The Greatest Sports Photo Ever Made Turns 60

New York Times

25-05-2025

When Muhammad Ali caught Sonny Liston with a sharp right 1 minute and 44 seconds into their title bout on May 25, 1965, a few things happened in quick succession: Liston hit the mat. Ali hovered over him, shouting, 'Get up and fight, sucker!' And, amid the pop and sparkle of flashbulbs, Neil Leifer, a 22-year-old freelance photographer working for Sports Illustrated, tripped the shutter of his camera. His image of Ali — standing, scowling, swinging his arm above the vanquished Liston — did not make the cover of the magazine. It wasn't even used for the story's opening spread, running instead on the final page, then languishing in a photo editor's file. And yet now, exactly 60 years later, Leifer's picture is considered by many to be the greatest sports photo of all time.
It remains surprising that the image we think of when we think of Muhammad Ali, among the most photographed athletes the world has ever known, was made in a youth-center hockey rink in Lewiston, Maine, in front of fewer than 4,000 fans. It's even more surprising that Leifer's photograph has, over the years, gone from ignored to iconic.
Here, the 82-year-old Leifer, who made his first photo for Sports Illustrated on his 16th birthday, speaks about how the picture took on a life of its own.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Let's go back 60 years to the night of the heavyweight title fight in Lewiston. Some of the biggest magazines of the day sent their superstars to shoot the fight. Why did Neil Leifer, at just 22 years old, get the call?
I was not a beginner at that point. In 1965, I had 15 covers for Sports Illustrated. In those days, a lot of the covers were illustrated, paintings or caricatures, and I probably got one out of every two covers available to photographers. I had also shot the first title fight between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston in Miami [15 months earlier], where we had five photographers, all my heroes — Hy Peskin, Marvin Newman, Ralph Morse, Bob Gomel — shooting, and I got the cover. In Lewiston, we had two precious ringside seats. Herbie Scharfman got one and I got the other.
In your picture, your S.I. colleague Herb Scharfman can be seen between Ali's legs, clearly missing the shot. How was it decided that Scharfman was seated on that side of the ring and you on the other?
It was his choice. He liked to sit in the middle of the ring [next to the judges] because if you're in a seat like where I was, you're shoulder to shoulder with other photographers, and it gets tight. But it made no difference. I've always understood one thing about sports photography: the importance of luck. You've got to get lucky. Lucky was being in the seat that I was in that night. And when you get lucky, you're not supposed to miss. What happened that night was I got very lucky, and I didn't miss.
The A.P. photographer John Rooney, seated to Leifer's left, captured the same moment, but his widely seen black-and-white rectangle isn't nearly as powerful or poetic of an image as Leifer's colorful square.
When Ali and Liston fought for the title in Miami, everyone had assumed Liston was invincible. The oddsmakers favored him 7 to 1. Liston was seen as the sturdy, establishment boxer and Ali, then Cassius Clay, the mouthy, flamboyant upstart. To many, Ali's victory signaled a new era for boxing, for sports, and for the culture. Was that on your mind as you prepared for the rematch?
There was nothing different about this fight to me. It was just another fight. For me, it was a payday. In fact, going in, I thought no one would ever remember it. Ali had beaten Liston so badly in Miami that any fair-minded person knew that Ali should have no trouble in Lewiston.
How did you prep for the fight?
I probably got to Lewiston three days early to work with the electricians who you normally had to bribe. Maybe not bribe, but when you started offering money, you got the help you needed. I had two sets of strobes, maybe 20 feet over the ring, and the electricians have to hang them where you want them and make sure they work.
You used a Rolleiflex medium format camera. How come?
Quality. There's no difference between the quality of my Ali-Liston picture and those of Richard Avedon in the studio. Second, I wanted to get the cover of the magazine and maybe the opening spread, too. How do you decide in a split second whether to shoot vertical or horizontal? One of the great things about shooting with a Rolleiflex: the square frame. You don't have to turn the camera if you're shooting for a spread. You shoot the best picture and if it crops beautifully vertical, you use it as a full page or a cover. If it crops beautifully horizontal, you got a spread
Those whites, blacks and reds really stand out. How did you get that look?
You light it just like you would a portrait in the studio. I think there were three of us with strobe lights. You want the fighters to pop out and you want to accentuate the muscle tone. It's like doing a fashion shoot for Vogue: You pick a spot in the ring where you think, This will be the best place for me to get action, and you light the subject there.
The frame has no visual distractions. It really locks our eyes on the fighters.
Because there was no commercialism. The mat was plain off-white canvas. There was nothing on the trunks. Nothing on the gloves. The background would be different today, with all sorts of crap: commercials for light beer, a hotel.
