Free Republic

Sonny Liston was a ferocious fighter, the heavyweight champion of the world and the man Cassius Clay beat to win the title for the first time, igniting his own legend. And yet, outside of boxing, Liston was a haunted man, initiated early into a life of crime and decimated by drugs when his boxing career faltered. His untimely end was long thought to be accidental and self-inflicted, courtesy of a heroin-filled needle in his arm. Now the book “The Murder of Sonny Liston” by Shaun Assael wonders if another might have pushed the fatal plunger. . .

Fifty years ago today, Muhammad Ali “shocked the world” and beat one of the most fearsome fighters ever to put on a pair of boxing gloves, heavyweight champion Sonny Liston. But what if that storied fight was not what it seemed? It happened Feb. 25, 1964, at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The film clip and sound bite have now become part of the American story — Liston quitting his stool before the eighth round, a young Cassius Clay, as Ali was known then, bouncing around the ring, waving his hands, yelling to the reporters at ringside who thought he...

Even in the moment of his greatest triumph, Floyd Patterson was afraid. Afraid he had killed a man. On the night of June 20, 1960, at New York's ancient Polo Grounds, this most sensitive of prizefighters set out to avenge the stunning loss of his heavyweight championship to Sweden's Ingemar Johansson nearly a year earlier. He succeeded with two monstrous left hooks in the fifth round. The first put the Swede down for a nine-count. The second, a leaping and terrifying swat, made Patterson the first ex-heavyweight champ to regain his title. If Patterson did not hate Johansson -- and...