Ali vs Liston 'Phantom Punch' Gloves

The punch nobody saw

The first Clay-Liston fight, on February 25, 1964, in Miami Beach, had already been a shock. Cassius Clay went in an 8-to-1 underdog against the most feared heavyweight alive, and Liston quit on his stool before the seventh round. At 22, Clay became the youngest man to take the heavyweight title from a reigning champion. Within weeks he had joined the Nation of Islam and become Muhammad Ali.

The rematch was supposed to happen at Boston Garden on November 16, 1964, but Ali needed emergency hernia surgery three days before the bout. When it was rescheduled for May 1965, Massachusetts officials blocked it over concerns about the promoter's licensing and alleged organized-crime ties. Maine Governor John H. Reed stepped in, and the heavyweight championship of the world went to a youth hockey arena in Lewiston, a city of about 41,000. Liston, despite the first loss, was the 13-to-5 favorite.

Midway through the first round Ali threw a short right hand that he later called the 'anchor punch.' Slow-motion study of the film shows a short, grazing right to Liston's cheek of apparently limited power. Liston went down at 1:44. Referee Jersey Joe Walcott, a former heavyweight champion, could not hear the timekeeper's count and struggled to get Ali into a neutral corner. Liston got up at 1:56, the two men traded briefly, and Walcott stopped the fight at 2:12. The official announcement said 1:00.

Ringside photographer Neil Leifer caught Ali standing over the fallen Liston, arm cocked, shouting at him to get up. Leifer later recalled that the picture won nothing in that year's photojournalism contest and did not make the magazine's cover that week. Decades later it was chosen for the cover of a 1999 retrospective of the century's greatest sports photographs.

The commissioner takes the gloves

The man with authority over the fight was George L. Russo, Maine's boxing commissioner. Because the knockout was so disputed, he gathered up both fighters' gloves at the end of the bout. Bill Condon of the Maine State Athletic Commission, who was at ringside with him, later wrote that Russo took them because he thought there might be an investigation.

There was never a formal ruling that changed the result, and the gloves went home with Russo to Portland. Condon remembered that whenever someone visited, Russo would bring the gloves out and the talk would turn to the big fight in Lewiston. Before Russo died in 1975, he gave them to his nephew, G. Robert 'Bobby' Russo, who ran the Portland Boxing Club.

Condon last saw the gloves in 1998, in Bobby Russo's office at the club, where he had come to officiate a regional tournament. He said there was no doubt they were the same gloves he had seen at the fight and at George Russo's home.

From a Portland boxing club to New York

In 1995 Ali came back to Lewiston to mark the 30th anniversary of the fight and signed both pairs. In March 1999 Bobby Russo swore an affidavit setting out the chain of ownership, and three months later Ali signed his own notarized letter stating that the gloves in Bob Russo's possession were the ones he wore defending his title against Liston on May 25, 1965. Condon's notarized letter, dated January 16, 1999, completed the paper trail.

Several years before the sale, a California collector named Seth Ersoff heard about the gloves, traveled to Maine to see them and bought them from the Russo family. The wider collecting world did not know they existed until he contacted an auction house about selling them.

Offered as a single lot in New York on February 21, 2015, three months before the fight's 50th anniversary, the two pairs had been expected to bring more than $1 million. Reports of the result differ: a trade report put the price at $965,000, while the Associated Press reported $956,000. The buyer asked to remain anonymous. The lot also included a signed print of Leifer's photograph, numbered 82 of 350.

A year earlier, in February 2014, the gloves Clay wore when he first beat Liston in Miami Beach had sold at auction for $836,500. Between them, the two lots account for the gloves of both fights that made Ali champion.

How the gloves were matched

Boxing expert Craig Hamilton examined the gloves and wrote a five-page letter on their physical characteristics. Gloves hand-sewn at Sammy Frager's Chicago factory vary slightly from pair to pair, and Hamilton compared seam lengths, tape stains and label placement to photographs of the fight and found them a match. He also confirmed that the Frager date coding fits the mid-1960s.

Two small markings help tell the pairs apart. The thumbs of Ali's gloves carry faded ink that Hamilton attributed to Angelo Dundee, Ali's Hall of Fame trainer. Liston's gloves are marked inside the wrist with a handwritten 'L' by an unknown hand.

