The Man, the Rabbit & the Boy

It was the season for reruns. Last fall in Chicago, it took Charles ("Sonny") Liston 2 min. 6 sec. to pluck the heavyweight crown from Floyd Patterson. Last week in Las Vegas, Liston spent 2 min. 10 sec. pounding Patterson into boxing oblivion. Like a man killing a rabbit with a stick, he clubbed the hapless challenger to the canvas--gracelessly and methodically, his sulphur-and-obsidian eyes betraying neither pleasure nor anger. "It was just something I had to do," grunted Sonny, whose mind was obviously on something else.

That something else was Cassius Clay. For his night's work on Patterson, Liston collected $300,000 of a $1,600,000 gate; with Clay, the gate might go to $8,000,000. It was a casting director's dream: Liston, the ex-con, scowling, surly, somnolent; Clay, the will-o'-the-wisp, gaudy, gay, garrulous, boastful, poetic. This time there would be emotion enough for everybody. People hate Liston and he hates them right back. People hiss at Clay and he laughs in their faces.

"Pretend You're an Egg." In Las Vegas, Cassius was the show--and Liston his straight man. Both of them knew how good the publicity could be. At one of Liston's prefight workouts, Cassius pranced around outside the ring gleefully hurling insults at "that big fatty." "You can't punch hard enough to break an egg," snarled Liston. "Whoopee!" yelled Clay, squaring off: "You just stand there and pretend you're an egg." Handlers rushed in to pry the fighters apart. "How did it look?" Clay whispered to a friend.

The whole idea, Cassius insisted, was "to make Liston mad." One night Sonny slapped Clay's face when Cassius taunted him in a casino on the Strip. Just before the fight, Cassius bounced into the ring, solemnly shook Patterson's hand, started for Liston's corner--then threw up his hands in mock terror and dived for the seats. The crowd almost busted laughing. No sooner was Patterson counted out than Clay was back, shaking off cops, grabbing a microphone, proclaiming "That was a disgrace. They should apologize for wasting my time on that farce." At Liston's victory party, Cassius sneered: "My brother could have beaten Floyd Patterson." Sighed Sonny: "Come on over here and sit on my knee and finish your orange juice."

"Maybe the Movies." By week's end, the haggling over a Clay-Liston fight this fall was in full swing. Leaving his managers to work out the details, Cassius flew to New York to cut an album for Columbia Records and ponder the future. "Maybe after Liston,

I'll go into the movies," he said. "After all, I'm the greatest actor there is."

Clay promised to knock out Liston in eight rounds. On paper, his boast might seem almost reasonable. Liston is somewhat heavier (215 lbs. v. 205 lbs.) and has a longer reach (7 in.), but Cassius is taller (6 ft. 3 in. v. 6 ft. 1 in.), faster, and has a big advantage in age (eight years). Yet few experts see it Clay's way. "Nobody's gonna beat Liston 'cept old age," said Joe Louis. "Clay doesn't know how to fight," agreed a ringwise trainer. "Liston will break him in half."

The Louisville Lip just laughed and laughed as he conjured up the fight scene: a jampacked, 150,000-seat stadium, roving searchlights, TV cameras dollying in. "I'm gonna make my entrance surrounded by beautiful queens wearing gowns that drag on the ground. I'll be wearing a crown on my head and a beautiful robe, like in Pharaoh's days. One queen will take the crown from my head and place it gently on a silken pillow. Another queen will help me out of my robe. The others will be rubbing me down with cocoa butter and manicuring my nails. That's what we need in boxing. Beautiful girls."

And Cassius Clay.

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