The Greatest

May 25, 2015 6:54 AM

It instantly hits your eyes haloed in a corona of potency—structured so soundly as to seem staged, this forceful frieze of physical dominance. The Victor yells, the Loser displays himself vanquished, and the Watchers are all caught in that moment. The kinetic poetry of moving bodies, momentarily frozen, such is the stuff of the best sports photos—this has that.

It's widely recognized today as one of the greatest photographs in sports history, but Neil Leifer's masterpiece, capturing the climax of the fight 50 years ago today between Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) and Sony Liston hardly made a stir at the time it was snapped.
posted by Horace Rumpole (34 comments total)

One thing this piece doesn't mention is that Ali and Liston restarted the fight. The ref in the ring hadn't heard the count from the timekeeper, in part because he was trying to get Ali to return to his corner. Neither Ali nor Liston knew he'd been counted out, and Liston got back up and resumed fighting. It seems to me that that detail pretty much refutes the "dive" theory. If you're taking a dive why would you resume the fight? Why not just lie still until someone declares the fight over?
posted by yoink at 7:19 AM on May 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's pretty annoying that the page is displayed in a way such that you can't see the whole picture at once, which is presumably key to getting the composition as it is meant to be seen. If the point of the article is to showcase the picture, please show me the picture clearly. And for some reason, zooming out the web page to try to get the full pic in view actually zooms IN the picture somehow.

Ok, I had right clicked to "View image" and was about to link to the actual picture, and I paste in the link URL and see the word "CROP" in URL. So they wrote an article about an iconic picture, but changed the picture and then made it impossible to view even their changed picture.

This may or may not be the original picture. It looks like there are versions with different colours and I'm not sure which is most faithful to the original.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:19 AM on May 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

That one is cropped and missing the space above Ali's head.

Interesting story for sure, but yeah, agreed on the terrible formatting of the page.
posted by ODiV at 7:23 AM on May 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

That was a great read. I was more familiar with the black & white shot, and the explanation of what made Leifer's photo so much better was excellent. I remember watching Ali fights as a kid, a bit after his prime, and the phantom punch would often come up in conversation amongst the adults. The impression that stayed with me was that even the ones who were sure the the fight was thrown didn't hold it against Ali himself.
posted by gimli at 7:24 AM on May 25, 2015

Can someone who knows enough about the photo and photography find and link the original?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:27 AM on May 25, 2015

In a famous incident, five cops jumped Liston, beating him about the head and neck until they “broke [their] hickory nightsticks”—and they still couldn’t get cuffs on him. In a more cartoonish infraction, Liston deposited a cop headfirst into a trash can. And there was the time Liston took away the gun of an arresting officer—Liston broke the guy’s knee, then strode from the scene wearing the copper’s hat.

I had known Liston was a bad, bad man, but dag.

Re: The anchor punch controversy: I find it odd that even the boxing experts that talk about this think that some kind of huge punch is needed to knock someone down. It certainly helps, but the state of the body at that moment in time is a big part of it, and sometimes it doesn't take much to tip the brain into unconsciousness.

Also, human bodies are weird. And forward movement can put you into an unfavorable physics situation (scroll down to Silva vs. Griffin to see another light tap KO).

It still certain could have been a dive! But a legit KO is far from impossible there.
posted by ignignokt at 7:38 AM on May 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Just behind and to the left of the bald man who's framed by Ali's legs, there's a younger guy with his mouth open; that's former HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant.
posted by ambient2 at 7:41 AM on May 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

That's a fascinating picture.

There is not a single woman in it.
posted by Combat Wombat at 7:47 AM on May 25, 2015

There is not a single woman in it

It's a boxing match from 50 years ago; of course there aren't any women in it. Probably the only females in the arena were ring card girls and cigarette girls.

Just behind and to the left of the bald man who's framed by Ali's legs, there's a younger guy with his mouth open; that's former HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant.

