 2016 than he was in 1965.”

Harvey Araton’s blog piece bore the title “Ali, Connector of Generations.” Here’s a link to it.
http://www.harveyaraton.com/the-araton-blog/ali-connector-of-generations

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Rick Assad

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Emanuel Navarrete Survives a Bloody Battle with Charly Suarez in San Diego

Published

1 hour ago

May 11, 2025

David A. Avila

Emanuel-Navarrete-Survives-a-Bloody-Battle-with-Charly-Suarez-in-San-Diego

In a torrid battle Mexico’s Emanuel “Vaquero” Navarrete and his staccato attack staved off the herky-jerky non-stop assaults of Philippine’s Charly Suarez to win by technical decision and retain the WBO super feather world title on Saturday.

What do they feed these guys?

Navarrete (40-2-1, 32 KOs) and his elongated arms managed to connect enough to compensate against the surprising Suarez (18-1, 10 KOs) who wowed the crowd at Pechanga Arena in San Diego.

An accidental clash of heads opened a cut on the side of Navarrete’s left eye and forced a stoppage midway through the fight.

From the opening round Navarrete used his windmill style of attack with punches from different angles that caught Suarez multiple times early. It did not matter. Suarez fired back with impunity and was just as hungry to punch it out with the Mexican fighter.

It was savage.

Every time Navarrete connected solidly, he seemed to pause and check out the damage. Bad idea. Suarez would immediately counter with bombs of his own and surprise the champion with his resilience and tenacity.

Wherever they found Suarez they should look for more, because the Filipino fighter from Manila was ferocious and never out of his depth.

Around the sixth round the Mexican fighter seemed a little drained and puzzled at the tireless attacks coming from Suarez. During an exchange of blows a cut opened up on Navarrete and it was ruled an accidental clash of heads by the referee. Blood streamed down the side of Navarrete’s face and it was cleared by the ringside physician.

But at the opening of the eighth round, the fight was stopped and the ringside physician ruled the cut was too bad to continue. The California State Athletic Commission looked at tape of the round when the cut opened to decipher if it was an accidental butt or a punch that caused the cut. It was unclear so the referee’s call of accidental clash of heads stood as the final ruling.

Score cards from the judges saw Navarrete the winner by scores of 78-75, 77-76 twice. He retains the WBO title.

Interim IBF Lightweight Title

The sharp-shooting Raymond “Danger” Muratalla (23-0, 17 KOs) maneuvered past Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-2, 12 KOs) by unanimous decision to win the interim IBF lightweight title after 12 rounds.

Both fighters were strategic in their approach with Muratalla switching from orthodox to southpaw at various times of the fight. Neither fighter was ever able to dominant any round.

Defense proved the difference between the two lightweights. Muratalla was able to slip more blows than Abdullaev and that proved the difference. The fighter from Fontana, California was able to pierce Abdullaev’s guard more often than not, especially with counter punches.

Abdullaev was never out of the fight. The Russian fighter was able to change tactics and counter the counters midway through the fight. It proved effective especially to the body. But it was not enough to offset Muratalla’s accuracy.

There were no knockdowns and after 12 rounds the judges scored it 118-110, 119-109 twice for Muratalla who now becomes the mandatory for the IBF lightweight title should Vasyl Lomachenko return to defend it.

Muratalla was brief.

“He was a tough fighter,” said Muratalla. “My defense is something I work on a lot.”

Perla Wins

Super flyweight Perla Bazaldua (2-0) eased past Mona Ward (0-2) with a polished display of fighting at length and inside.

Combination punching and defense allowed Bazaldua to punch in-between Ward’s attacks and force the St. Louis fighter to clinch repeatedly. But Ward hung in there despite taking a lot of blows. After four rounds the Los Angeles-based Bazaldua was scored the winner 40-36 on all three cards. Bazaldua signed a long term contract with Top Rank in March.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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Late Bloomer Anthony Cacace TKOs Hometown Favorite Leigh Wood in Nottingham

Published

15 hours ago

May 10, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Late-Bloomer-Anthony-Cacace-TKOs-Hometown-Favorite-Leigh-Wood-in-Nottingham

Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions was at Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, England, tonight with a card featuring hometown favorite Leigh Wood against Ireland’s Anthony “Apache” Cacace.

Wood, a former two-time WBA featherweight champion, known for dramatic comebacks in bouts he was losing, may have reached the end of the road at age 36. He had his moments tonight, rocking Cacace on several occasions and winning the eighth round, but he paid the price, returning to his corner after round eight with swelling around both of his eyes.

In the ninth, Cacace, an 11/5 favorite, hurt Wood twice with left hands, the second of which knocked Wood into the ropes, dictating a standing 8-count by referee John Latham. When the bout resumed, Cacace went for the kill and battered Wood around the ring, forcing Wood’s trainer Ben Davison to throw in the towel. The official time was 2:15 of round nine.

Akin to Wood, Northern Ireland’s Cacace (24-1, 9 KOs) is also 36 years old and known as a late bloomer. This was his ninth straight win going back to 2017 (he missed all of 2018 and 2020). He formerly held the IBF 130-pound world title, a diadem he won with a stoppage of then-undefeated and heavily favored Joe Cordina, but that belt wasn’t at stake tonight as Cacace abandoned it rather than fulfill his less-lucrative mandatory. Wood falls to 28-4.

