Ali-Sonny Go To Maine

May 7, 1965 - The Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston heavyweight title fight was transferred today from Boston to Lewiston, Maine and scheduled for the same date, May 25.

The shift was announced after two days of litigation in Suffolk County (Mass.) Superior Court, where D.A. Garrett Byrne had sought an injunction to block the fight in Boston.

Byrne charged that Inter-Continental Promotions, Inc., of Chester, Pa., was promoting the fight without a Massachusetts license. Inter-Continental said the bout was being promoted by Sam Silverman, a licensed promoter in Boston.

In announcing the shift, Governor John Reed of Maine said Maine’s attorney general, Richard Dubord, had “assured me that he anticipated no legal problems” in Lewiston, a manufacturing city 140 miles north of Boston.

The fight will be staged in Lewiston’s Youth Center, which can seat about 6,000. The promoters had not counted on a large ringside gate anyway — the fight had originally been planned for the Boston Garden, which seats only 13,909.

The biggest portion of the estimated $4 million gate is expected to come from closed-circuit television showings in theaters across the country.

Ali, whose emergency hernia operation forced postponement of the bout from the originally scheduled Nov. 16 Boston date, put his unruffled reaction to the switch into rhyme.

“When Liston leaves Maine, he’ll be in pain.”“I don’t care if they stage the fight in a telephone booth,” Ali said from his training camp in Chicopee, Mass. 

“There’s no sense in moving from where we are now,” said Ali’s manager, Angelo Dundee. “The champion likes this place, and we intend to stay right here and complete our training.”

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