Free The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches Page A

the end of action after 2:16 of the round.
    This probably was Liston's final appearance in the amateur ranks. He is expected to sign a professional contract within the next few days.
    His contract with Harrison and Mitchell granted the two men half of Liston's purses and held them to pay all his expenses. The managers soon discovered, however, that it was difficult to find anybody willing to fight him, and when they could, the purses were small. Expenses included all his meals: and, as Mitchell's mother, Mrs. Nellie Mitchell Turner, said, "That Sonny is an eater."
    The first professional fight they lined up for him - the contract was signed on August 26 - was a four round preliminary match against Don Smith, a newcomer from Louisville who had won his two previous matches, both in St. Louis, with impressive early round knockouts. Liston's rise through the amateur ranks had been so fast and so fulminous - such a sudden, attention commanding burst of neon lightning and Shango thunder - that the price negotiated for his professional debut was two hundred dollars, about four times the going rate for a preliminary novice.
    The Liston - Smith fight, held in St. Louis on September 2 , 1953 , lasted thirty three seconds, ending in a knockout by Liston with the first punch of the first round.
    Those thirty three seconds , that one single blow - the same blow that had felled robbery victim and Olympic champion alike - brought Liston more money than he had ever seen.
    Fifteen days later, he beat Ponce de Leon, a stiff from Spokane who was in the fifth year of a dead-end career laden with losses and draws. On November 21, Liston beat Benny Thomas of Memphis. In his first fight of the new year, on January 25 , 1954 , he beat Martin Lee: and on March 31, he beat Stan Howlett for the Missouri state championship. These are men whom boxing history has all but forgotten, but who never forgot their nights in the ring with Liston.
    By the spring of 1954 , Liston had fought five fights, all of them in St. Louis, all of them against nobodies, all of them victories. Every good fighter with smart handlers is given many lambs to slaughter, easy fights that build a record that looks good on paper while giving the experience in the ring that will prepare him for bigger, tougher, and more seasoned game.
    Liston's first big fight, his first out of town fight, his first televised fight, was on June 29, 1954: a main event match in Detroit against the Michigan state heavyweight champion John Summerlin, a veteran fighter who had lost only once in a career of twenty bouts. That loss, several years before, had been to another St. Louis fighter, Wes Bascom, who was among the top ten light heavyweight contenders of his day and with whom Liston had sparred in St. Louis.
    Summerlin was a hometown hero and generally considered to be Michigan's finest heavyweight. Local bookmakers had Liston as an off the board twenty two to one underdog. But those odds meant nothing to Sonny, except for the nickel he had laid on himself: and he was the victor that night before the near capacity crowd of twelve hundred at the Motor City Arena.
    Six weeks later, in a rematch, on August 10, in the same ring, also televised by WWJ TV. Liston won again. "Sonny Liston," stated the Detroit News the next day, " could claim the Michigan title without dispute, if he resided here."
    Before the fight, the Detroit News had scoffed at growing comparisons of Liston to Joe Louis. "His home town," wrote Harry Stapler, "is paralleling his rise to that of Joe Louis, a bit of wishful thinking often engaged in on behalf of other heavyweights since the mid-thirties."
    After the fight, the Detroit Free Press quoted Bill Appleton, one of the three officials who judged the fight: " At this stage of his career, I'd say he's a better prospect than Joe Louis at a comparable point."
    "Liston is handled by Frank Mitchell, a wise old ring hand," said the Free Press . "If he shows patience and understanding, if he