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February 25, 1964
Miami Beach, Floridabr />
22-year-old Cassius Clay had been pro for just four years when he faced the undisputed heavyweight champion and former prisoner Sonny Liston for the first time.
Liston had taken away the title of Floyd Patterson two years before in only two minutes and six seconds. At that time he had lost only once as a professional. He seemed invincible.
Before the contract was signed, Clay had been travelling around the states with his bus \"Big Red\", painted with provocant slogans in order to promote a bout between him and Liston. Thus, Clay increased the pressure on Sonny and his management until a championship bout was unavoidable.
Clay, who had a fight record of 19 wins with an average length of five rounds, used to call his opponent \"ugly, brown bear\" and appeared in public wearing shirts with slogans like \"bear huntin'\".
When the contract had been signed, Clay however did not stop to ridicule and mock Liston.
He drove to Liston's house at 3 a.m. and ran riot until the house owner went out with a poker to smash one of the bus' windows before the police pulled him back in.
Liston had to deal with sneering poems describing how Clay would knock him out.
During the traditional weigh-in on the morning of the fight, Clay went absolutely crazy.
He shouted \"I'm ready to rumble!\" and \"I'm gonna eat you alive!\" and it seemed it took Clay's staff a great effort to prevent their boxer from attacking Liston. The present doctor announced a pulse of 120 bpm and declared Clay \"emotionally unbalanced and scared to death\".
In fact, Clay had fooled everyone including Liston. He wasn't crazy at all but rather wanted to make everyone think he was. And everyone believed in his show.
43 out of the 46 sportswriters covering the bout thought that Clay, who was seven to one underdog, would be no match for Liston. Only half of the seats at Miami\'s Convention Hall had been sold. One reason were the high ticket prices. 8,000 people finally attended the fight.
At the beginning of the fight, Liston attacked Clay as if he wanted to finish him like he finished Floyd Patterson two times - by a first round knockout. But the challenger didn't let him come close. He danced around the flat-footed champion the whole time. Liston\'s punches missed the continously moving Clay. The champion himself had to take straight lefts again and again. From the third round on, he suffered from a cut under his left eye.
But suddenly Clay's victory was questioned because of an incident never totally cleared up. After the fourth round, Clay couldn't see. \"Cut the gloves off. We're going home!\", the desperate contender told his trainer Angelo Dundee. But the coach pushed him back in the ring before the referee could stop the fight. \"This is the big one, daddy. Stay away from him. Run!\". By doing so, Dundee made Clay win and probably saved his career. Experts doubt that Liston being the winner would have accepted a rematch against this uncomfortable opponent.
Half-blind Clay somehow got through round five by avoiding punches he hardly saw. At the end of the round, Clay's eyes cleared and he dominated Liston again in the sixth.
When the gong for the beginning of the seventh round came, Liston stayed on his stool in his corner.
Clay couldn't believe it. He ran around the ring shouting \"I must be the greatest - I shook up the world!\". Indeed, a 22-year-old country boy from Louisville had turned the boxing scene upside down. He had beaten a supposedly invincible opponent and climbed the heavyweight throne for the first time.
But the happiness didn't last long. There had been rumors before the bout that Cassius Clay had joined the Nation Of Islam, a popular black organization whose leader Elijah Muhammad preached that integration be the wrong way for blacks. The blacks should claim their own territory in the US instead. Clay had been seen a lot in public with Malcolm X and other leading personalities of the Black Muslims as the members of the Nation were commonly called.
After the Liston bout, speculation became fact. It was revealed that Clay had joined Muslim meetings through the back door for three years. Clay\'s joining the Nation Of Islam and changing his name to Cassius X and then Muhammad Ali didn't please America's white establisment. \'Clay\' had been the name given to the family by their slave owner generations before. Ali's statement: "Cassius Clay is a slave's name, and I'm not a slave."
The putting down of their slave names was a common feature among Black Muslims at that time. However, most of the journalists kept calling the champ by his old name.
All these things made a \"good lad Cassius Clay\" in the eyes of many Americans change into a \"bad sect member Muhammad Ali\".
There were also changes concerning Ali\'s private. In August of 1964 he married Sonji Roi who he had been knowing for merely a month. On May 25, 1965 the rematch between Ali and Liston took place.
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