This Just In: Ali’s Hernia Killed Liston!

Unfortunately, the postponement changed everything for Liston, and changed it forever.

Ali wanted to mark the occasion by delivering a sack of black cats to Liston’s training camp but was talked out of the idea by his handlers…

Boston, Massachusetts—Friday, November 13, 1964
In three days, two of the finest heavyweights ever to grace the squared circle would meet at a time when their physical and mental conditions were as closely aligned as they would ever be. The much older Sonny Liston was in the best fighting shape of his life and had never been hungrier or more motivated than he was for his rematch with Muhammad Ali. He was also an 11-9 favorite. Conversely, Ali was more confident than he should have been and much more dismissive of the threat Sonny posed than he could afford to be. But none of these things would matter because this fight would never take place.
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When Sonny Liston unexpectedly lost his title to Cassius Clay on February 25, 1964, his world quickly began to implode. Within an hour, his purse was seized and a federal income tax lien of $868,000 was filed against the Listons by the Internal Revenue Service.
The bout was a fiasco of epic proportions for Sonny. He had been fooled by a boxer young enough to be his own son into thinking that he couldn’t possibly lose the fight. He had also been manipulated by his manager and business partners (the Nilon brothers) into believing that he was getting the best deal any fighter ever got. It was a worst-case scenario for Liston on both counts.
The rewriting of Sonny’s boxing legacy began that very night. Calling Liston a crude lumbering oaf, Arthur Daley said Sonny’s performance “showed unmistakably that he was the biggest hoax since the Cardiff Giant.” A Sports Illustrated article said Sonny “quit on his stool for reasons that will be found only in his strangely confused character.” Referring to him as “the old hoodlum,” Jimmy Cannon said Liston was “as dumb and helpless as a scarecrow on sticks.” Ring Magazine said Liston was “by nature a lazy man,” but stopped short of calling him shiftless.
Florida State Attorney Richard Gerstein initiated an investigation of the fight to focus on Liston’s shoulder injury, for which he enlisted the services of his office’s medical/legal adviser and the Dade County Medical Examiner. A Florida state law provided for a prison term of up to ten years for anyone found to have fixed or thrown a boxing match.