The Clay-Liston Fight was a Watershed Moment for Journalist and Author Robert Lipsyte

Published

2 years ago

July 2, 2023

Rick Assad

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Two lives unknowingly became intertwined on February 25, 1964, at the Miami Beach Convention Center when Cassius Clay faced the reigning heavyweight champion Charles “Sonny” Liston, a 7-1 betting favorite over the brash 22-year-old challenger from Louisville, Kentucky.

Seated ringside was Robert Lipsyte, who was covering the match for the New York Times, seven years after graduating from Columbia University with an English degree.

Clay, who would shortly change his given name to Muhammad Ali, was thought to be in over his head.

“The regular boxing writer, Joe Nichols, terrific guy, also covered horse racing which he was more interested in,” Lipsyte said. “His feeling, as was the general feeling, was that Cassius Clay would be knocked out in the first round and he did not think it was worth his time to go all the way down to Miami Beach for less than one round.”

Lipsyte, who had two tours at the Times beginning in 1957 and running through 1971, and 1991 through 2003, was looking for his big break.

“He kind of looked around the newsroom and he pointed to me and he said, “the kid on the night rewrite, he’s not doing anything, send him.” That’s a bit of a legend,” he said. “The point was they were ready to move me up. The fight was in February. The decision was probably made in October to send me down. Those decisions are certainly made long in advance. And so, I had a number of months to go to every boxing match I could go to, interview fighters, read everything.”

Getting this assignment wasn’t lost on Lipsyte, who would become one of the vaunted Sports of the Times columnists, and during his long career would be highly decorated, including winning the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association for lifetime contribution to Young Adult Literature in 2001. Previously he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992 and won the A.J. Liebling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing from the Boxing Writers Association of America in 1995.

“I was enormously inexperienced compared to Joe Nichols, but I had a little sense of boxing when I went down there. I was very excited. Even if the fight was going to be over in 10 seconds, I had never been to a heavyweight championship fight,” he admitted. “Remember this was 1964 when boxing was very important and it was still a major sport in America and really a heavyweight fight held the same prestige as the Super Bowl now. It’s hard to believe.”

“Think about the excitement of being in the arena for a heavyweight championship fight. The Super Bowl. A Broadway opening. Think of anything that has that kind of crackle and electricity,” said Lipsyte, a New York City native. “I was totally thrilled to be there.”

Like every writer, Lipsyte, who has published roughly two dozen books of non-fiction and fiction including “SportsWorld: An American Dreamland,” “The Contender,” and “An Accidental Sportswriter: A Memoir,” arrived in South Florida several days before the fight.

“I had spent a week now down there, most of that time with Clay and I really liked him a lot which was not necessarily the consensus and my thought was that I hoped he wouldn’t get hurt too badly because I really liked him,” he said. “I hoped he would stay around and I could interview him some more.”

At the time, Lipsyte was 26 and part of the younger generation of sportswriters.

“Most of the sportswriters down there were older experienced guys, like Joe Nichols would have been, and then there were the younger guys,” he said. “The younger guys gravitated to Clay’s camp and hung out there. The older guys went to Liston’s camp where his entourage included Joe Louis who was the hero of their young manhood.”

On the night of the fight, the overwhelming majority of scribes concurred with the Las Vegas oddsmakers and favored Liston.

“Up until the very moment that the two fighters came into the ring, beside my excitement to be there, was this feeling I really hoped he would be able to dance away enough so he would not get hurt,” Lipsyte said. “Then the moment the two fighters came into the ring, I suddenly had this thought that Cassius Clay is much bigger than Sonny Liston.”

Lipsyte’s concern for Clay’s safety quickly dissipated as he dominated the action which resulted in a sixth-round stoppage and technical knockout victory when Liston failed to come out for the seventh round.

“In our minds, we had created this David versus Goliath narrative but actually it’s really not quite true,” he said. “Clay was taller. He was broader and he took command of the fight almost immediately and it changed everything. I would say only one or two of the 100 reporters at ringside gave him a chance to win.”

Compared to many of the veteran sportswriters at the clash, Lipsyte was a pup.

“I was young and inexperienced and I went along with what the experienced big shots were saying,” he said of Liston’s menacing stare and potent punching power. “I assumed that because Liston was terrifying. He could make you pee in your pants at a press conference.”

Looking back on what Clay and later Ali meant to him, Lipsyte is grateful for that time and opportunity.

