Shaking Up the World

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"Clay comes out to meet Liston, and Liston starts to retreat.
If Liston goes back an inch farther, he'll end up in a ringside seat.
Clay swings with his left, Clay swings with his right.
Look at young Cassius carry the fight.
Liston keeps backing, but there's not enough room.
It's a matter of time till Clay lowers the boom.
Now Clay lands with a right, what a beautiful swing,
And the punch raises the Bear clean out of the ring.
Liston is still rising, and the ref wears a frown
For he can't start counting till Sonny goes down.
Now Liston is disappearing from view, the crowd is going frantic,
But radar stations have picked him up, somewhere over the Atlantic.
Who would have thought when they came to the fight
That they'd witness the launching of a human satellite?
Yes the crowd did not dream when they put up the money
That they would see a total eclipse of the Sonny."

Cassius Clay (1963)

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Sonny Liston was the most fearsome fighter of his day.

Heck, he would be fearsome in any era. Sports Illustrated ranked him third among all the heavyweights — behind only Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis.

Fifty years ago tomorrow, Liston was the heavyweight champion about to defend his title in Miami Beach against an up–and–comer named Cassius Clay (soon to be Muhammad Ali), and most observers believed the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Modern boxing fans who grew up knowing Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield as the fiercest fighters around would be astonished by Sonny Liston. Many of his contemporaries were hesitant to fight him. There were boxing writers who believed he could not be beaten.

How tough was Liston? His nickname was "The Big Bear."

Liston was a brawler who learned to fight while serving time for armed robbery. He was sent back to prison for beating up a policeman. Through most of his professional career, Liston's majority owner was a former Mafia hit man; because of that association, Liston had a reputation for being everything that was bad about the sport even though his criminal record was a thing of the past, a relic of his reckless youth.

Clay was known to be loquacious, young and arrogant. He had won a gold medal as a light heavyweight in the 1960 Olympics, but he had struggled as a professional. Most boxing writers believed Liston would win easily.

Liston may have thought so, too. The 31–year–old Liston was a 7–to–1 favorite over the 22–year–old Clay.

Clay did everything he could to capitalize on that. He cultivated the image of a naive youngster in an attempt to lull Liston into a false sense of security.

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Any thoughts that Liston might have had about knocking Clay out in the first round the way he had disposed of the previous heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson, disappeared quickly as Clay proved to be too slippery. He constantly frustrated Liston by backing just out of range of the champion's punches.

Then, in the third round, Clay staggered the champ. Liston didn't go down, but he was bleeding from his nose and a cut just below his left eye when the round ended.

By the fifth round, Liston's right eye was beginning to swell, but Clay was having his own vision problems. Something appeared to be in one of his eyes, and he was blinking rapidly as the round began. Sensing a vulnerability, Liston tried to move in for the kill, but Clay bounced away every time Liston tried to connect, and Liston seemed to be tired by the end of the round.

When the fighters came out for the sixth round, Liston was dragging. The fight was stopped before the start of the seventh round.

And Clay jumped around the ring, repeatedly shouting, "I shook up the world!"

Clay leaned over the ropes of the boxing ring and told the working press to "eat your words." Sports writer Red Smith wrote that "nobody ever had a better right" to demand that.

"He might have been nailed if the bout had continued," Smith wrote, "but, on the evidence of 18 frenzied minutes, Cassius was entitled to crow, 'I'm the greatest. I'm gonna upset the world.' "

Smith's words were a glimpse into the mindset of many who had been skeptical of Clay before the fight. Perhaps they felt he had been lucky. He was still a brash youngster, and upsets do happen. Clay "might have been nailed if the bout had continued," Smith had written, but he won "on the evidence of 18 frenzied minutes."

Evidence, of course, is what it is, whatever it is, not what someone might wish that it is. The fight did not continue. It was the end of the Liston championship.

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Within a few days, Clay joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

It was the start of a new era in boxing. Liston got a rematch with Ali in Lewiston, Maine, in May of 1965, which he lost, and he was never to be a contender again. Less than six years later, he was found dead of what was originally ruled to be a heroin overdose. Police could find no paraphernalia that would have been necessary to inject the fatal dose, however, so his death remains officially unresolved.

For Ali, it was the beginning of a remarkable professional career.

Website Offers Guidance in Tying Fishing Knots

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I'm not much of a fisherman.

That isn't a good thing to admit when you live in the South — kind of like admitting that you don't watch NASCAR or eat chicken–fried steak or drink tea (guilty on all three charges).

My mother's father was an avid fisherman, though. He belonged to a fishing club in east Texas, and we used to meet my grandparents there.

It was about a two–hour drive from my grandparents' home in Dallas — an old two–story country house that was converted into a clubhouse where guests could spend the night and have meals. Members could keep fishing boats there, and that is what my grandfather did. When he was planning a trip to the fishing club, he would call the clubhouse and tell them to get his boat ready — which meant, I suppose, making sure it had enough gas and that all his gear was ready to go when he was.

I can still remember his boat, light brown and white, and I remember getting up early with my father and grandfather to go fishing hours before breakfast. I never did too well on those excursions on the lake, but I remember vividly the night Grandpa taught me to cast.