The documentation that traveled with the lot included the notarized letters from Ali, Bobby Russo and Condon, Hamilton's glove letter, and letters of authenticity for Ali's signatures from two autograph authentication firms.

A mystery with no ending

Liston never got a clear answer either. He was found dead in his Las Vegas home on January 5, 1971; police estimated he had died on December 30, 1970. The official cause was lung congestion and heart failure, though traces of heroin were found. His exact birth date was never documented. He finished 50-4 with 39 knockouts and entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991.

Ali's fights outside the ring were still ahead. He refused induction into the armed forces on April 28, 1967, was stripped of his title, and saw his conviction overturned 8-0 by the Supreme Court in 1971. He finished 56-5 with 37 knockouts and died on June 3, 2016, at 74.

Footage from Lewiston shows Ali asking his corner after the fight, 'Did I hit him?' Sixty years on, the gloves are the only physical witnesses to the punch, and they cannot settle it either.

The numbers

Date and venue

May 25, 1965, Central Maine Youth Center, Lewiston, Maine

Result

Ali by KO, round 1; Liston down at 1:44, up at 1:56, stopped at 2:12

Referee

Jersey Joe Walcott

Odds

Liston 13-to-5 favorite

Attendance

2,434

Ali career

56-5, 37 KOs

Liston career

50-4, 39 KOs

Timeline

1. Jan 17, 1942

   Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. is born in Louisville, Kentucky.

2. Sep 25, 1962

   Sonny Liston knocks out Floyd Patterson in the first round in Chicago to win the heavyweight title.

3. Feb 25, 1964

   Clay, an 8-to-1 underdog, takes the title when Liston fails to answer the bell for the seventh round in Miami Beach.

4. Nov 16, 1964

   The scheduled Boston rematch is called off after Ali's emergency hernia surgery.

5. May 25, 1965

   Ali knocks out Liston in the first round in Lewiston, Maine; commissioner George L. Russo seizes both pairs of gloves.

6. Dec 30, 1970

   Liston's official date of death in Las Vegas; his body is found January 5, 1971.

7. 1975

   George Russo dies after giving the gloves to his nephew, Bobby Russo.

8. 1995

   Ali returns to Lewiston for the fight's 30th anniversary and signs both pairs.

9. Jan 16, 1999

   Bill Condon of the Maine State Athletic Commission signs a notarized letter on the gloves' history.

10. Mar 3, 1999

    Bobby Russo swears an affidavit on the chain of ownership; Ali signs his own notarized letter three months later.

11. Feb 2014

    Clay's gloves from the first Liston fight sell at auction in New York for $836,500.

12. Feb 21, 2015

    Both pairs from the rematch sell as one lot at auction in New York to an anonymous buyer.

13. Jun 3, 2016

    Muhammad Ali dies in Scottsdale, Arizona, at 74.

The world in 1965

• Feb 21, 1965

  Malcolm X is assassinated by three members of the Nation of Islam in Manhattan.

• Mar 7, 1965

  Alabama state troopers attack civil rights marchers in Selma on Bloody Sunday.

• Mar 8, 1965

  About 3,500 U.S. Marines land in South Vietnam, the first American combat troops there.

• Jun 3, 1965

  Ed White makes the first U.S. spacewalk during Gemini 4.

• Jul 25, 1965

  Bob Dylan goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival.

• Aug 6, 1965

  President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act.

• Aug 11, 1965

  The Watts riots begin in Los Angeles.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Ali vs Liston 'Phantom Punch' Gloves is number 68 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (67 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The official announcement said the fight ended at 1:00 of the first round; it actually ended at 2:12.
• Lewiston, with about 41,000 people, was the smallest city to host a heavyweight title fight since 1923.
• Neil Leifer's famous photo of Ali over Liston won no prize in its year and did not make the magazine's cover that week.
• The gloves were taken because the commissioner expected an investigation into the knockout.
• Ali later said he learned the 'anchor punch' from the comedian Stepin Fetchit, who credited it to Jack Johnson.
• Ali, the challenger in the first fight, was an even bigger underdog in the rematch than Floyd Patterson had been against Liston.