Good eye. Amazing to see him as a young man. I grew up with him as the sage, wise old man of boxing. Him, Eddie Futch, Angelo Dundee, and Bert Sugar were like the elders of the tribe.
posted by holybagel at 7:55 AM on May 25, 2015

Lewiston is not (and was not at the time) a "tiny town" as the article suggests. It's a large town or very small city (legally it's a city) that is just across the river from Auburn, another very small city.

They still remember the Phantom Punch in Lewiston and it comes up about yearly. A local brewer even makes a winter stout named after it.

Here's a local article showing another side of Liston, and another local article with background on the match that also includes another photo.
posted by selfnoise at 8:00 AM on May 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I listened to this report on NPR calling the fight the Worst Mess in the History of Sports. Fascinating.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 8:03 AM on May 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

By the way, if you look at the gallery in the last article I linked to, you'll notice that there were indeed women in attendance, including the governor's wife.
posted by selfnoise at 8:05 AM on May 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

This NYT article from a couple of weeks ago leads off with the famous photograph in full and looks at the way the fight is both remembered and forgotten in Lewiston.

I grew up in Lewiston-Auburn. My high school graduation was in the auditorium where the fight was held, 16 years later. It's one of those things that everybody sort of knows about to some degree (the uncle of one of my high school friends was the time-keeper for the fight), but nobody pays attention to.
posted by briank at 8:09 AM on May 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Can someone who knows enough about the photo and photography find and link the original?

Neil Leifer's own site has the photo.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:10 AM on May 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Also, great article, thanks.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:11 AM on May 25, 2015

this was an excellent article. I'd not heard all this stuff about Liston - he was always sort of a miniboss in the Ali story. what a weird and depressing end.

when i was a kid my dad used to yell for me to come into watch old Ali matches on ESPN classic. I don't remember if I ever saw the Liston fight. I just remember thinking about how fast Muhammad Ali was relative to the guys he was fighting. Like, it's one thing to hear about it and another thing to watch him out-box these huge dudes by just being quicker.
posted by dismas at 8:12 AM on May 25, 2015

This was an excellent article, thanks. It's obvious in retrospect, having read the article, how the empty blackness above Ali in a color photo makes that image so much more powerful than the very similar but tightly cropped black and white image.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:23 AM on May 25, 2015

It's pretty annoying that the page is displayed in a way such that you can't see the whole picture at once

Make your browser window narrower. Or use a tablet.
posted by effbot at 9:35 AM on May 25, 2015

Recommended reading, The Devil and Sonny Liston, by Nick Tosches
posted by readery at 9:41 AM on May 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

There is not a single woman in it

And only two black people. Amazing times.
posted by merlynkline at 9:53 AM on May 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Liston’s fists each measured 15 inches around. For reference, a slow-pitch softball can be 11 inches around; so take that softball and inflate it an extra third in size, stick that on the end of your wrist, and propel it forward with some of the biggest biceps on record

A 15 inch circumference sphere has two and a half times the volume of an 11 inch sphere. (Alright, mathematically pedantic, fists are not spherical, but then you are not being hit by circumference.)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:37 AM on May 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

My father-in-law, a WWII combat vet, had love of boxing and a strong dislike of Ali. He just saw him as someone not wanting to serve his country and did not see the reasons behind it. The old man was a product of his time and he wasn't going to see nuance in this. I saw no reason to stir up a debate.

Sometime in the 80s, I asked him to rank the heavyweights of all time. He worked through a list of boxers, including Liston, going through who would beat who. He ended up with saying "so Rocky Marciano would come out on top of all of 'em....(sigh)...and he'd get knocked out in the seventh round by that sonovabitch Ali."

It's Memorial Day and I do miss the old man.
posted by Ber at 11:26 AM on May 25, 2015 [11 favorites]

This NYT article from a couple of weeks ago leads off with the famous photograph in full and looks at the way the fight is both remembered and forgotten in Lewiston.

