(Originally published by the Daily News on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 1964; written by Gene Ward)
Miami Beach, Fla. – Turning his boastful words into a blazing assortment of punches, young Cassius Clay became the new heavyweight champion of the world in a scene of bedlam here tonight as a badly-beaten and bloodied Sonny Liston failed to answer the bell for the seventh round of the scheduled 15-round battle.
The bell for round seven rang, but Liston’s chief advisor, Jack Nilon, wig-wagged to referee Barney Felix that the heavily-favored champion had had it. Thus, one of the all-time great upsets was recorded by a 7-1 underdog, a 22-year-old with only 19 professional bouts, whom the whole mitt world had said didn’t have a chance.
One half hour after the bout, the Miami Beach Boxing Commission ordered Liston’s purse held up pending examination by two surgeons in Miami Beach Wednesday. The announcement, made by Ed Lassman, a member of the Commission and the president of the World Boxing Association, affected only Liston’s share of the live gate, not the huge revenue from theatre television. The Miami Beach City Council also announced it would investigate the bout.
When the bout ended, Liston was slumped on his stool, a cut under his left eye drooling blood and the area under the right eye a lumpy purple blob. He just sat there with a stony look on his face as Nilon and his corner cut-man, Willie Reddish, explained to the referee that Liston had injured his left shoulder and was through for the evening.
“WE THINK IT’S OUT of joint,” Reddish explained to shouting newsmen at ringside. “He hasn’t been able to punch with his left.”
The defrocked champion’s personal physician, Dr. Robert Bennett, who came to the corner after Nilon had made his decision to end the fight, said it appeared that Liston had injured a nerve or pulled a tendon.
Later, Liston went to St. Francis of Assisi Hospital for an examination. Dr. Alexander Robbins, chief physician of the Miami Beach Commission, came to ringside and told reporters that Liston felt something snap in his left shoulder in the first round.
“That’s what he told me,” Dr. Robbins said. “The middle of the first round. He told me he couldn’t raise his left arm after that.”
The first official medical bulletin came from Dr. Octavio Suarez, chief of the emergency ward at St. Francis Hospital, who examined Liston and said he had no feeling from the left side of his neck down to his left elbow.
The fact is, of course, he did raise his left arm after that, and threw many hooks and jabs, the majority of which whistled harmlessly through the air.
Clay seemed to be the first to sense that what he had been boasting all along would happened had, indeed, come to pass. He came leaping from his corner like a gazelle, prancing and dancing and whooping, followed by his dazed handlers, Angelo Dundee and Drew (Bundini) Brown.
Then his followers, who out-antic the Beatles’ own addicts, came storming into the ring followed by a deluge of Convention Hall gendarmes. The fighters disappeared from view and chaos descended on the ring for a good 10 minutes before order was restored.
THE CROWD of 8,297, paying $402,000 at the gate – far below expectations – was baffled by the sudden, anti-climactic ending. Clay, magnificent in the early rounds, had seemed to be running out of juice in the fifth, which was the first and only round won by Liston, at least on this ring-sider’s scorecard.
Then, suddenly, the fight was over and the Clay camp was going crazy. It wasn’t until a good 15 to 18 minutes later than announcer Frank Freeman asked for the crowd’s attention and told them about the injury to Liston.
THE REACTION was a chorus of boos, indication that many in the house thought Liston quit cold.
A fresh announcement from Liston’s dressing room a half hour later stated that the defeated champion would have his shoulder X-rayed as soon as possible. Dr. Robert Bennett, his personal physician who had jumped into the ring just before Sonny bowed out, was with him.
But no matter what the examination shows, nothing can detract from the magnificence of Clay’s performance. Only 12 hours before, at the weigh-in in which he scaled 210 1/2 to Liston’s 218, his frenzied behavior had brought him a $2,500 fine and prompted the chief physician of the Miami Beach Commission, Dr. Alexander Robbins, to call him “emotionally unbalanced” and “apt to crack up at any moment.”
INSTEAD, IT WAS Liston who cracked – wide open. Circling left and right, making the slugger look foolish with his clumsy swinging, Clay breezed through the opening around. He filled Sonny’s ugly, scowling face full of jabs and won it going away.
At the end of that round he had Liston flinching and ducking. In fact, it wasn’t until the round was over – both of them having fought after the bell – that Liston finally landed his right.
In the second round, the one which Sonny had tabbed as the wind-up frame at weigh-in, the champion went all out for the kayo and got nowhere. Clay eased off on his torrid maneuvers of the opening stanza but Liston still couldn’t nail him with a solid punch and it was an even round.
He chased Clay continually, but never caught up with him.
IN ROUND THREE, the Louisville Lip, who had entered the ring with a flamboyant jacket on which was emblazoned “THE LIP”, was sensational. Here, in round three, Cassius had his greatest moments.
He opened with two jabs to the face and suddenly the blood was spurting from a cut under the left eye on the rim of Liston’s cheekbone. The ringsiders screamed as Clay went to work on the damaged eye.
“Close his other peeper, Cassius,” shouted one of his seconds above the roar of the stunned crowd, which couldn’t believe what it was seeing.
CLAY FOLLOWED with a left-right to the jaw and drove Liston to the ropes. Liston missed a hook and moved in to pummel Clay on the ribs until the challenger grabbed and held.
Clay put over a left, then a left-right combination to the side of the head, and a new gush of blood streamed down the side of Liston’s face. He appeared to hurt Clay in the final seconds with a right uppercut, but he was too late with too little.
CUT-MAN REDDISH worked feverishly on the slice under Liston’s left eye between rounds, but it was puffy as the fourth opened and drooling blood half way through the round.
Liston couldn’t seem to untrack himself in the fourth, but he won the fifth, a round in which Clay’s seconds were complaining that a drug used on Liston’s cut was getting into their man’s eyes. Cassius did appear to be bothered for a time in the fifth and Liston took command.
IN FACT, it appeared at this point that Clay had run completely out of bounce. He had stopped throwing his lightning jabs and was merely scrubbing his left in Liston’s face. By now Sonny’s eye had stopped bleeding and it looked as though he finally had found the groove.
Clay held, then held some more, and caught a left hook on the side of the jaw just before the bell.
But it was Clay who was back on the beam in the sixth. He opened with a left jab, followed with a straight left, then put over a lead right. The crowd whooped. The area under Liston’s right eye was getting puffy now and blood was spurting again from the cut beneath the left.
HE LOOKED LIKE a tired old fighter as he moved back to his corner at the end of what was to be the final round of the fight. In that the bell actually sounded for the seventh, the seventh round becomes the official round of the knockout.
It was Reddish who first tipped this ringsider that Liston was through for the evening when he turned toward referee Felix and gave an elaborate shrug. Then Nilon wig-wagged that it was over.
SONNY’S PHYSICIAN, Dr. Bennett, climbed into the ring after Nilon had ended Liston’s title defense and taped Sonny’s shoulder. But all of this was hidden from the crowd by the swarm of handlers, police and just plain interlopers in the ring.
It was the second defeat for Liston and his first by kayo, while the unconquered Clay, a former Olympic light-heavyweight champion, was running his pro skein to 20 straight and his knockout total to 16.
ACCORDING TO optimistic pre-fight estimates, Liston could earn a million dollars as his cut of the closed-circuit TV, the guaranteed $625,000 from Bill MacDonald’s live promotion, and the various other ancillary money from movies, radio, etc.