I was about 7 years old. My family had met up with my grandparents at the fishing club and one night after dinner, Grandpa decided it was time for me to learn how to cast so we went down to the shoreline between the boathouses. Grandpa showed me how to cast ("Pull the rod back to 10 o'clock," he instructed, "then go forward and release the line when your hand is at 2 o'clock.").

We both thought I was just practicing the mechanics of casting — but, lo and behold, I caught a fish!

Well, anyway, the reason I bring up fishing is because I stumbled on to a website that I think has the potential to be very useful for any of you anglers out there.

Called NetKnots.com, it instructs fishermen in tying knots. It even has animations.

I shared this with a friend of mine who used to be one of the outdoors writers for a newspaper where I worked as a copy editor. To be honest, I figured the material would be a little too elementary for him, but he replied that it has a lot of good information consolidated in one place. He said he had bookmarked it.

Well, that's good enough for me!

So, if you are an angler — or you know one — take a look at the website.

And I hope you catch a whopper!

Back to the Future?

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A couple of days ago, I read with interest a column by Linda Robertson of the Miami Herald in which she argues that figure skating in America desperately needs "an ice queen" to survive.

It is ironic, I suppose, that such a suggestion should be made this month, 20 years after the Tonya Harding–Nancy Kerrigan showdown in the Winter Games.

Tonya, as I observed last month, was part of a conspiracy to get Kerrigan out of the way so Harding could breeze to the championship in the Nationals and then — presumably — win the gold medal in Norway.

But the plot unraveled, and both were allowed to compete in the Winter Olympics. The buildup for that showdown had something for everyone — Kerrigan was the good girl, Harding was the bad girl. Ratings went through the roof. In spite of the assumptions of many, though, neither won the gold. Kerrigan took the silver.

The general mindset at the time was that women's figure skating was the domain of the Americans — not unlike the general belief that once accompanied women's gymnastics, that it was the domain of Russia and the communist–bloc countries.

Fast forward a couple of decades.

The American women haven't won a gold medal in figure skating since 2002. They didn't medal at all in the last Winter Games.

The general prospects for the 2014 Games don't look so good, either. It isn't all bad. Americans are favored in ice dancing, Robertson reports, and the U.S. team has a chance at a medal.

But "U.S. pairs will be outclassed and, most humbling of all, U.S. men's and women's skaters face the prospect of being shut out of the medals for the first time since 1936."

Robertson writes that dominance in skating is seen as a cyclical thing, and I suppose there is truth in that. Everything does seem to go in cycles, and perhaps this is a natural downturn for the Americans. That isn't good news for NBC, which holds the American Olympic broadcasting rights through 2020.

The Summer Games have a lot of appealing events for Americans — track and field, swimming, diving, volleyball, gymnastics — but the marquee event for the Winter Games is figure skating. Oh, sure, you have some who like to watch skiing and, for awhile, Olympic hockey thrived in traditionally non–hockey markets, but that faded after the U.S. hockey team failed to duplicate its gold–medal success in the 1980 Winter Games.

NBC needs women's figure skating to be what it once was — a ratings bonanza.

Securing the Olympics

When I was a boy, terrorists struck the Summer Olympics in Munich. Eleven members of the Israeli team and a German police officer were killed.

That event sent shock waves throughout the world, largely because it was unexpected. It took everyone by surprise.

But that was a different world, a world in which terrorist attacks didn't happen often.

It wasn't far removed from a time when airplane passengers didn't have to go through a series of security checks. They could simply walk onto their planes without their luggage or bodies being scanned for weapons or bombs. No one seems to have thought that a person might intend to seize control of a plane, maybe blow it out of the sky — at least, until people started hijacking planes.

Even then, no one seems to have imagined that a person might want to seize control of a plane with the specific intention of flying it into a building — at least, not until 19 terrorists did that very thing on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since then, America has been on alert at airports and on board airplanes. The Olympics came to Salt Lake City only a few months after the Sept. 11 attacks, and, with tens of thousands of participants and spectators visiting from other countries for two weeks, the world saw a model of security efficiency. Two other Winter Olympics — and three Summer Olympics — have been held since Sept. 11, and each has avoided a security catastrophe.

Americans, I have learned, tend to believe that, if they are acutely aware of something or diligent about something, the rest of the world is, too. Perhaps the last six Olympic Games have lulled Americans into a false sense of security, believing that each host country is just as serious about terrorism prevention as we are.

But that is a dangerous assumption to make in today's world.

And I am anxious about the Winter Olympics that officially get under way this weekend in Russia.

Kelly Whiteside wrote in USA Today this week that the appearance of tight security promotes a sense of comfort, but, as Caitlin Dewey and Max Fisher write in the Washington Post, reports of suicide bombers and online threats prompted a travel alert from the State Department. Doesn't sound to me like Sochi is very secure.

Most of the people with whom I have spoken in the last week or so agree with me — that a terrorist attack during the Olympics is likely.

I hope I'm wrong about that. I don't want to see any athlete or coach or spectator hurt or killed.

But if it happens, I am pretty sure I know what the reaction will be: Most people will be sad. Most probably will be angry. Most also probably will feel a sense of revulsion.

But few, if any, will be surprised.