Your Phantom Punch

On Feb. 25, in 1964, 22-year-old boxer Cassius Clay beat the odds-makers by dethroning world heavyweight champ Sonny Liston in a seventh-round TKO.

This set in motion a series of events mired in controversy and still hotly debated to this day. It also revealed a principle anyone facing long odds would do well to cultivate.

But first a ring of the bell..

Ding-ding!

The rematch was set for May 25, 1965. There were whispers of a fix, of mob entanglements, of contractual subterfuge in the wake of their first fight. The World Boxing Association had already stripped the title from Clay, now the newly renamed Muhammad Ali, amid the surrounding chaos. Doubt clung to the bout like backroom cigar smoke.

Despite all this, the match proceeded—for all of a minute and half. Ali threw a punch so hard and so fast that Liston was suddenly down on his back. The Big Bear, as he was nicknamed, rolled over, got his right knee underneath him but fell on his back again, KO’d.

The fight was over in the first round…