“I always say that when Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston it was as much of a career move for him as it was for me. It changed everything. Suddenly I was no longer this young newcomer, a feature writer at the paper,” he said. “I was immediately the boxing writer. Being the boxing writer at that point meant the Muhammad Ali writer. That was the biggest story in sports for a long time and I covered it. I got more out of it right away than he did. It absolutely made my career.”

Even though Clay had been the newly-minted heavyweight champion, he had tough sledding because of his unpopular stances.

“He was excoriated for becoming a member of the Black Muslims,” Lipsyte said. “There were all kinds of rumors that the fight was fixed in some way. It took a while for the Muhammad Ali we think about now. A lot of people and certainly a lot of very important older sportswriters like Red Smith, Jimmy Cannon and Arthur Daley, if they didn’t despise him, they certainly wrote as if they did. He refused to go into the Army. He repudiated the Christianity of his parents. At the middle of the civil rights movement in America, he was a segregationist. He was so many things that white America was either afraid of or hated because they were afraid of.”

No one is perfect and that includes Ali. Still, Lipsyte recited an example of his kindness.

“He and I had a midnight plane ride back to New York,” he recalled. “There was a little old lady and she took a picture. She clicks and he reaches out. “Your lens cap was on,” he said. “I wouldn’t want her to have missed taking a picture of the champ.”

Lipsyte mentioned a second incident of Ai’s generosity.

“I pulled up next to him on the plane with an economy ticket,” he noted. “I sat down next to him. I told him I had to get back in my seat. He said, “don’t worry, you’re with the champ,” and of course nobody bothered us the whole time. What I remember was his generosity, his spirit, his kindness and his sense of who he was and the world’s sense of who he was. It all was encapsulated for me in that little story. That was him.”

Another time when Ali seized center stage was at the Atlanta Olympics.

“That moment when he lit the Olympic torch in 1996, it’s the first time I have ever cried at a sporting event,” Lipsyte remembered, “and later finding out that hot wax was dripping on his hand and burning him but he never let on. He just held that flame in his quivering hand. It was kind of a testament to his gallantry.”

Though Lipsyte covered many boxing matches, his favorite sport is baseball, and in a curious way he finds much about the sweet science that he doesn’t much care for.

“I never liked boxing. This is something I’m struggling with right now. Boxers are my favorite athletes,” he stated. “They’re the best athletes to talk to and in the old days you had access. I love boxers. They’re fun to write about. I hated boxing.”

Asked if he keeps up with boxing, Lipsyte said that he hasn’t for a long time.

“I don’t follow boxing. The last time I followed boxing was when one of the heavyweight champions, one of the Klitschko brothers [Vitali] was mayor of Kyiv,” he said. “I kind of lost interest. The whole thing didn’t make sense anymore.”

Living on Shelter Island in Long Island, New York, Lipsyte turned 85 on January 16 and has several grandchildren and outside interests to occupy his time.

“I’m very busy. I’m still writing. I have a great family. At my age, I’m playing with the house’s money,” he said. “I go to memorials for my friends and that’s it. The last birthday that really rocked me was 30. That was the end of childhood.”

As a wise elder, Lipsyte can lay claim to being present at many unforgettable sporting events, including what Sports Illustrated ranked fourth on its list of greatest sports moments of the 20th century, the night Clay shocked the world, and two iconoclasts were launched.

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Rick Assad

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History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era

Published

7 hours ago

April 2, 2025

Arne K. Lang

History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era

This reporter was rummaging around the internet last week when he stumbled on a story in the May 1950 issue of Ebony under the byline of Mike Jacobs. Boxing was then in the doldrums (isn’t it always?) and Jacobs, the most powerful promoter in boxing during the era of Joe Louis, was lassoed by the editors of the magazine to address the question of whether the over-representation of black boxers was killing the sport at the box office.

This hoary allegation had been kicking around even before the heyday of Jack Johnson, bubbling forth whenever an important black-on-black fight played to a sea of empty seats as had happened the previous year when Chicago’s Comiskey Park hosted the world heavyweight title fight between Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott.

Jacobs ridiculed the hypothesis – as one could have expected considering the publication in which the story ran – and singled out three “colored” boxers as the best of the current crop of active pugilists: Sugar Ray Robinson, Ike Williams, and Freddie Dawson.

Sugar Ray Robinson? A no-brainer. Skill-wise the greatest of the great. Even those that didn’t follow boxing, would have recognized his name. Ike Williams? Nowhere near as well-known as Robinson, but he was then the reigning lightweight champion, a man destined to go into the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the inaugural class of 1990.

