Sonny Liston: The Champ Nobody Wanted by Young, A.S. "Doc - 1963

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Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company. Very Good+. 1963. 2nd printing. Softcover. [moderate external wear, a little fading along top edge of rear cover; binding still completely intact]. Trade PB (B&W photographs) An "unauthorized" yet sympathetic biography, by a prominent African-American sportswriter, of the heavyweight boxing champion who took the title away from then-champ Floyd Patterson with a stunning first-round knockout on September 25, 1962. Liston's long ascent to the pinnacle of boxing was fought both inside and outside of the ring, as he had to overcome a hardscrabble childhood which led him into extensive criminal activity (he served a two-year prison sentence for armed robbery in the early 1950s), and his boxing career was clouded by persistent links to organized crime and a general perception that he was an unsavory character. He held the heavyweight title for exactly 17 months, during which his single fight was a rematch with Patterson in which he again… Read More

Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1963. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. First edition. Some edgewear, near very good in about very good dustwrapper with shallow nicking at the spine ends. Biography of Liston by a noted African-American sportswriter. To some of his contemporaries Liston, a particularly dark-skinned ex-convict, embarrassed a sport that had been trying to gentrify its image. Issued simultaneously in both soft and hardcover editions, both are very uncommon, the hardcover verges on being rare. A presentable copy.