Charles "Sonny" Liston was born circa 1930 into a sharecropping family that farmed the poor land of Morledge Plantation near Johnson Township, St. Francis County, Arkansas.

Liston believed his date of birth to be May 8, 1932, and used this for official purposes[13] but by the time he won the world title an aged appearance added credence to rumors that he was actually several years older.

[citation needed] At this time, the head coach of the St. Louis Golden Gloves team, Tony Anderson, stated that Liston was the strongest fighter he had seen.

[citation needed] Liston's criminal record, compounded by a personal association with a notorious labor racketeer, led to the police's stopping him on sight, and he began to avoid main streets.

1 contender in 1960, but the handlers of world heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson refused to give him a shot at the title citing Liston's links to organized crime.

[42] However, in 1963 in the aftermath of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Liston broke off a European boxing exhibition tour to return home and was quoted as saying he was "ashamed to be in America.

[44] Frustrated, Liston changed his management in 1961 and applied pressure through the media by remarking that Patterson, who had faced mostly white challengers since becoming champion, was drawing the color line against his own race.

Former champions James J. Braddock, Jersey Joe Walcott, Ezzard Charles, Rocky Marciano and Ingemar Johansson all picked Patterson to win.

Sports Illustrated writer Gilbert Rogin wrote that "that final left hook crashed into Patterson's cheek like a diesel rig going downhill, no brakes."

Rogin discounted speculation that Patterson had thrown the fight, writing: "The genesis of all this wide-eyed theorizing and downright baloney was the fact that many spectators failed to see the knockout blows.

During an era when white journalists still described black athletes in stereotypes, Liston had long been a target of racially charged slurs; he was called a "gorilla" and "a jungle beast" in print.

Subsequently, Liston spent some months in Denver where a Catholic priest who acted as his spiritual adviser attempted to help bring his drinking under control.

[53] From the opening bell Liston attempted to close with Clay, looking to land a hard punch to the head to end the fight quickly and decisively.

At one point, Clay was wiping his eyes with his right hand while extending his left arm—"like a drunk leaning on a lamppost" Bert Sugar wrote—to keep Liston at bay.

Dr. Alexander Robbins, chief physician for the Miami Beach Boxing Commission, diagnosed Liston with a torn tendon in his left shoulder.

"[63] Hall of Fame matchmaker Teddy Brenner also disputed the shoulder injury, claiming he saw Liston use the same arm to throw a chair in his dressing room after the match.

But as it approached, there were fears that the promoters were tied to organized crime and Massachusetts officials, most notably Suffolk County District Attorney Garrett H. Byrne, began to have second thoughts.

[75] Former champions Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Floyd Patterson and Gene Tunney, as well as contender George Chuvalo all declared they considered the fight to be a fake.

Sheed says that the punch and the knockdown "may have been genuine, but when referee Joe Walcott blew the count and gave him all evening to get up, Liston's rendition of a coma wouldn't have fooled a possum."

[80] Credence to the latter theory is provided by the fact that Liston, immediately after his fight with Chuck Wepner, seemed more concerned about supporting the proposed Ali-Frazier bout and Ali's claims to be champion than promoting his own career.

"There is power in both his left and his right, even though the fists move with the languor of motoring royalty or as if passing through a gaseous envelope more dense than air."

found it suspicious that authorities could not locate any drug paraphernalia that Liston presumably would have needed to inject the fatal dose, such as a spoon to cook the heroin or a tourniquet to wrap around his arm.

Banker stated that "Sheriff [Ralph] Lamb told me, 'Tell your pal Sonny to stay away from the West Side because we're going to bust the drug dealers.'"

As the years passed and Liston's financial situation worsened, he got angry and told the mob he would go public with the story unless they gave him the money, leading to his murder.

A few years before Tocco died, he allegedly told one of his good friends, Tony Davi, that he went to Liston's house and found the door locked and his car in the driveway.

In the 2015 British crime film Legend, Liston is played by Mark Theodore in a scene where gangster Reggie Kray poses for a picture with the boxer.

[114] Sonny Liston was featured in a novel "Girl Fighter" with a brief reference to his early life, his rise to WBC heavyweight champion and his eventual losses to Clay/Ali.

[115] Liston has been referenced in many songs by artists such as Curtis Eller, Sun Kil Moon, the Animals, Tom Petty, Mark Knopfler, Phil Ochs, Morrissey, Freddy Blohm, Chuck E. Weiss, This Bike is a Pipe Bomb, the Roots, Wu-Tang Clan, Gone Jackals, Billy Joel, the Mountain Goats, Lil Wayne, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and the Killers.

[117] Elizabeth Bear wrote the short story "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall", published in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy in 2008.

On July 28, 1963, Liston joined a group of 500 African Americans in Denver who marched to a post office to mail letters urging the Colorado congressional delegation to pass the Kennedy administration's civil rights package.