The Big Bear Plays With A Cub

"Get in there and hit that big ape," snarled Herman.

Before it was over Richard was crying and Herman was storming, and the confused Henry was trying to decide if he should fight or run. Meanwhile he was taking a fearful beating. Before Referee Carter stopped it, Herman had already decided he wasn't going back into the corner.

"I'd had it with that Richard," said Herman, trying hard to swallow a lighted cigar. "I must have been nuts to let him in there in the first place."

"You can't let no relatives in the ring." said Enock Yip, the third man in Clark's corner. "Especially brothers. They are almost as bad as those damn fathers."

Momentarily drained of violence, Liston came away from the ring smiling and shaking the many hands thrust at him from the crowd. Later he sat in his dressing room, still smiling and pretending that the people who were there weren't the same ones who were calling him a bum and a fixer not too long before. "I guess I'm just glad they are all back," he said. "Or that I'm back, I mean."

Not even the idiot newsman who popped in to ask Liston his age could shake the feeling of benevolence. "I'm 36," said Liston in a hard voice. Then he laughed. "Or is it 39? Or 32?"

"Aged wine always tastes the best, huh, Sonny?" said another, brightly.

"Ah, yeah." said Liston. "How about this one: you're only as old as you feel. How do you like that one?"

One reporter nodded and wrote it in his notebook.

"Well, I guess now I'd like to go out and straighten out this heavyweight championship," Liston said. "One at a time—Joe Frazier and Jimmy Ellis. Clark, he was the California champ, so I guess that makes me the champ here now. Maybe I got to do it state by state. I only got 49 to go. It might take awhile, but then it might take Frazier and Ellis awhile to let me in with them."