I have been a boxing fan as long as I can remember. I am certain this is because of my father, who was a fan of most sports and incredibly knowledgeable about all of them. (He won the sports trivia contest so many times on the local radio that they asked him to voluntarily ban himself for awhile.) When it came to boxing my father was intrigued by the dichotomy of the sport; that it required an ability to fight in order to win but those who fought the hardest - or perhaps harshest - were not the most beloved by fans. This doesn't diminish Ali's great ability but it does explain how no one seemed to know what to do about Mike Tyson (you want him to beat the other guy into bloody submission but biting is too much) and it certainly explains a lot about why Sonny Liston was always feared more than revered.
When I came across Elizabeth Bear's short story, "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall" in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, I was pretty surprised. You don't expect to find a boxing story in a SFF collection (actually you don't find a lot of sports stories in this genre, period). Bear does something quite artful though, she brings Liston into a conversation with the soul of Las Vegas - with the spirit of the city - and raises all the questions about his two fights with Ali (the second of which ended shockingly in the first round) and gives them a fresh spin. What if Liston didn't take a fall for himself or for his family (the common belief) but fell for Ali? What if the monster that "no one wanted to come down their chimney" fell for the greatest of all reasons?
What if Sonny Liston was the hero?
Bear's words:
Boxing is called the sweet science. And horse racing is the sport of kings.
When Clay beat Liston, he bounced up on his stool and shouted that he was King of the World. Corn king, summer king, America's most beautiful young man. An angel in the boxing ring. A new and powerful image of black manhood.
He stepped up on that stool in 1964 and he put a noose around his neck.
The thing about magic is that it happens in spite of everything you can do to stop it.
And the wild old Gods will have their sacrifice.
No excuses.
If they can't have Charismatic, they'll take the man that saved him.
So it goes.
What if, what if, what if. No one knows for sure why Liston lost the first fight in the seventh round (he resigned claiming a shoulder injury) and no knows for sure why he dropped so mysteriously in the second (even the FBI investigated that one). He lost and that was enough. Ali was the fighter everyone wanted (until he fought the draft and then no one knew what to do about him) (until we decided he was a hero again) and Liston was not. Too rough, too tough, too much. Too real. Listen to Bear again:
"Ali can do something you can't, Sonny." Ali can be a symbol.
Is there anything more powerful than that - anything more enduring than a symbol? (And has any symbol been more enduring than Muhammad Ali?)
I read Bear's story in a few fast minutes and then again, slower, and then again. I've read it a dozen times now and every time I think the same thing: my father would have loved this story; he would have adored it.
I hate it when that happens; when I find something too late to share with him - when I find something that I would enjoy even more if only I could share it with him.
I expect to see "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall" in a few "Best of" collections and lists next year but I hope that it migrates to sports readers as well. Boxing fans will be impressed by Bear's scholarship (I was) and also by the inventive way in which she tweaks the Ali/Liston mythos. It's a wonderful story and, admittedly partly for purely personal reasons, one of my favorite reads this year.
[Post pic of Sonny Liston, above, and Ali staring down Liston after the fall, at the bottom.]
