Phantom Punch

Last updated: May 25, 2026

What is the phantom punch?

The phantom punch refers specifically to one historical moment: Ali’s first-round knockout of Liston at the Central Maine Youth Center. The name came from the crowd and the press in the immediate aftermath, when cries of “fake” and “fix” filled the small arena, and no one could agree on whether a punch had actually been thrown.

Ali himself called the blow the “anchor punch.” The label “phantom” stuck because of how it looked, or rather, how it didn’t look. A right hand traveled inches, Liston went down, and the fight was effectively over before most spectators had settled into their seats.

The moment lives on through one image more than any other: Sports Illustrated photographer Neil Leifer’s shot of Ali standing over the fallen Liston, glove raised, shouting, “Get up and fight!” Sports Illustrated later named it among the greatest sports photographs of the twentieth century. For anyone who has seen that picture, the phantom punch is the punch that produced it.

The Ali vs. Liston rematch

Ali’s February 1964 upset of Liston in Miami had ended with Liston retiring on his stool after six rounds. The rematch, fifteen months later, would not last six minutes.

The bout was originally scheduled for Boston Garden but was moved less than three weeks out, after a Suffolk County district attorney sought an injunction. Lewiston, Maine, was the only place willing to host. According to Wikipedia’s account of the bout, the Central Maine Youth Center was a junior hockey rink, and Lewiston remains the only Maine city ever to host a heavyweight title fight.

The atmosphere was tense. Malcolm X had been assassinated three months earlier by members of the Nation of Islam, and the FBI placed a twelve-man, twenty-four-hour guard around Ali on fears of a retaliatory attack. Liston’s camp claimed they had also received death threats. The crowd was sparse, fewer than 5,000 in a building that could hold more.

Midway through the first round, Liston threw a left jab. Ali came over the top with a right hand. Liston fell. He went down at 1 minute, 44 seconds, rose at 1:56, and was waved off at 2:12 by referee Jersey Joe Walcott, a former heavyweight champion who had been unable to corral Ali to a neutral corner. The official time was announced as 1:00, which was wrong. Former Ali opponent George Chuvalo climbed through the ropes after the fight and shoved Ali, yelling, “Fix!”

How the punch worked

Ali threw a short, chopping right hand over Liston’s left jab as Liston came forward. It traveled only a few inches. Ringside boxing writer Larry Merchant, in a letter to The New Yorker fifty years later, called it “a classic example of a medulla oblongata K.O.,” the kind of blow that disrupts the brainstem rather than relying on raw concussive force.

Sports Illustrated’s Tex Maule reviewed the punch frame by frame for the magazine’s June 7, 1965, issue and concluded the blow had enough force to lift Liston’s left foot off the canvas. Other ringside observers saw something different. Sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, sitting at ringside for ABC, said on air that the punch “couldn’t have crushed a grape.”

Both descriptions can be reconciled with what the cameras captured. The broadcast tape, Allen Barra wrote in a 2000 New York Times analysis, had no useful angle on the punch because the cameras were placed in the fighters’ corners. The film shot from above the ring obscured Ali’s right hand entirely. With no clean view available, the eyes of the building filled in the gap with disbelief.

Was the phantom punch a fix?

Six decades on, opinion still splits between people who saw a perfect counter and people who saw a dive.

The case for a fix starts with Liston’s mob ties. According to ESPN’s biography of Liston, two top mafia figures, Frankie Carbo and Blinky Palermo, held majority ownership of his fight contract; Carbo was later indicted on multiple counts related to undercover prizefight management. Boxing historian Nigel Collins wrote in Boxing Babylon that members of the Nation of Islam had visited Liston during training and warned him that if he won, “there would be a bullet waiting.” Liston’s cornerman, Ted King, corroborated that account to Sports Illustrated’s William Nack. Years later, per Mark Kram, Liston told the magazine, “I went down. I wasn’t hit.”

