The Devil and Sonny Liston

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Story Of Sonny Liston!
Review: This is an excellent story of Sonny Liston.Liston had scored
two stunning first round knockouts of Floyd Patterson. He had
developed the aura of being indestructible.His destruction of
Cassius Clay was a foregone conclusion.After his first loss to
Clay,liston later admitted that the fight was fixed.Liston was supposedly controlled by Organized crime.His second fight with
Clay was an even bigger farce.The force of Clay's punch that
knocked out Liston will forever be argued.
The author gives an very good background on Sonny Liston.He was
born in Arkansas and later moved to St. Louis.In St. Louis he
robbed grocery stores and filling stations.He was eventually
caught and sent to prison.In prison he became a feared boxer on
the prison boxing team.After returning to society he went into
professional boxing and quickly climbed to the top.This author
tells the entire story.Liston died a sad death from a heroin
overdose.He was still one of my favorite sports figures.This is
an excellent book that you will find very informative.

Rating:
Summary: More Sonny Liston Please, Nick
Review: "The Devil and Sonny Lisaton," does not deal with Liston very much. The book covers mob trivia and rehashed info on mobster influence in boxing during the fifties, but contains very little interesting info on Liston, on his fight career, his opponents or anything else about the man. This is one of the worst boxing books ever published!

Rating:
Summary: Tosches hits it
Review: "The Devil and Sonny Liston" is a spellbinding tale about one of sports most misunderstood characters. The insight and detail Tosches presents are void of political correctness and give an intriguing portrait of one of professional boxing's most feared competitors and the sport's underlying corruption of the 50's and 60's. Muhammad Ali worshippers are in for an education. No punches are pulled. A great book!

Rating:
Summary: Sonny Liston a Guest In His Own Biography
Review: 3.5 Stars

I liked most of this book, but do not consider it a biography.

I think too much time - too many pages - were dedicated to the mob figures and peripheral issues and people - and it took away from Sonny - ironically - like they did.

It seemed the writing style was trying too hard to be tuff and every now and then a swear would pop up - oddly - like it was just there to be there.

The last 50 pages are unquestionably powerful. Toshes writing style and way work perfectly here.

I think Sonny deserves more.

I would not consider this a biography of the champ, but I'm glad I read it. I'm glad I got to learn some parts of Sonny Liston that I didn't know before - so that alone is worth reading it - as long as you realize that Sonny is only a bit player in what is supposed to be his biography.

In addition to this I'd recommend David Remnick's King of The World - it's a fantastic book surrounded by Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali.

Read both and you get somewhat of a view of Sonny Liston.

Rest in Peace Champ!

Rating:
Summary: Tosches takes a dive
Review: A truly talented writer is one who can write about a subject in which I have no interest and keep me interested. Tosches is a talented writer because I find boxing a bore. "The Devil and Sonny Liston" (or "Night Train," Tosches' preferred title which was used in the UK) held my interest, yet if I came to the book as a fan of either boxing or the title subject, I think I'd be disappointed.

As he did in his superior biography of Dean Martin, the author uses the central figure more as a starting point to cover a wider terrain, in both cases, the influence of organized crime in 20th century America. But whereas Dino came alive on the page, Liston takes a few valiant swings before he's knocked to the canvas, a supporting character in his own life. If Liston took a dive in the famous match against Cassius Clay, and Tosches is convinced he did (and makes a convincing case despite a lack of objectivity - Tosches obviously despises Clay as a triumph of style over substance), Tosches did the same here by writing this book strictly for the cash (an admission he makes in "In the Hand of Dante"). I don't condemn that, after all, the book is still a good read, but that doesn't change my feeling that Liston and his fans got shortchanged.

Rating:
Summary: sonny and the mob
Review: i didnt love this book but didnt hate it either. i wish the book would have dived into the intricacies of the fights much more.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I hoped for
Review: I was very displeased with this book. It was very disjointed. I didnt learn much more about Liston than i already knew. There was very little detail about his fights. The author gives slanted details as to why he thinks the first Liston-Clay fight was fixed. He ignors the fact that Sonny was beat up durring that fight and that Sonny's corner used a substance to blind Clay during the fight. That part of the book reminded me of some of the rediculous conspiracy theory books out there. I think everyone would agree the second fight was fixed, but not the first.

