Free The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches

slapped with his right hand. He really didn't know how to fight." But , in Lubbock's phrase , "he had a left like a pile driver."
    That February 1953.Liston swept the competition in the open and novice heavyweight division of the Globe-Democrat 's eighteenth annual Golden Gloves tournament. He went with the other local winners to Chicago , where , emerging as the sole surviving victor of the St. Louis team , he wiped out all comers and took the Midwestern Golden Gloves title from Ed Sanders of Los Angeles , the heavyweight champion of the 1952 Olympics. At the national matches in March, Liston defeated Julius Griffin of New York to become the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of America. And his right was becoming less idle.
    When sports minded St. Louisians turn out for the Globe Democrat 's International Golden Gloves matches a week from tomorrow night. [wrote Jim Lubbock on June 14, 1953 ] chances are they'll be coming as much to see one St. Louis fighter as they will the 10 all European champions who make up the visiting team.
    The local larruper is a big , quiet , amiable heavyweight named Charles "Sonny" Liston. Virtually unheard of in fistic circles a year ago , he is currently bearing out predictions that someday soon he'll be "another Joe Louis."
    Within just a few months of formal boxing training , "Sonny" has batted around with comparative ease the best of the amateur fighters. One of his victims is World Olympic Heavyweight Champion Ed Sanders of Los Angeles.
    In fact , he has so completely outclassed most of his opposition that Chicago coaches have selected him to fight as their heavyweight when the Europeans battle here Tuesday night in their only other matches in this country.
    Possessed of no astounding amount of boxing skill as ye t, "Sonny's" technique is simply to push his opponent in the face with a long , powerful jab , and occasionally crash home with a ponderous but even more powerful right.
    This rudimentary approach to the noble art of self-defense succeeds so well principally because the young man employing it is one of the strongest , fastest amateur heavyweights ever seen in a St. Louis ring , according to veteran boxing coaches who have seen them all for many years.
    Since last January , Liston has smashed and bashed his way to heavyweight championships in the Globe-Democrat 's St. Louis Golden Gloves , the Midwest Golden Gloves and the National Golden Gloves , the latter two tourneys in Chicago. He has also won the Ozark A.A.U. title here.
    Just 20 years old , Sonny weighs 204 pounds. He works at the St. Louis Ordinance Plant, 4300 Goodfellow Boulevard , and trains in the evenings at Tony's Gym. 4525 Olive Street. His heavy punching makes sparring partners hard to find.
    What luck he'll have battling West Germany's Herman Schreibauer , the hard-hitting European heavyweight, remains to be seen. Most ringsiders expect to see him win. They feel they are watching the early stages of what could well be a truly great ring career.
    On June 22 , Liston wiped out Herman Schreibauer of West Germany in less than a round, thus becoming the Golden Gloves champion of the world. According to the Globe-Democrat , "His victory over Schreibauer was so impressive that it left the 7489 fans in Kiel Auditorium Monday night convinced that the amateur ranks no longer can contain him."
    In four months , he had risen to the height of the amateur standings, and few who saw him doubted that there was a man alive he could not bring down. "Gloves King Liston Ready to Turn Pro," declared a headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch two days after the Schreibauer fight:
    Charles "Sonny" Liston climaxed the show with a quick technical knockout [reported the Post-Dispatch ] in the first round of the final heavyweight bout.
    Obviously unworried, Liston whistled as he went about his work, stalked his opponent and then floored him with a solid right. When Schreibauer rose, he was unsteady and Referee Vic di Filippo quickly signaled