Cassius Clay Defeats Sonny Liston: ‘Eat Your Words’

"An earthquake. The ground collapsing beneath one’s feet. Everything around you that is established and familiar giving way to things new and strange.\n\nCassius Clay wasn’t supposed to be for real. A braggart, a clown, a walking publicity stunt. Not someone a deadly puncher like Sonny Liston would ever need to worry about. Just a loudmouth, a showboat, who’d do and say just about anything for attention. Did some bizarre training stuff underwater. Went to Liston’s house and woke him up in the middle of the night. How could a guy like that ever be the heavyweight champion of the world? But it’s February 26th, 1964, and now he is."

"It was a right hand in the very first round which signalled something was amiss. Before that, so much dancing and skittering around from Clay, pulling his head back from punches: what kind of boxing was this? Liston chasing and chasing and Clay snapping that jab in his face until he threw a right hand lead and it landed flush and stopped Sonny in his tracks. The crowd roared as Clay followed up with a left and Liston gave ground and then ate another right hand, and then a left, and then a one-two. That was the harbinger, the portent, the sign the wholly unexpected was about to take place."

"In the second Liston just kept missing and missing. How could he knock this kid out if he couldn’t corner him and couldn’t land anything? And then seconds into the third he got tagged by a sharp right, then another, and another, and suddenly it was Clay chasing Liston and letting his hands go, a total reversal of what was supposed to happen. The world momentarily righted itself for a few seconds when Liston found his footing and unleashed some big shots, putting the challenger on the run, but nothing landed clean and then there was Clay opening up again, a right and three lefts, and by then everyone could see the blood: a cut under Liston’s left eye and a welt under his right, with more blood coming from the nose.\n\nSonny Liston battered and bleeding. And it’s only round three. What the hell is going on?"

"By this point anyone with eyes and any understanding of The Sweet Science knew what was about to happen. Not only was Clay too fast and elusive for Liston but, astonishingly, his punches were hurting the supposedly invincible champion. In the fourth it was back to Liston chasing and chasing, but he kept missing and kept bleeding, but before the reality of the situation could really sink in, something strange happened.\n\nThere was a commotion in Clay’s corner before round five, the challenger shouting and waving his hands around, and when the match resumed, he was shaking his head and blinking furiously. Liston closed in and unleashed a furious barrage of leather, some 15 unanswered punches and again, for a moment, it seemed as if reality was reassuming a familiar shape, until you realized all those punches had had no effect on Clay."

" \n\nA pair of left hooks got home, and a right snapped the challenger’s head back and seconds later Liston’s best shot of the whole fight landed, a heavy left hook on the jaw, and something weird was definitely up because Clay took the punch with no difficulty whatsoever. How could this be? By round’s end he had gotten his legs back and was snapping home that sharp jab again while Sonny suddenly looked like a man who very much wanted to be anywhere else."

"In the sixth Clay couldn’t miss. He was spearing the champion with the left lead and following with the right and Liston was doing little more than tossing out feeble jabs and giving ground. The pace had slowed to a crawl and at the bell Sonny trudged back to his corner like a very tired man looking for a place to lie down. He slumped on his stool as his handlers crowded around him and when they hadn’t left the corner a minute later Cassius Clay started doing a victory dance and the referee was raising his hand.\n\n“I shook up the World” said Clay afterwards. He sure did."