The case against a fix is the punch itself. Maule’s frame-by-frame analysis found it legitimate. Merchant maintained for fifty years that he saw the right hand land cleanly on the chin. Light heavyweight champion José Torres called it “a perfect punch.” Rocky Marciano, after watching the tape the next day, agreed Ali had “snapped the punch the last six inches.” Ali’s own behavior in the aftermath argues against any script: he asked his corner, “Did I hit him?” and shouted at Liston, “Nobody will believe this!” A bout designed to end in a knockout would not have produced a champion in genuine confusion.

Why it’s also called the anchor punch

Ali’s own name for the technique was the anchor punch, and he had been talking about it for months. According to NPR’s coverage of the 2013 play Fetch Clay, Make Man, Ali credited comedian and actor Stepin Fetchit, real name Lincoln Perry, with teaching him the move. Fetchit had been friends with Jack Johnson, the first Black world heavyweight champion, who was rumored to have used the punch decades earlier.

Whether the anchor punch was a real, distinct technique or part of Ali’s pre-fight theatre is impossible to say. According to Nick Tosches’s biography The Devil and Sonny Liston, Ali never threw it again in any fight that followed, and he stopped referencing it in interviews. The name survived only because the punch that supposedly produced it did.

The phantom punch’s legacy

Neil Leifer’s photograph traveled far beyond boxing. Sports Illustrated later put the image on the cover of its special issue ranking the greatest sports photos of the century.

Liston’s reputation took the hit no punch could repair. He went from a champion seen as virtually unbeatable to a fighter forever attached to suspicion. Boxing writer Bob Mee, quoted in Wikipedia’s account, observed that after the two Ali bouts, Liston would never again intimidate a world-class fighter.

The term has since drifted into broader combat sports usage. Any knockout that looks too quiet for the damage it does, any finish where commentators and fans rewind the tape to confirm what they just saw, will sometimes attract the phrase. In every case, the reference points back to Lewiston.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did the phantom punch actually land?

Slow-motion footage shows the right hand grazed Liston’s jaw. Whether it carried enough force to legitimately knock him out remains debated by boxing analysts.

How long did the second Ali-Liston fight last?

Liston went down at 1 minute, 44 seconds of round one. Referee Jersey Joe Walcott stopped the fight at 2:12, though the bout was officially announced as ending at 1:00, which was incorrect.

Why is it called the phantom punch?

Many spectators and ringside reporters did not see the blow land. In the chaos after Liston fell, the press coined the term to capture the strangeness of a knockout that seemed to come from nowhere.

What did Muhammad Ali call the phantom punch?

Ali called it the anchor punch and said it was taught to him by actor Stepin Fetchit, who had supposedly learned it from Jack Johnson.

Was the Ali-Liston rematch fixed?

There is no proof. Sports Illustrated’s frame-by-frame analysis concluded the punch was real, but Liston’s mob ties and reported Nation of Islam threats have kept the fix theory alive for six decades.

Who took the famous phantom punch photo?

Sports Illustrated photographer Neil Leifer captured Ali standing over Liston. The image is among the most reproduced sports photographs in history.

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Sources

1. Wikipedia. “Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston II.” Accessed May 2026.
2. Maule, Tex. “A Quick, Hard Right And A Needless Storm Of Protest.” Sports Illustrated. June 7, 1965.
3. Merchant, Larry. “The Phantom Punch.” The New Yorker. July 6–13, 2015.
4. Snowden, Jonathan. “The Phantom Punch Hits 50: Ali, Liston & Boxing’s Most Controversial Fight Ever.” Bleacher Report. May 24, 2015.
5. Hauser, Thomas. Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. Simon & Schuster, 1991.
6. Tosches, Nick. The Devil and Sonny Liston. Little, Brown, 2000.
7. Collins, Nigel. Boxing Babylon.
8. NPR Code Switch. “Fetch Clay, Make Man: Ali, Fetchit And The ‘Anchor Punch’.” October 11, 2013.
9. PBS Antiques Roadshow. “Ali’s ‘Phantom Punch’ Controversy Explained.” May 24, 2021.
10. Barra, Allen. “Sonny Liston: He Never Knew What Hit Him.” The New York Times. May 21, 2000.

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