Rating:
Summary: Tosches botches it
Review: Sonny Liston was one of the real bad boys of boxing, although the term "bad boy" is undersized, like the gloves Liston had to wear until he could afford a custom-made pair to cover his massive fists. One of the baddest of bad men, then, one of the three truly fearsome heavyweights of the last fifty years, a brutal ring warrior who dispatched his opponents with ease until his career was clipped by Cassius Clay under what many view as suspect circumstances. Subsequently overshadowed, his reputation has been revised recently and a growing minority now view him as the greatest heavyweight of all. Nick Tosches' biography is certainly aptly timed.
Liston's early life was mysterious. His birth date is unknown, but was apparently some time between 1928 and 1932. His father, Tobe, was born four years after the abolition of slavery in the almost unfathomably distant year of 1870. Next to nothing is known of Sonny's childhood, but it was evidently hard. He came to St Louis as a young man who couldn't read or write and followed the all-too-well-trodden path of petty crime, prison and boxing. He turned out to have outstanding ability, including tremendous punching power. Opponents described his blows as paralyzing or excruciatingly painful. By the late 50's he was a leading heavyweight contender. He finally got his championship shot against Floyd Paterson, whom he demolished in two fights in a total time of four and a half minutes.
Liston's career by this point had been severely tarnished. He was managed by the Mob, drank heavily, had run-ins with the police, even during his tenure as champion, and apparently settled his way out of being charged with sexual assault. In February, 1964 his 18-month reign as champion ended when he refused to rise from his stool at the start of the seventh round against Cassius Clay, claiming that his left arm was numb and thereby becoming the first champion since 1919 to go out sitting down. In the rematch Liston was knocked out by one punch in the first round. The fight film (surely the second-most scrutinized strip of film from the 60s) has failed to satisfy fans that a blow of any force was delivered. But real or not, the "Phantom Punch" didn't just stop Liston, it ended his career. An attempt to get into movies was a complete failure (although his commercial spot for Braniff Airlines, co-starring Andy Warhol, sounds memorable). Sonny mounted a comeback bid in the late 60's but it was derailed when he was KOd by Leotis Martin (although the fight also ended Martin's career, as he suffered a detached retina). In his last fight, in 1970 (100 years after the birth of his father), Sonny banged up Chuck Wepner. His shady life ended in shady circumstances. He was found dead at home by his wife in January, 1971. As he had already been dead several days, however, the precise date of death is unknown. The cause of death, likewise, could not be established with certainty.
While Liston and his times are fascinating - not least Liston's role as the godfather of all subsequent bad-ass African-American sports and music celebrities - their treatment by Tosches is decidedly pedestrian. There is little about boxing, with almost no description of any of Liston's fights and little about the overall scene or the other leading contenders. Tosches' main focus is on organized crime. Unfortunately, most of this material is second-rate. Apart from the problem of a relative lack of documentation, the would-be Mob historian writing of decades-old events is also confronted by the fact that many of the principals are dead, while the survivors may be afflicted by (genuine) memory loss and were all habitual liars to begin with anyway. Tosches wastes space with transcribed filler from various public inquiries (does anyone really want to read about Blinky Palermo or Barney Baker taking the fifth a dozen times?). But he fails to tackle the big question of the narrative - were the fights against Ali fixed? Tosches has his opinions, but adds no new evidence. Nor does he address the obvious fact that the motive for a fix was highly problematic. Allegedly, Liston's owners deliberately gave up a valuable, high-prestige and revenue-generating property - the heavyweight championship. For what - so they could bet on a fix at 8-1? And then how did they get Sonny to take a dive? While it might be rational to throw a fight in pursuit of a title shot, as Jake LaMotta admitted to having done, the championship itself is what fighter live, train and suffer for, the rewards are enormous and the alternatives bleak, as most fighters have neither skills nor interests outside the ring. The notion that a fighter would throw away the title, his lifetime goal, simply to satisfy his manager's machinations requires a little explanation. And even if the first fight was rigged, why not recapture the crown in the second, where the 8-5 odds offered a much less lucrative payoff? The evident dive against Ali notwithstanding, the fix theory raises as many questions as it answers.
Tosches' investigation of Liston's death is similarly inconclusive. Tosches states at the outset that Liston was murdered, but later admits that there is no evidence to support this; nor is there much evidence for any other cause, such as drug overdose.
Tosches success is in drawing his subject as a man who never escaped servitude, who could handle himself in the ring but not in life, but who, for all his bad side also maintained a kind of dignity. At the same time, the portrait of Liston is sketchy and unsatisfying. The main research effort having been wasted on minor Mob figures, and the writing style being classic blowhard, this is a book with some shortcomings. But its subject is a remarkable figure, and the photos are good, especially the cover and the last one. Bad as he was, Sonny Liston deserves a better biography.

Rating:
Summary: I Love Boxing and I HATED this Book !
Review: Sonny Liston was without a doubt, one of the most interesting stories in boxing history. He was mean, tough and just a genuine badass. Moreover, he had mob connections and a truly strange past. However, reading this book you would not get such a fascinating portrait of him. Instead, you will get fifty pages of his family tree and other unnecessary and un-entertaining info. I cannot describe in words how much I hated this book. This guy took an enigmatic icon and buried him under page and page of trivial nonsense, which did nothing more than demonstrate the tedious writing style of a pompous twit. Sonny, you deserved better.