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Brooding Champ Finds Friend in Smiling Boy
By Oscar Fraley UPI Sports Writer
Even in success, Sonny Lister is suspicious of a world which since childhood he has battled tooth and nail.
When this big, sowling man with the hooded eyes looks at you he seems to be saying "I hear you man, but what are you thinking?"
THE BITTERNESS of his past has not been erased by the winning of the heavyweight championship of the world. It may never be. Much of his past was sordid and the silk suits don't entirely wipe out the indelible memory of coarse pork garb.
Except with children, possibly because they accept a man on face value and understand the hurt which lurks inside.
Mike is only 11 years old, a handsome youngster who is of another race, another faith and another color than Sonny. But Sonny is his idol.
Like little, black-haired Mike Zwerner.
THE FIRST DAY Liston turned up for early morning road work on a Miami Beach golf course. Mike was waiting for him. Shyly, he began to trot alongside the massive man bundled in sweat clothes. After a quarter of a mile, he looked up and with an impish grin said:
"Hey, let's shake it up a little."
The big one looked down and grinned. In that moment an in-explicable friendship was formed. They "shook it up."
Since that day, little Mike has been Liston's shadow, and one of those privileged to draw a smile from the brooding champion. He stood at ringside while Liston boxed and, between rounds, Liston took time to walk over and give him a playful nudge on the chin with a hand as big as Mike's head.
"YOU BRING HIM up to visit me in the summer," Liston told Mike's father, Jack Swerner, a Miami industrialist. "I'll build him a swimming pool just for his visit."
Four weeks ago, Sonny hurt his left knee swinging a golf club. The story is that he did it swinging for a photographer. Not so.
What actually happened is that he—and little Mike—finished their roadwork on the golf course and little Mike picked up a club and knocked a ball straight down the middle.
"Huh," said Sonny, "I can do that."
And hurt his knee twining.
IT WAS AN INJury which caused a six-day postponement of Liston's title defense against Floyd Fatterson and ultimately an indefinite postponement, which sent Sonny home to Chicago to rest the knee fully for another week.
Little Mike and his dad were at the airport.
"I'm going with him," little Mike said tearfully.
"He's going with me."
He slipped past the man at the gate and bounding up the ramp hurled himself onto Liston's lap. Big Sonny gave him a hug, and, shoving the child behind him, stood up and declared:
Little Mike was wearing only a sports shirt and slacks and his father suggested it might be cold in Chicago.
To the father he said: "I'll send him back tomorrow."
"It's all right," the father agreed with a resigned shrug. "Mike said he was going with Sonny. What can I do?"
"Who's gonna worry about a ticket at a time like this?" Sonny demanded as little Mike peered around from behind his formidable bulk.
"Shoot," Sonny said, "this here topcoat would keep him warmer than a dozen of his suits."
So they winged northward together, the dark, usually scowling man, and the white, usually smiling boy.
"Well." interjected a stewardess primly, "he doesn't have a ticket."
Tuesday. March 19, 1963 University Daily Kansam
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