He walked past the reporters as if he were any other fighter before a match, and later he went into the ring like any other fighter. The commission doctor said the young challenger was 'scared to death.' So strikingly odd was his behavior that later reporters waited at his dressing-room door to see if he would actually emerge. For his wild antics, Clay was fined $2,500 by the Miami Beach Boxing Commission. Sonny Liston, weighing 218 to Clay's 210 1/2 and watching with contempt, made a circular motion with his hand over his forehead.

'I'm the greatest-the prettiest that ever was!' he had screamed at the weigh-in, and the reporters had stared with something of the horror of the normal for the possessed. But Cassius Clay was immaturity itself, a brash, over-handsome movie actor of a fighter.Īt times he was hysterical. With a glower, a thick-armed gesture, he transfixed before he punished. Liston had been the epitome of power and menace.

Tim Graham/Evening Standard/Gettyįinally, the fight seemed wrong because the new champion was so anticlimactic. Olympic gold medallist Audley Harrison has paid tribute to the boxing icon who has died aged 74. Muhammad Ali at the New Victoria Theatre, London. Still others simply could not believe in any upset by an 8-to-1 underdog, even given the reputation of the fight game and Liston's own criminal record and underworld associations. Sullivan spitting out teeth and then wading into Jake Kilrain Sugar Ray Robinson fighting himself into heat prostration against Joey Maxim broken-knuckled Gene Fullmer battling on against Florentino Fernandez. Others-and they weren't all plump sportswriters-recalled doughtier champions: John L. Some doubted that Liston, who had been throwing lefts all night, had injured his left upper arm badly enough to quit. Outlandishly, 22-year-old Cassius Marcellus Clay had become world heavyweight champion.Īnd it seemed wrong-on so many counts. Incredibly, the man believed to be the most powerful athelte of his time had given up the sports world's most valuable title while sitting, quietly glowering and in full possession of his senses, on the ring stool. Sonny Liston's victory party at the grand and gaudy Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach was over before it began. They cased up the gin, wheeled away the canopied bar, and turned out the lights. They carried the corned beef out of the ballroom. This story originally appeared in the Maissue of our magazine, with the headline 'And I'm Already the Greatest!'

'My name is magic,' declared the 22-year-old athlete, who was still going by his given name, Cassius Marcellus Clay. Newsweek profiled the beloved boxer in 1964, on the occasion of his historic heavyweight championship upset.

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