Boxing Legend Sonny Liston Died 55 Years Ago. How He Died Remains in Question

If there was ever a mystery wrapped up in a riddle, it would be the life and death of Sonny Liston.

On December 30, 1970, the former heavyweight champion of the world died in his Las Vegas home at the age of 38. On January 5, 1971, his wife, Geraldine, found him in his bed.

The official cause of death was lung congestion and heart failure. However, theories continue to persist about what the actual cause of death could have been. Among them include a heroin overdose because needle marks were found on Liston’s body. Another theory is that he was murdered by the mob given his longstanding connections to the underworld.

Geraldine arrived at the house to find a pile of newspapers stacked up at the front door as well as open bottles of old milk in the kitchen. She had previously tried to contact Liston during the Christmas holiday while visiting her mother in St. Louis, but she was unsuccessful.

When she got to the house, the doors were unlocked and it was pitch dark inside. A foul odor permeated the air. She followed it all the way upstairs to the bedroom where she discovered Liston’s lifeless body.

He was in his underwear, there was dried blood around his nose and he had been dead for around seven days. At first, Gerladine didn’t call the police, instead calling a lawyer and a doctor.

A police officer who eventually arrived on the scene also found a bag of marijuana and a glass of vodka near Liston's body. In the kitchen, there was a stash of heroin, but no syringe was found.

A mob hit: It is rumored Liston had failed to pay debts and refused to throw his bout against Chuck Wepner in June 1970.

Overdose: The possible needle marks on his body and heroin at the scene suggest an overdose.

Police involvement: In the 1960s and 1970s, there was widespread corruption within the Las Vegas Police Department, as well as issues of police brutality against the Black community. Plus, blurred lines existed between organized crime and law enforcement, leading some to speculate that crooked cops had a hand in Liston’s death.

Growing up, Liston, born around 1930 to a sharecropping family in rural Arkansas, the second-youngest of 25 children, was subjected to violence, poverty and abuse. His father, Tobe, would routinely whip him, and he was forced to work in the fields at the age of 8. He grew up without any formal education and ran away at approximately age 14.

Eventually, Liston would find himself in St. Louis, where he joined a gang. He was arrested for armed robbery, and while in prison, he discovered boxing at the encouragement of two men, Reverend Alois Stevens and Father Edward Schlattmann.

Like many fighters who endured similar hardships, Liston would find salvation in boxing, knocking out sparring partners in prison. In 1952, he was granted early parole and began a boxing career. He turned pro the following year and established a reputation as one of the most feared fighters on the circuit. He was also taken in by a team of fight promoters with allegiances to notorious mobster John Vitale. Liston’s actual managers were mob bosses Frank “Blinky” Palermo and Frankie Carbo.

While a cloud of suspicion hovered over him, Liston got his shot at the heavyweight title when he took on champion Floyd Patterson in 1962. In the first round, Liston knocked out Patterson to become the heavyweight champion. He also knocked out Patterson in the first round of their 1963 rematch, holding on to the title.

“He was one of the great boxers of all time,” Dr. Louis Moore, professor of history at Michigan State University, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Sonny Liston didn’t have widespread support. The NAACP didn’t like him, yet he was the heavyweight champion of the world. He was a fighter, but he was not celebrated.”

On February 25, 1964, Liston took on 22-year-old Muhammad Ali, who had won a gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics and aligned with Malcolm X and members of the Nation of Islam, a Black nationalist organization that advocated for the separation of the races. Ali defeated Liston after Liston refused to answer the bell for the seventh round in one of the greatest upsets in boxing history.

When Ali and Liston squared off again in a May 1965 rematch, Liston went down after what became known as the “phantom punch:” Ali landed a quick right hander to the jaw that nobody saw coming.

Ali stood over Liston, yelling, “Get up and fight, you sucker!” That moment was immortalized by the famous photograph taken by Neil Leifer of Sports Illustrated. Eventually, referee Jersey Joe Walcott called the fight off after Nat Fleischer, editor of The Ring magazine, said Liston had been down longer than 10 seconds. Many in the crowd shouted “fix” and “fake,” implying that Liston tanked the fight to fend off pressure from the mob or spare his life from threats from the Nation of Islam following the February 1965 assassination of Malcolm X.

“A lot was swirling,” Moore says. “You have a civil rights assassination and Liston with the mob. In that moment, he understands the circumstances and knows what people are about to say. Boxing always had an element of fix. Ali does hit him, and that is how people dive. He hit him with a punch he couldn’t see. It is not far-fetched to say this fight was fixed, because we now think sports are fixed.”

Afterward, Liston would continue to fight on and off. However, he would eventually become a disgrace following the second Ali fight, eventually falling into the temptations of Las Vegas for his remaining years, often in the company of notorious gambler Irving “Ash” Resnick.

In the years following his mysterious death, it has become evident that Liston has never been given the honors bestowed on other fighters such as Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman or Mike Tyson.

“At a time when folks were pushing for civil rights, he became this bad guy that nobody wanted to associate with,” Moore says. “He never got a chance; he deserved to be heard and understood. I guess they feared Sonny Liston. He became the poster of what fear looks like.”

Moore suggests Liston could have gained the same notoriety as Tyson, a celebrated figure in the broader society and culture despite of his baggage and long rap sheet. Some have sympathy for Tyson because of his hard-knock life, something that was never afforded to Liston.

“If you left Tyson in the 1990s, I think his reputation is shattered,” Moore says. “Then he gets in The Hangover, and that's all gone away. We pick and choose who we like because it sells a story. The problem with Sonny Liston's story is that it doesn’t make us feel good. “

According to Moore, if Liston had been able to live and age gracefully, he would likely have been viewed more charitably.

“Let’s say Sonny Liston lives and lives into the 1990s,” he says. “He would be on those reunion shows; he would be part of that. We love older athletes. The death, when it did happen, just cements his legacy. He was a bad guy, mysterious guy, and that is where it stays. We never get to know Sonny Liston.”