After the nightmare of the fix with the second Ali bout, Sonny Liston went into hiding for awhile. He took 14 months off from boxing, before traveling to Stockholm to fight a guy named Gerhard Zech on July 1, 1966. Sonny finished Zech in the seventh, and was back in the win column. A month later in Gothenburg, Liston knocked out Amos Johnson in three rounds. Seven months later, Sonny KO’d Dave Bailey in the opening round back in Gothenburg again. The ‘Bear’, as Ali had nicknamed him, was out of hibernation and making waves in the heavyweight division again.
Sonny notched his fourth straight victory on his comeback campaign a month later, by stopping Elmer Rush in six in Stockholm. After two years of fighting abroad, Liston returned to U.S. soil in 1968, piling up seven wins between March and December. With Ali now out of boxing, Joe Frazier was the recognized champ by most, and Sonny hoped that eventually he could score a shot at Joe.
Liston was living in Las Vegas at the time, and the circle he kept with was from organized crime. His manager was Ash Resnick, a known mob guy, and no one seemed to care anymore. As long as Sonny kept his nose clean, stranger things than him getting another title shot could happen.
After three more wins in 1969, the end of Sonny’s career came swiftly at the hands of Leotis Martin. Now 44 years old, Liston was slow and measured, and when Martin knocked him out cold in Las Vegas on ABC live television, that was all she wrote.
Liston would fight once more in 1970 against the now infamous ‘Bayonne Bleeder’, Chuck Wepner. Sonny traveled to Wepner’s hometown in north Jersey, and easily disposed of him. He cut him up so badly, Wepner’s cuts couldn’t be stopped, and the action was halted in the ninth. Liston’s final record stands at 50 wins and 4 losses.
Late in December of 1970, Sonny’s wife Geraldine returned from a trip to find her husband dead on their bed. Most speculate that it was a mob hit, and that Liston was injected with a ‘hotshot’ of heroin to kill him. There were talks that Liston was causing problems with the wrong people, and in that world, that’s a death sentence. His life is one of sadness, and whenever I think of Charles ‘Sonny’ Liston, that emotion comes to mind. He never found peace in this life, and it’s befitting that no one knows his exact day of birth, or the day he died.
As a heavyweight however, he is definitely in my top ten list of the all time greats. A great puncher with a plank of a left hook. Sonny Liston.
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