Semi-Wind-Up

Nottingham light heavyweight Ezra Taylor, fighting in his hometown for the first time since pro debut, delighted his fan base with a comprehensive 10-round decision over previously undefeated Troy Jones. Taylor, who improved to 12-0 (9) won by scores of 100-90, 99-91, and 98-92.

This was Taylor’s first fight with new trainer Malik Scott, best known for his work with Deontay Wilder. The victory may have earned him a match with Commonwealth title-holder Lewis Edmondson. Jones was 12-0 heading in.

Other Bouts of Note

In his first fight as a featherweight, Liam Davies rebounded from his first defeat with a 12-round unanimous decision over Northern Ireland’s previously undefeated Kurt Walker. Davies, who improved to 17-1 (8), staved off a late rally to prevail on scores of 115-113, 116-112, and 117-111. It was the first pro loss for the 30-year-old Walker (12-1), a Tokyo Olympian.

In a mild upset, Owen Cooper, a saucy Worcestershire man, won a 10-round decision over former Josh Taylor stablemate Chris Kongo. The referee’s scorecard read 96-94.

Cooper improved to 11-1 (4). It was the third loss in 20 starts for Kongo.

A non-televised 8-rounder featured junior welterweight Sam Noakes in a stay-busy fight. A roofer by trade and the brother of British welterweight title-holder Sean Noakes, Sam improved to 17-0 (15 KOs) with a third-round stoppage of overmatched Czech import Patrik Balez (13-5-1).

Photo credit: Leigh Dawney / Queensberry

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Published

2 days ago

May 9, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Years ago, I worked at a newsstand in the Beverly Hills area. It was a 24-hour a day version and the people that dropped by were very colorful and unique.

One elderly woman Eva, who bordered on homeless but pridefully wore lipstick, would stop by the newsstand weekly to purchase a pack of menthol cigarettes. On one occasion, she asked if I had ever been to San Diego?

I answered “yes, many times.”

She countered “you need to watch out for San Diego Smoke.”

This Saturday, Top Rank brings its brand of prizefighting to San Diego or what could be called San Diego Smoke. Leading the fight card is Mexico’s Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1, 32 KOs) defending the WBO super feather title against undefeated Filipino Charly Suarez (18-0, 10 KOs) at Pechanga Arena. ESPN will televise.

This is Navarrete’s fourth defense of the super feather title.

The last time Navarrete stepped in the boxing ring he needed six rounds to dismantle the very capable Oscar Valdez in their rematch. One thing about Mexico City’s Navarrete is he always brings “the smoke.”

Also, on the same card is Fontana, California’s Raymond Muratalla (22-0, 17 KOs) vying for the interim IBF lightweight title against Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-1, 12 KOs) on the co-main event.

Abdullaev has only fought once before in the USA and was handily defeated by Devin Haney back in 2019. But that was six years ago and since then he has knocked off various contenders.

Muratalla is a slick fighting lightweight who trains at the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy now in Moreno Valley, Calif. It’s a virtual boot camp with many of the top fighters on the West Coast available to spar on a daily basis. If you need someone bigger or smaller, stronger or faster someone can match those needs.

When you have that kind of preparation available, it’s tough to beat. Still, you have to fight the fight. You never know what can happen inside the prize ring.

Another fighter to watch is Perla Bazaldua, 19, a young and very talented female fighter out of the Los Angeles area. She is trained by Manny Robles who is building a small army of top female fighters.

Bazaldua (1-0, 1 KO) meets Mona Ward (0-1) in a super flyweight match on the preliminary portion of the Top Rank card. Top Rank does not sign many female fighters so you know that they believe in her talent.

Others on the Top Rank card in San Diego include Giovani Santillan, Andres Cortes, Albert Gonzalez, Sebastian Gonzalez and others.

They all will bring a lot of smoke to San Diego.

Probox TV

A strong card led by Erickson “The Hammer” Lubin (26-2, 18 KOs) facing Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0, 6 KOs) in a super welterweight clash between southpaws takes place on Saturday at Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee, Florida. PROBOX TV will stream the fight card.

Ardreal has rocketed up the standings and now faces veteran Lubin whose only losses came against world titlists Sebastian Fundora and Jermell Charlo. It’s a great match to decide who deserves a world title fight next.

Another juicy match pits Argentina’s Nazarena Romero (14-0-2) against Mexico’s Mayelli Flores (12-1-1) in a female super bantamweight contest.

Nottingham, England

Anthony Cacace (23-1, 8 KOs) defends the IBO super featherweight title against Leigh Wood (28-3, 17 KOs) in Wood’s hometown on Saturday at Nottingham Arena in Nottingham, England. DAZN will stream the Queensberry Promotions card.

Ireland’s Cacace seems to have the odds against him. But he is no stranger to dancing in the enemy’s lair or on foreign territory. He formerly defeated Josh Warrington in London and Joe Cordina in Riyadh in IBO title defenses.

Lampley at Wild Card

Boxing telecaster Jim Lampley will be signing his new book It Happened! at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood, Calif. on Saturday, May 10, beginning at 2 p.m. Lampley has been a large part of many of the greatest boxing events in the past 40 years. He and Freddie Roach will be at the signing.

Fights to Watch (All times Pacific Time)

Sat. DAZN 11 a.m. Anthony Cacace (23-1) vs Leigh Wood (28-3).

Sat. PROBOX.tv 3 p.m. Erickson Lubin (26-2) vs Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0).

Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1) vs Charly Suarez (18-0); Raymond Muratalla (22-0) vs Zaur Abdullaev (20-1).

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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