And Freddie Dawson? If the name doesn’t ring a bell, dear reader, you are not alone. I confess that I too drew a blank. And that triggered a search to learn more about him.

Freddie Dawson had four fights with Ike Williams. All four were staged on Ike’s turf in Philadelphia. Were this not the case, the history books would likely show that the series knotted 2-2. Late in his career, Dawson became greatly admired in Australia. But we are jumping ahead of ourselves.

Dawson was born in 1924 in Thomasville, Arkansas, an unincorporated town in the Arkansas Delta. Likely a descendent of slaves who worked in the cotton plantations, he grew up in the so-called Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, the heart of Chicago’s Black Belt.

The first mention of him in the newspapers came in 1941 when he won Chicago’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) featherweight title. In those days, amateur boxing was big in the Windy City, the birthplace of the Golden Gloves. The Catholic Archdiocese, which ran gyms in every parish, and the Chicago Parks Department, were the major incubators.

In his amateur days, he was known as simply Fred Dawson. As a pro, his name often appeared as Freddy Dawson, although Freddie gradually became the more common spelling.

Dawson, who stood five-foot-six and was often described as stocky, made his pro debut on Feb. 1, 1943, at Marigold Gardens. Before the year was out, he had 16 fights under his belt, all in Chicago and all but two at Marigold. (Currently the site of an interdenominational Christian church, Marigold Gardens, on the city’s north side, was Chicago’s most active boxing and wrestling arena from the mid-1930s through the early-1950s. Joe Louis had three of his early fights there and Tony Zale was a fixture there as he climbed the ladder to the world middleweight title.)

The last of these 16 fights was fatal for Dawson’s opponent who collapsed heading back to his corner after the fight was stopped in the 10^th round and died that night at a local hospital from the effects of a brain injury.

Dawson left town after this incident and spent most of the next year in New Orleans where energetic promoter Louis Messina ran twice-weekly shows (Mondays for whites and Fridays for blacks) at the Coliseum, a major stop on boxing’s so-called Chitlin’ Circuit.

That same year, on Sept. 19, 1944, Dawson had his first encounter with Ike Williams. He was winning the fight when Ike knocked him out with a body punch in the fourth round.

The first and last meetings between Dawson and Ike Williams were spaced five years apart. In the interim, Freddie scored his two best wins, stopping Vic Patrick in the twelfth round at Sydney, NSW, and Bernard Docusen in the sixth round in Chicago.

The long-reigning lightweight champion of Australia, Patrick (49-3, 43 KOs) gave the crowd a thrill when he knocked Dawson down for a count of “six” in the penultimate 11^th round, but Dawson returned the favor twice in the final stanza, ending the contest with a punch so harsh that the poor Aussie needed five minutes before he was fit to leave the ring and would spend the night in the hospital as a precaution.

Dawson fought Bernard Docusen before 10,000-plus at Chicago Stadium on Feb. 4, 1949. An 8/5 favorite, Docusen lacked a hard punch, but the New Orleans cutie had suffered only three losses in 66 fights, had never been stopped, and had extended Sugar Ray Robinson the 15-round distance the previous year.

Dawson dismantled him. Docusen managed to get back on his feet after Dawson knocked him down in the sixth, but he was in no condition to continue and the referee waived the fight off. Dawson was then vacillating between the lightweight and welterweight divisions and reporters wondered whether it would be Robinson or Ike Williams when Dawson finally got his well-earned title shot.

Sugar Ray wasn’t in his future. Here are the results of his other matches with Ike Williams:

Dawson-Williams II (Jan. 28, 1946) – The consensus on press row was 7-2-1 or 7-3 for Dawson, but the match was ruled a draw. “[The judges and referee] evidently saw [Williams] land punches that nobody else did,” said the ringside reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dawson-Williams III (Jan. 26, 1948) – Dawson lost a majority decision. The scores were 6-4, 5-4-1, and 4-4-2. The decision was booed. Ike Williams then held the lightweight title, but this was a non-title fight. (It was tough for an outsider to get a fair shake in Philadelphia, home to Ike Williams’ co-manager Frank “Blinky” Palermo who would go to prison for his duplicitous dealings as a fight facilitator.)

Dawson-Williams IV (Dec. 5, 1949) – This would be Freddie Dawson’s only crack at a world title and he came up short. Ike Williams retained the belt, winning a unanimous decision. The fight was close – 8-7, 8-7, 9-6 – but there was no controversy.

