For the majority of his career, Muhammad Ali claimed to be the best thing the world had ever produced. He was confident, loud, and almost theatrical. He insulted opponents in front of the cameras, predicted rounds, and showed up at press conferences looking like he had already won. It was brilliant, entertaining, and, at least once, a front for something he didn’t fully acknowledge in public until years later.
Sonny Liston was the man who frightened him.
Ali stated unequivocally in both his autobiography and subsequent interviews that the only opponent he was ever genuinely afraid to fight was Liston. I’m not anxious. Not to be afraid of. terrified. The distinction is important, particularly from a man whose whole public persona was based on appearing fearless.
Floyd Patterson was knocked out by Liston in the first round and again in the rematch. With an 84-inch reach and a jab that reporters frequently ran out of words to describe, he was the undisputed heavyweight champion and was thought to be unbeatable. He was eventually listed as the tenth-greatest heavyweight of all time by The Ring magazine. That reputation was the main topic of discussion in 1963.
When Ali entered the fight, he was 22 years old. At the time, Cassius Clay was still alive. On February 25, 1964, he went into the fight in Miami Beach as an 8-to-1 underdog, a statistic that essentially sums up how the fight appeared from the outside. His blood pressure spiked so sharply at the weigh-in that the ringside physician thought about pulling him. The readings needed to be double-checked by the medical staff. Ali subsequently acknowledged that a large portion of the mayhem he caused that day—the yelling, the taunts, the calculated theatrics—was a purposeful tactic to enter Liston’s head and conceal what was going on inside his own.
It’s difficult not to find something subtly noteworthy in that. One of the most confident athletes in sports history, he managed genuine, documented fear while projecting confidence so convincingly that no one in the room could see through it. In one interview, he referred to Liston as the most terrifying man he had ever encountered, calling him “ugly in and out of the ring.” This statement carried more weight than it might seem. He had nothing to do with appearances. He described a presence that completely occupied a room, leaving very little room for other people to feel comfortable.
Liston’s refusal to compete in the seventh round, citing a shoulder injury, put an end to the fight and sparked decades of conjecture. A year later, Liston was defeated by a punch that many onlookers claimed they never saw land, sparking controversy after the rematch. It’s unlikely that those questions will ever be completely resolved.
But what often gets overlooked in the commotion surrounding those altercations is what Ali said afterward, after the fear had subsided: that Liston’s beating had permanently altered him. Something was confirmed by it. He admitted that he had told people he was the greatest before he even believed it, in the hopes that the repetition would eventually make it true. It was real after Liston.
George Foreman is an entirely different story. Going into the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, Ali admitted to having a particular fear of Foreman’s power—not the overwhelming fear he felt about Liston, but a clear-eyed respect for what those hands could accomplish. He responded to that power in part by using the rope-a-dope strategy in that fight, which allowed Foreman to exhaust himself swinging at a target that continued to roll away. It was successful. However, Foreman subsequently disclosed that Ali had once discreetly informed him that he didn’t think he could have defeated Mike Tyson during his prime. Ali had never faced a stronger opponent than Tyson. Depending on how generously you interpret it, it may or may not amount to fear.
Ali is not diminished by any of this. It adds something, if anything. The public performance is the version of him that most people carry around: incredibly self-assured and untouchable. The version that entered the ring in Miami Beach while acknowledging his fear and the pressure of facing Sonny Liston is more accurate. Without giving up, fear is a form of bravery in and of itself. More than most, Ali seemed to grasp that.
