Flashback Notebook: Ali-Liston is Maine's Greatest Sports Moment
From April 2019, I was arguing that we needed a monument to Ali's win over Sonny Liston. Thankfully now we have one.
Sometimes in this business we call The Notebook, something happens and I’ll have this realization that “I’ve written about this before.” Almost like a repressed memory, anything can trigger one of these flashbacks. Thankfully, due to modern technology and my back up hard drive, we are able to look back to see if these thoughts are real or Memorex. (Not a sponsor.)
This week we dipped into the Notebook archives, and I traveled into these hallowed halls (picture the library from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast) to retrieve a piece from the previous decade. From 2016 to 2019 I was a co-host on a daily sports talk radio show in Bangor, Maine. On Friday’s, I had a weekly segment called “A Sterling Moment." In this segment, I would write a short piece (can you imagine such a thing?) and I would read it on-air, with musical accompaniment, I would pick a song that would enhance the piece or the topic, or just add comedic value. (Example, the first A Sterling Moment was after the Red Sox finally released Pablo Sandoval, entitled Panda Eulogy and it was to the tune of Dust in the Wind by Kansas.) You get the idea, this was pretty highbrow Friday afternoon content. The segment endured for the entirety of my 3-years on the show.
What led to the following piece originally was that we had conducted a poll, where listeners could vote for what was the more significant moment in Maine Sports history. I don’t remember all 4 choices, but it essentially came down to Ali vs Liston in Lewiston or the 1993 Maine Hockey team. (Timely too, because this week when Cooper Flagg is picked 1st overall in the NBA Draft, that will enter this conversation.) The Black Bears won the poll and I was agog that Ali-Liston didn’t win. This led to multiple segments of me railing against the results and multiple calls from listeners that I was wrong for not backing the ‘93 Black Bears. So, back in those days I settled things with A Sterling Moment.
(Side note: As we are talking about statues. It was announced a couple of weeks ago that Tom Brady’s statue is going to be unveiled outside of Gillette Stadium before the August 8th preseason game against the Commanders. Seems like an odd time to do something like this, why a preseason game? I guess it could be a draw for a game that typically has very little sizzle to it. Though I’m not sure what kind of ceremony they’ll have, will Tom even be there? He has to be, right? Could he not be there during the season because he’s part owner of the Raiders? (The Pats week 1 opponent, at home.) Or because of his broadcast schedule? I have a lot of questions, what I do like though is that if you go to any regular season game this season, you’ll get to see the newest piece of artwork added to One Patriot Place.
Also, while we’re on the subject of adding statues, I want to be on the record that the Patriots need a Bill Belichick statue and Newport needs one of Cooper Flagg. Bill Green and I were debating this recently and I said I’d put it in the middle of the intersection by the new IHOP (not a sponsor) and Sawyer’s Dairy Bar (them either.) Coincidently, Notebook reader Scott G. suggested in an email recently that Bill Green himself should have a statue in Maine. Which got me to thinking, where in Maine would you put a Bill Green statue? I mean it’s all his Maine!
Here is my idea: I think we make the Bill Green statue mobile. We put it on a trailer and tow it behind the LL Bean Bootmobile. (Not a sponsor.) What an attraction, they could take “Bronze Bill” all over the state. I’m open to what the posing would look like, but I’ve always enjoyed the Red Auerbach statue in Faneuil Hall, where you can sit down on the bench next to him. Maybe something like that.)
The piece included below is in its original form, unfortunately I don’t have the accompanying audio and honestly don’t remember what song I read this over. But I thought of this piece after viewing the new Ali statue that was recently unveiled in Lewiston and how vehement I had been that we needed a proper monument to this moment, because after (at the time) 54 years, it wasn’t given it’s just due respect.
(Fun fact: looking at the date, I finished up on the show in May of 2019, so this was perhaps my last A Sterling Moment. It’s also possible that this is the reason why.)
(Originally published April 9, 2019)
Greatest of all time. Now it is attached to Tom Brady but until Super Bowl 49, the only GOAT in sports was Muhammad Ali. One of the most iconic faces in ALL of sport. The loudest talker, the most recognizable athlete that existed prior to the internet.
One of the most iconic images in the history of sport is Ali, waving for the befallen Sonny Liston to get up off of the canvas in the first round of their world heavyweight title fight in 1965. Even with that short description, you can picture it: the angle of Ali’s elbow, to the look on his face, to the photographer behind the turnbuckle with a smirk that says “the fix is in.” The image endures even now, almost 54 years since it was snapped.
The collage of sport is incomplete without this image of Ali, just as it would be without Jordan, Gretzky, Ruth or Brady. I’m not saying anything that everybody doesn’t already know. What people might not know is that this monumental moment took place in Lewiston, Maine.
Which is more unfathomable: that one of sport’s most iconic moments happened in Maine or that nobody knows that it happened here?
Whose fault is that? The people of Maine are modest, not showy of boastful, but the fact that a plaque or a statue doesn’t reside outside the Lewiston Colisee right now boggles my mind. I’m even more boggled now that as a result of a Drive poll from Wednesday, that people think a college hockey title is a bigger moment.
Ali- Liston is a bigger sports moment than 42-1-2. It is also a bigger moment than most Super Bowls, NBA Finals, World Series, Stanley Cup Finals, World Cups and all Olympics since Jesse Owens (except for the Miracle on Ice). So I’m not impugning UMaine’s accomplishment, Ali-Liston is a runaway train, they’re the ’76 Hoosiers, Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide, US Steel, death, taxes and The Undertaker at Wrestlemania.
Sports Illustrated, a magazine that Ali graced the cover of 38 times which is second only to Michael Jordan, ranked Ali-Liston as the 4th Greatest Sports moment of the 20th’s century. I’m not sure where 42-1-2 ranked.
Ali-Liston: Must be the greatest. It shook up the WORLD.
