It Must Have Been the Will of Allah

Throughout Maine they had been touting The Fight as the most exciting thing to happen in the state since the Aroos-took Treaty. They were wrong.

The only legitimate victory scored in the Central Maine Youth Center last night was Robert Goulet's first-bar kayo of the national anthem.

I don't know just what happened in the Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight any more than you. But like fight fans around the world-from bleary eyed London viewers to the guys in the bar around the corner--I suspect that something was not quite kosher in the sleepy little mill town of Lewiston, Me.

In their first fight in Miami, Clay whacked a presumably injured Liston for six rounds and scarcely staggered those 215 pounds of lead. He called the winning blow last night his "phantom punch," and it was aptly named. You could scrutinize the video tapes of the fight from now till doomsday without finding a remote facsimile of "toonder 'n' lightning."

Referee Jersey Joe Walcott waited several seconds before starting the countdown--perhaps Clay's punch was so undiscernible that he thought Liston had slipped on a banana peel, or maybe Old Jersey Joe is still a little punch-drunk from the Marciano fight. At any rate, Liston was required to stay down for an eight count. He got up before he was counted out--and naturally he would wait till the last second to conserve his strength.

Walcott hastily consulted with the timekeeper, learned that twelve seconds had elapsed while Sonny was decked, and proclaimed Clay the winner.

Another enigma surrounding the swiftest knockout ever in a heavyweight title fight was Clay's failure to go to a neutral corner immediately. After the knockdown Clay hovered over Liston and hollered a few vilifications at him. As I've always understood the rule, a fighter must retire to a neutral corner before the countdown begins. If Clay had thought the knockdown were legitimate, he wouldn't have jeopardized his chances for a first-round victory by carrying on a little social chat with his prostrate victim before going to a corner.

Before the fight I had fervently hoped that no matter who won--even if my quarter on Liston in the fifth in the CRIMSON pool went down the drain--the fight would be freed of the taint of the Miami affair. What happened last was worse than anyone's most horrid dreams. Somehow, the whole thing seemed too blatantly fallacious to have been a fix unless Sonny, Casslus, and Blinky Palermo have been watching too many Grade D fight films on the late show.

Whether Clay's victory were the result of a fix, of Walcott's utter ineptitude, of the winds of fate, or of Clay's prayers to Allah, I don't know. The only result of the fight not wrapped in enigmas is the obvious fact that boxing may have suffered a fatal blow last night.