Dawson made three more trips to Australia before his career was finished. On the first of these trips, he knocked out Jack Hassen, successor to Vic Patrick as the lightweight champion of Australia. A 1953 article in the Sydney Sunday Herald bore witness to the esteem in which Dawson was held by boxing fans in Australia: “None of our boxers could withstand his devastating attacks which not only knocked them out but also knocked years off their careers,” said the author. “It is doubtful whether any Australian boxer in any division could have beaten Dawson.”

Dawson had his final fights in the Land Down Under, finishing his career with a record of 103-14-4 while answering the bell for 962 rounds. Following what became his final fight, he had an eye operation in Sydney that was reportedly so intricate that it required a two-week hospital stay. He injured the eye again in Manila while sparring in preparation for a match with the welterweight champion of the Philippines, a match that had to be aborted because of the injury. Dawson then disappeared, by which we mean that he disappeared from the pages of the newspaper archives that allow us to construct these kinds of stories.

What about Freddie Dawson the man? A 1944 story about him said he was an outstanding all-around athlete, “a champion in all athletic undertakings – basketball, baseball, track and even jitterbugging.” A story in a Sydney paper as he was preparing to meet Vic Patrick informs us that he had two young children, ages 2 and 1, owned his own home in Chicago, and drove a two-year-old Cadillac. But beyond these flimsy snippets, Dawson the man remains elusive.

What we learned, however, is that he was one of the most underrated boxers to come down the pike in any era, a borderline Hall of Famer who ought not have fallen through the cracks. Inside the ring, this guy was one tough hombre.

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Ringside at the Fontainebleau where Mikaela Mayer Won her Rematch with Sandy Ryan

Published

4 days ago

March 30, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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LAS VEGAS, NV — The first meeting between Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan last September at Madison Square Garden was punctuated with drama before the first punch was thrown. When the smoke cleared, Mayer had become a world-title-holder in a second weight class, taking away Ryan’s WBO welterweight belt via a majority decision in a fan-friendly fight.

The rematch tonight at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas was another fan-friendly fight. There were furious exchanges in several rounds and the crowd awarded both gladiators a standing ovation at the finish.

Mayer dominated the first half of the fight and held on to win by a unanimous decision. But Sandy Ryan came on strong beginning in round seven, and although Mayer was the deserving winner, the scores favoring her (98-92 and 97-93 twice) fail to reflect the competitiveness of the match-up. This is the best rivalry in women’s boxing aside from Taylor-Serrano.

Mayer, 34, improved to 21-2 (5). Up next, she hopes, in a unification fight with Lauren Price who outclassed Natasha Jonas earlier this month and currently holds the other meaningful pieces of the 147-pound puzzle. Sandy Ryan, 31, the pride of Derby, England, falls to 7-3-1.

Co-Feature

In his first defense of his WBO world welterweight title (acquired with a brutal knockout of Giovani Santillan after the title was vacated by Terence Crawford), Atlanta’s Brian Norman Jr knocked out Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas in the third round. A three-punch combination climaxed by a short left hook sent Cuevas staggering into a corner post. He got to his feet before referee Thomas Taylor started the count, but Taylor looked in Cuevas’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw and brought the bout to a halt.

The stoppage, which struck some as premature, came with one second remaining in the third stanza.

A second-generation prizefighter (his father was a fringe contender at super middleweight), the 24-year-old Norman (27-0, 21 KOs) is currently boxing’s youngest male title-holder. It was only the second pro loss for Cuevas (27-2-1) whose lone previous defeat had come early in his career in a 6-rounder he lost by split decision.

Other Bouts

In a career-best performance, 27-year-old Brooklyn featherweight Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington (15-0, 9 KOs) blasted out Jose Enrique Vivas (23-4) in the third round.

Carrington, who was named the Most Outstanding Boxer at the 2019 U.S. Olympic Trials despite being the lowest-seeded boxer in his weight class, decked Vivas with a right-left combination near the end of the second round. Vivas barely survived the round and was on a short leash when the third stanza began. After 53 seconds of round three, referee Raul Caiz Jr had seen enough and waived it off. Vivas hadn’t previously been stopped.

Cleveland welterweight Tiger Johnson, a Tokyo Olympian, scored a fifth-round stoppage over San Antonio’s Kendo Castaneda. Johnson assumed control in the fourth round and sent Castaneda to his knees twice with body punches in the next frame. The second knockdown terminated the match. The official time was 2:00 of round five.

Johnson advanced to 15-0 (7 KOs). Castenada declined to 21-9.

