As he campaigned for a title match with Liston, Clay’s fresh-faced challenge to boxing’s accepted rules invigorated a dying sport. Floyd Patterson seemed a nice-enough fellow, but except for Liston, his manager Constantine “Cus” D’Amato kept him away from tough opponents, especially any with mob ties. In his battles with Liston, Patterson was “the good Negro,” humble and modest, versus the surly, amoral black man from the ghetto, a Bigger Thomas with boxing gloves. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) did not want Patterson to fight Liston, fearing the consequences of a black champion with criminal ties, but once the fight was announced, the civil rights organization, like President Kennedy, rooted for Patterson and was horrified when he was humiliated in 1962 and again in 1963 by the former mob enforcer. From the moment he won his Olympic gold medal in 1960, Cassius Clay stepped into this gloomy picture to help establish a new era in boxing. “Whether you like Clay or not,” noted Ring’s Dan Daniel, “the fact remains that he performed for boxing a tremendous benefice similar to that which Babe Ruth achieved for baseball” after the Black Sox scandal had shaken public confidence in the sport. Clay knew how to capture the spotlight. He was “fresh, new, and filled with the liveliness of a new age,” argued Angelo Dundee. “Put them all together and all of a sudden it was the Age of Cassius.”
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