Apoisonous mood pervaded Muhammad Ali’s camp as he prepared for his rematch against Sonny Liston. “The atmosphere surrounding the fight was ugly,” Jerry Izenberg recalled. “Malcolm was dead, and there were rumors Ali was going to be killed, maybe in the ring, in retaliation.” At one point, a week or so before the fight, while Ali was getting a rubdown after a workout, a reporter asked him if he had heard the stories about Malcolm’s people coming after him. He lifted his head angrily, a cruel note in his voice. “What people? Malcolm ain’t got no people.”1
In the days leading up to the fight, the rumors intensified. Supposedly, carloads of heavily armed men—Malcolm’s men—had left New York headed for Ali’s camp. There were other tales too. One story held that the Nation of Islam had threatened to kill Liston unless he took a dive. Other scuttlebutt suggested that the Nation would discard the champ if he lost, but Ali refused to believe a word of it. “lies, all lies,” he shouted during a news conference. “The hell with Malcolm’s boys!” he erupted, pounding a table with his fist. “Who are they?”2
Paranoia swept through the St. Dominic’s Arena in Lewiston, Maine. On May 25, 1965, security guards scrutinized every black man who walked through the turnstiles. Officers searched purses, briefcases, and coat pockets. Hours before the contest they combed the old hockey stadium, searching for “poison gas bombs.” The match was originally scheduled to take place in Boston, but a few weeks before the fight Massachusetts authorities refused to sanction it, claiming that the promoter had ties to organized crime. The fight moved to Lewiston, an impoverished textile town and unlikely site for a heavyweight title match, leaving the Muslims increasingly suspicious that Ali was being set up. Unconvinced that the police had thoroughly searched St. Dominic’s, Clarence X inspected the air vents in Ali’s dressing room, “afraid poison gas would be shot into it.”3
All the talk about a murder in the ring contributed to the pathetic turnout. Officially, the ring announcer declared the evening’s attendance to be 4,280, but Sports Illustrated’s Tex Maule reported that there could not have been more than 1,200 fans present. And even fewer of them actually saw how the fight ended.4
It all happened in the blink of an eye. After the opening bell rang, Ali stormed toward Liston, hitting him with a hard right cross. For about a minute they danced as Ali moved clockwise, his head high and his gloves low. He moved cautiously, looking for an opening. Plodding toward Ali, Liston tried to cut off the ring, pawing at the champ. Liston tossed a few amateurish jabs, lunged forward, and lost his balance. At that moment, Ali leaned back, dodging Liston’s punch. Quickly, he planted his left foot, and snapped a short, chopping right flush on Liston’s chin. Sonny collapsed as if a sniper had shot him. But only his reputation died that night.5
A chorus of boos rained from the stunned fans. “Fake! Fake!” the crowd shouted. Few ringside observers could believe that Ali’s single whipping punch had knocked Liston down. Sportswriters labeled the final blow “the phantom punch,” implying that Ali never actually hit Liston, or at least, he had not hit him hard enough to end the fight.6
Upon review of the fight film, and with the benefit of slow-motion technology, writers determined that Ali “perfectly delivered” a hard, blurring right. He threw the final punch at precisely the right instant—the moment Liston lost his balance and fell toward him, exposing his chin. Sonny never saw it coming. Sprawled across the canvas, Ali loomed over him, his right hand cocked, muscles flexed, shouting, “Get up and fight, sucker!” Neil Leifer, a young photographer from Sports Illustrated, snapped an iconic picture of Ali towering above Liston, taunting the fallen fighter. That photograph would become the most recognizable and enduring image of him during the sixties, capturing Ali’s essence: his strength and beauty, his arrogance and boldness, everything that made Americans love and hate him.7