The black-and-white New York Times picture is by John Rooney, not Neil Leifer. Open both those image links in new tabs and switch between them. It's striking both how similar they are and how much more perfect Leifer's is.
posted by Mothlight at 12:05 PM on May 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

> It still certain could have been a dive! But a legit KO is far from impossible there.

Liston (Liston!) getting KO'ed seems less unthinkable when you remember that was Mohammad Fucking Ali he was fighting.
posted by jfuller at 12:38 PM on May 25, 2015

Liston (Liston!) getting KO'ed seems less unthinkable when you remember that was Mohammad Fucking Ali he was fighting.

Liston fought the man called Cassius Clay. Mohammad Fucking Ali came onto the scene in about 1975 in the fight against Joe Frazier - the Thrilla in Manila. That was Ali at his peak.

Funny how Ali's career is framed by Philadelphia boxers. And the mark it left. Smoking Joe was (and is) an icon in Philly; Liston was (and is) barely acknowledged.

Sonny Liston was a tremendous champion. The really ironic thing is that Sonny Liston was the fighter Joe Frasier always aspired to be and both of them were stuck in orbit around this man called Ali - which is why Ali's boast of being the greatest of all time always rings in my ear as a humble tribute to the Supermen he beat in the ring.
posted by three blind mice at 1:40 PM on May 25, 2015

Ali had just changed his name before the Liston fight, no?
posted by persona au gratin at 3:31 PM on May 25, 2015

I believe the article says changed but not publicly announced.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:00 PM on May 25, 2015

More on Leifer's boxing photography, with a version of the Ali-Liston picture that should fit in your screen.
posted by stargell at 4:00 PM on May 25, 2015

Muhammad Ali began calling himself by that name in 1964.
posted by stargell at 4:05 PM on May 25, 2015

Sonny Liston was a tremendous champion. The really ironic thing is that Sonny Liston was the fighter Joe Frasier always aspired to be

I seem to recall that George Foreman said the same: That's why he was such a glaring, glowering, untalkative champion his first time around. He wanted to be like Liston.

Speaking of Foreman and punches that don't look like much, Foreman's knockout of Moorer might not look like much to the casual observer.
posted by clawsoon at 4:32 PM on May 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

> which is why Ali's boast of being the greatest of all time always rings in my ear as a humble
> tribute to the Supermen he beat in the ring.

A lot of great heavyweights has the bad luck to come along in the same era as Ali. Frazier is still my pick for all time next best and almost-as-good. "Joe won't lay down for Ali. Joe make 'im work." (Richard Prior) Liston didn't make Ali/Clay work nearly as much.

If it's not Frazier it would have to be Joe Louis, who like Ali had the power of a heavyweight and the speed of a middleweight.
posted by jfuller at 4:32 PM on May 25, 2015

If you twiddle with the image URL on Leifer's site, you can get a very high resolution version.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:38 PM on May 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

For them as wants a better boxing authority than Richard Prior:

"I fought Joe twice and it was Hell both times. If I fight Joe again, it'll be Hell again." -- Muhammad Ali
posted by jfuller at 4:42 PM on May 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

There is not a single woman in it

And only two black people.

There are a number of African-Americans (I can see at least five) although I suppose far fewer than there ought to be be. If you look at the front row, there's a bald white gentleman with glasses sucking in his breath, second from the left. Count three heads back from him, and I think you can see an African-American woman. That's the only woman whose face is clear (if I'm reading it correctly) but there's an indistinct image that looks like a woman with a white hat up and to the right of her, and I think the body language and outline of the spectator in the right-hand bleachers, second from the left, fourth row up indicates that it's a (white?) woman.

Also, weirdly, next to the possible-woman with the white hat there appears to be a Lubavitcher Chasid. Pareidolia is a wonderful thing.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:33 PM on May 25, 2015 [2 favorites]