Spectators trudged out of Comiskey Park and theaters across the country feeling disappointed, if not cheated. Liebling insisted that Patterson was “a nice young man—kind to children, socially conscious, conscientious about his work”—who did not quit: “he just got licked.” As for Floyd, he slunk out of Comiskey wearing a fake beard and mustache and drove through the early morning hours to New York. Still in disguise the next day, he went to the airport and bought a ticket to Madrid, where he stayed for a week or so, limping through the poorer section of town like an old man and eating soup because, he said, that was what an old man would eat.34
Liston, “who had once been a tool of mobsters” and who kept running afoul of the police, was the new titleholder. Although Sonny claimed that he planned to prove that he could be a “good and decent champion,” few insiders believed he could change his old habits. Boxing, some thought, was dying. The death of Paret and the ascendancy of Liston seemed to seal its fate.35
IN THE MINUTES before the Patterson-Liston fight, boxing’s two most vocal practitioners were introduced in the ring. The younger man received little attention. He was, after all, still lightly regarded as something of a comic novelty. “Ladies and gentleman, heavyweight contender, Cassius Clay,” the announcer intoned. Cassius swung through the ropes wearing a black tie and shouting something, “as insolent as ever,” James Baldwin commented dismissively. In Norman Mailer’s twenty-thousand- word article on the match, Clay did not even rate a mention. Of more interest to the novelists and fans was the stylish veteran Archie Moore, elegant in a black opera cape and carrying a cane. He entered the ring with the panache of a stage performer, twirling his cape with the flair of a magician.36
At that moment, when so much talk was about the death of boxing, neither Cassius nor Archie seemed in a position to change the sport’s fate. For all his boasting and predicting, Clay was still young, “a barely discernible figure on the distant horizon,” commented Arthur Daley. His record was padded with no-name boxers, over-the-hill fighters, and other assorted paper tigers. And Archie Moore was clearly a boxer on his way out of the sport. Like Liston, his birth date was a mystery, but whether it was 1913 or 1915, it was definitely during Woodrow Wilson’s first term. As he neared his fiftieth birthday, the fact that he was still boxing and articulate seemed miraculous. He was a monument to the sport’s past, not a cornerstone of its future.37
For Angelo Dundee, old, out-of-shape Archie, a former light-heavyweight champion who had been stripped of his crown by sanctioning bodies, was both an ideal stepping-stone and a potentially lucrative draw. Cassius began the buildup for a match minutes after he knocked out Alejandro Lavorante. After slipping out of the ring, he noticed Moore sitting near ringside. Pointing a finger, he scowled, shouting, “You’re next, old man! Moore will fall in four.” A few days later Moore responded. “That kid’s got a lot to learn. And I’m afraid the ole Professor is gonna have to teach him. I’ve discovered a few chinks in his armor.”38
Moore understood Clay’s showmanship, but he was also keenly aware of the young man’s many talents. Cassius had all of the outrageous fortunes of youth—speed, strength, endurance, and the firm belief in his own destiny. Against those advantages, Archie possessed only experience, guile, and a reputation supported by yellowing newspaper clippings. He no longer had the skills to compete with the best in the young man’s sport. But he needed money.39
By the fall of 1962, with shrinking television ratings and other boxing cards drawing meager audiences, money seemed to be fleeing the sport. Even the Liston-Patterson match was a bit of a financial disappointment, drawing fewer than twenty thousand fans to Comiskey and a closed-circuit audience forty percent below expectations. With these grim facts in mind, promoters Cal and Aileen Eaton took a cautious approach by staging the Clay-Moore match in the Los Angeles Sports Arena—rather than the larger Coliseum—and initially excluded live radio, television, and closed-circuit-theater broadcasts.40