Las Vegas junior welterweight Emiliano Vargas (13-0, 11 KOs) blasted out Stockton, California’s Giovanni Gonzalez in the second round. Vargas brought the bout to a sudden conclusion with a sweeping left hook that knocked Gonzalez out cold. The end came at the 2:00 minute mark of round two.

Gonzalez brought a 20-7-2 record which was misleading as 18 of his fights were in Tijuana where fights are frequently prearranged. However, he wasn’t afraid to trade with Vargas and paid the price.

Emiliano Vargas, with his matinee idol good looks and his boxing pedigree – he is the son of former U.S. Olympian and two-weight world title-holder “Ferocious” Fernando Vargas – is highly marketable and has the potential to be a cross-over star.

Eighteen-year-old Newark bantamweight Emmanuel “Manny” Chance, one of Top Rank’s newest signees, won his pro debut with a four-round decision over So Cal’s Miguel Guzman. Chance won all four rounds on all three cards, but this was no runaway. He left a lot of room for improvement.

There was a long intermission before the co-main and again before the main event, but the tedium was assuaged by a moving video tribute to George Foreman.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0

Published

4 days ago

March 29, 2025

David A. Avila

William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0

No surprise, once again William Zepeda eked out a win over the clever and resilient Tevin Farmer to remain undefeated and retain a regional lightweight title on Saturday.

There were no knockdowns in this rematch.

The Mexican punching machine Zepeda (33-0, 17 KOs) once more sought to overwhelm Farmer (33-8-1, 9 KOs) with a deluge of blows. This rematch by Golden Boy Promotions took place in the famous beach resort area of Cancun, Mexico.

It was a mere four months ago that both first clashed in Saudi Arabia with their vastly difference styles. This time the tropical setting served as the background which suited Zepeda and his lawnmower assaults. The Mexican fans were pleased.

Nothing changed in their second meeting.

Zepeda revved up the body assault and Farmer moved around casually to his right while fending off the Mexican fighter’s attacks. By the fourth round Zepeda was able to cut off Farmer’s escape routes and targeted the body with punishing shots.

The blows came in bunches.

In the fifth round Zepeda blasted away at Farmer who looked frantic for an escape. The body assault continued with the Mexican fighter pouring it on and Farmer seeming to look ready to quit. When the round ended, he waved off his corner’s appeals to stop.

Zepeda continued to dominate the next few rounds and then Farmer began rallying. At first, he cleverly smothered Zepeda’s body attacks and then began moving and hitting sporadically. It forced the Mexican fighter to pause and figure out the strategy.

Farmer, a Philadelphia fighter, showed resiliency especially when it was revealed he had suffered a hand injury.

During the last three rounds Farmer dug down deep and found ways to score and not get hit. It was Boxing 101 and the Philly fighter made it work.

But too many rounds had been put in the bank by Zepeda. Despite the late rally by Farmer one judge saw it 114-114, but two others scored it 116-112 and 115-113 for Zepeda who retains his interim lightweight title and place at the top of the WBC rankings.

“I knew he was a difficult fighter. This time he was even more difficult,” said Zepeda.

Farmer was downtrodden about another loss but realistic about the outcome and starting slow.

“But I dominated the last rounds,” said Farmer.

Zepeda shrugged at the similar outcome as their first encounter.

“I’m glad we both put on a great show,” said Zepeda.

Female Flyweight Battle

Costa Rica’s Yokasta Valle edged past Texas fighter Marlen Esparza to win their showdown at flyweight by split decision after 10 rounds.

Valle moved up two weight divisions to meet Esparza who was slightly above the weight limit. Both showed off their contrasting styles and world class talent.

Esparza, a former unified flyweight world titlist, stayed in the pocket and was largely successful with well-placed jabs and left hooks. She repeatedly caught Valle in-between her flurries.

The current minimumweight world titlist changed tactics and found more success in the second half of the fight. She forced Esparza to make the first moves and that forced changes that benefited her style.

Neither fighter could take over the fight.

After 10 rounds one judge saw Esparza the winner 96-94, but two others saw Valle the winner 97-93 twice.

Will Valle move up and challenge the current undisputed flyweight world champion Gabriela Fundora? That’s the question.

Valle currently holds the WBC minimumweight world title.

Puerto Rico vs Mexico

Oscar Collazo (12-0, 9 KOs), the WBO, WBA minimumweight titlist, knocked out Mexico’s Edwin Cano (13-3-1, 4 KOs) with a flurry of body shots at 1:12 of the fifth round.

Collazo dominated with a relentless body attack the Mexican fighter could not defend. It was the Puerto Rican fighter’s fifth consecutive title defense.

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