When perusing the annals of prize-fighting history and discussing the most feared fighters of modern times, it seems there is only one weight class that could produce the kind of sheer knockout power that could strike bone-chilling fear into boxing's toughest opponents, and that weight class is the heavyweight division.
Suddenly, our minds and imaginations are launched on an incredible journey back to a time when everyone wore a Fedora hat, and the air was filled with the stench of stale cigar smoke that seemed to float lazily through the rafters of the dimly lit boxing arenas.
The sound of leather covered fists smacking against ribs and facial bones was grossly overdubbed by the drone of drunken fans shouting obscenities at the two battered and weary fighters.
Joe Louis Barrow once fought a fighter named King Levinsky who, before a fight with Louis, was incapacitated by thoughts of impending doom, Levinsky was terrified of Joe Louis; the great boxing columnist Jimmy Cannon was at ring-side for the Louis vs Levinsky fight, Cannon stated that it was the first time he'd ever witnessed a fighter being carried "into" the ring.
During the time of his historic fight with Muhammad Ali in "Rumble in the Jungle," George Foreman traveled in the company of two beautiful-but-menacing dogs, which made him seem much more fearsome than he actually was.
Certainly one of the toughest and most feared heavyweight fighters to ever step in the ring was a boxer named Charles "Sonny" Liston. Liston's entire life is shrouded in mystery. Liston believed his birth date was May 8, 1932, but no documentation exists, and many experts believe Liston was actually a few years older.
The 24th of 25 children fathered by Tobey or Tobe Liston, Charles "Sonny" came into the world in a tenant's shack 17 miles northwest of Forrest City, AR. "I had nothing when I was a kid but a lot of brothers and sisters, a helpless mother and a father who didn't care about any of us," he said. "We grew up with few clothes, no shoes, little to eat. My father worked me hard and whupped me hard."
The family worked in cotton fields and Sonny's father Tobey was a raving lunatic alcoholic who battered young Sonny on a daily basis; as a result of these violent events Sonny chose to run away to St Louis, MO to live with his Aunt.
Life on the streets is challenging in any city, St. Louis was no exception; only the street-wise and tougher kids learn the survival skills necessary to get by; Sonny Liston seemed to fit in perfectly with this type of violent clientele.
Usually this type of violent behavior in society gets progressively worse, before long Sonny Liston found himself doing hard time up-state. In 1950, he and two others were arrested for armed robbery of two gas stations and a diner.
Pleading guilty to two counts of first-degree robbery and two charges of larceny, he was sentenced to five years on each charge to run concurrently. It was during this stint at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City that Sonny Liston learned the skills of boxing; and although he didn't know it then, these basic skills would eventually make Sonny Liston the heavyweight champion of the world.
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