Liston might have sensed that, like Benny “the Kid” Paret did with Griffith, he could belittle Clay’s masculinity by calling him a “fag” or “bitch.” But although Griffith was sensitive about his sexual identity, Clay was not. Paret’s taunts were on target, causing Emile to respond violently. But Liston’s vulgar labels never reached Cassius’s heterosexual core.
Clay’s psychological warfare against Liston was dramatically more effective. He began his campaign in earnest on November 5, 1963, at about three a.m. outside Liston’s home in Denver. Fleeing police harassment in Philadelphia and looking for a “new start” and a quiet life, Sonny had moved to Denver and bought a home in an upscale neighborhood filled with well-established bankers, lawyers, physicians, and businessmen. Sports Illustrated’s Huston Horn claimed that the week after Liston moved in, thirty-two for-sale signs sprouted in neighborhood lawns, but Sonny wanted peace, not war, with the other homeowners.3
Liston may have desired a quiet suburban existence, but Clay had other ideas. While Sonny slumbered peacefully, Cassius, aboard a red-and-white thirty-passenger 1953 Flxible bus, was headed in the champion’s direction. There was nothing incognito about his approach. The slogans “CASSIUS CLAY ENTERPRISES,” “WORLD’S MOST COLORFUL FIGHTER,” and “SONNY LISTON WILL GO IN EIGHT” decorated the side of the bus, which bounced and rumbled with a circus-coming-to-town festivity. Inside, Cassius, Rudy, Bundini Brown, photographer and friend Howard Bingham, and a few other merry pranksters joked as they planned their assault on Liston’s domicile. To guarantee an audience for his performance, Clay had already alerted local reporters that something was about to happen at Sonny’s place.4
Outside the house, Clay hit the horn: “Oink! Oink! Oink! Oink!” Lights blinked on in the surrounding houses. “You know how them white people felt about that black man just moved in there anyway, and we sure wasn’t helping it none,” Cassius later remembered. “People was hollering things, and we got out with the headlights blazing.” Bingham had a mild stuttering problem, so of course Cassius insisted that he knock on the door and talk to Liston.
About the time he reached the door, Sonny, wearing short nylon pajamas, cracked it open. “What do you want, you black motherfucker?” he greeted Bingham. And if his point was not made quite strongly enough, he fixed him with his infamous stare, as if the intruder were a bug about to be pinned in his insect collection.
While Bingham beat a hasty retreat, Cassius advanced into the yard, “screaming and hollering about how he was gonna whup Liston bad,” as Bingham later recalled. “Come on out of there! I’m going to whip you right now! Come on out of there and protect your home! If you don’t come out of that door, I’m going to break it down!” Cassius raged. Sonny, however, stayed put. Finally, seven squad cars arrived and the police sent Clay and his band on their way.
Liston was trapped by his past and his police record, and Clay knew it. If the police were called out and he was involved in a scuffle, even one he did not provoke, he knew he would get arrested. Furthermore, Cassius’s actions confused Sonny. “You know, if a man figures you’re crazy, he’ll think twice before he acts, because he figures you’re liable to do anything,” Clay said.
He had planted the seed in Liston’s mind. Initially Sonny assumed Cassius’s stunts were just that—harmless acts to build the gate. But as one stunt led to the next, he found it difficult to separate the act from reality. “A man with Liston’s kind of mind is very funny. He ain’t what you would call a fast thinker,” said Cassius. “He’s got one of them bulldog kind of minds. . . . Once he ever starts to thinking something, he won’t let hold of it quick.” Once he had believed that, like virtually every other man, Clay was afraid of him. Now he did not know what to think.
Clay continued his campaign on the afternoon of November 5, when he met with Liston in a Denver hotel to sign contracts for a title match. “I don’t want to sit by him,” he said when he arrived, and throughout the proceeding he shouted insults at the champion. Liston swatted away the verbal attacks, occasionally laughing at Cassius’s performance. “I’m the champ of fighting,” he told Clay, “but you the champ of talkin’.” There were reasons for his good cheer—his 40 percent of ticket, concession, closed-circuit, television, and radio revenue would amount to several million dollars. Toward the end of the meeting, as Liston was speaking and Clay was digging into a plate of chicken, the champ looked over at his next opponent and said, “You eat like you headed to the electric chair.”5