But it's also the dark background. Tell me about that.
Smoking was allowed, and in those days the crowd was going to be 90 percent men, and a lot of men were smoking cigarettes or cigars. A lot of cigars. The strobe lights filter through the smoke and you get a little bit of a blue haze, as opposed to a jet black, and it made the picture look a little more dramatic.
A lot of people refer to the blow that knocked Liston down as the 'phantom punch' because they didn't see Ali's quick right hand catch Liston and they assumed the fight was fixed. Did you see it?
I'm asked that more than anything else. No, no one expected a two-minute fight, and I was focused on my equipment. But it's important to remember that Liston got up and they started fighting again. All he had to do was stay down one more second and it would have been over. But he got up.
Looking at the picture, you'd think Ali stood over Liston for two or three seconds, but —
Until I saw the video a while later that's exactly what I thought.
But when you watch the video and see Ali swinging his arm, it's a fraction of a fraction of a second. It almost doesn't happen. Why did you hit the shutter at that exact moment?
I'm not being modest: absolute luck. It took three seconds for my strobe lights to recharge, three seconds until I could shoot the next frame. So if Ali had done something more fantastic two seconds later I wouldn't have got that shot.
Knowing that you'd have to wait three seconds before taking your next picture makes your decision to hit the shutter more incredible. Did you see Ali start to swing his arm?
You hope the action will happen at a certain spot. I knew that 10 feet in front of me, in the middle of the ring, was a perfect place. So I do two things, and I do nothing else: focus the camera — in those days, you didn't have autofocus — and be sure to let my strobes recycle. I knew the referee wasn't between me and the fighters. It happened so fast, but I knew that everything was where I'd like for it to happen.
The composition is fantastic. Ali is dead center in the frame. It has both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. And it's the only color photo that exists of this moment. Did you know you'd nailed the shot?
I had no idea. It happened so quick.
Today, your picture is considered by many to be the greatest sports photograph ever made. But when the issue of Sports Illustrated came out, it didn't make the cover.
I thought I had a very good picture, and I was very disappointed it wasn't on the cover. But I really didn't think much more about it and neither did anyone else. The picture didn't win a single award. Zero. Not an honorable mention. At the time, I thought to myself, I was in the right seat and I got the picture. But is this a picture people are going to talk about 60 years later? Not in a million years did I think about that.
Rooney's picture did receive a major award, from the World Press Photo organization.
How did your image go from overlooked to iconic?
This is a young Ali, in the ring, looking as good as he ever looked. And he was a handsome devil. Such a charismatic character, this confident, terrific fighter, this great human being. It's the way people want to remember Ali.
Lewiston was Ali's first fight after changing his name from Cassius Clay. A lot of people didn't like that, and later, of course, he took unpopular stands against the Vietnam War and for civil rights. Those were more radical positions then, but over time they became mainstream. Is this a case of the culture catching up with the picture?
As Ali's reputation and stature grew, the picture grew in importance. He became Muhammad Ali, the iconic figure he is considered today.
When you say he 'became' Muhammad Ali —
That's the only explanation I have, because the picture itself is not special. I love the picture and I'm proud of it, and I thank God I was lucky enough to be in the right seat and that I didn't miss. But I also don't fool myself into thinking it's the greatest sports photo of all time, because I don't believe it is.
Why is that?
If I had taken exactly the same picture in a preliminary fight with a handsome Black fighter — same scowl, same position, lit the same way — no one would have cared. What made the picture special is the subject. The photo's been very good to me, but nothing makes it a great picture. I'm just being honest. My own favorite picture is Ali-Williams because it wasn't about being in the lucky seat. It came from my brain. That's the one I hang in my house, and it will be there as long as I live.
Leifer's magnificent top-down image shows Ali's 1966 fight with Cleveland Williams.
You would go on to shoot 40 covers for Time magazine, and photograph everyone from the pope to Charles Manson. But Ali-Liston is the picture you're known for.
I've taken a lot of good pictures, a whole lot. I took a lot of pictures I think are iconic. But I'm not fooling myself as to what my career would have been like if it weren't for that picture.
Does the fact that this image has taken on new meaning over 60 years change the way you think about the life of a photograph?
I don't think about those kinds of things. It always amuses me that people are so taken by the picture. Strangers come up to me sometimes and don't say a word but whip their arm across their chest. I'm not criticizing anybody for having those feelings. I'm just saying if it had not been Muhammad Ali, you wouldn't feel what you feel when you look at it.