rural Arkansas to a family of sharecroppers - the 24th of 25 children - but birth certificates were not a legal requirement at the time and so Liston did not have one. It is believed he was about 40 when he died, but some have suggested he may have been closer to 50.

As a child he was beaten at home and he struggled at school. "We hardly had enough food to keep from starving, no shoes, only a few clothes, and nobody to help us escape from the horrible life we lived," he would later say. "We grew up like heathens."

The young Liston was teased relentlessly because he was unable to read or write and, when his family upped sticks and moved from Arkansas to St Louis, heabandoned education and turned to crime. "The police were forever chasing him," says Steen. "Apparently they had his photograph stapled to the inside of the visor in their cars. He was in trouble with the police quite a bit."

In one early incident, he made his disdain for the police clear while demonstrating his remarkable strength. "He started a fight with a cop, beat the cop senseless, snatched his gun, picked him up and dumped him in an alley," recounts Jonathan Aig in Muhammad Ali: A Life. "[He] then walked away smiling, wearing the cop's hat."

His first serious conviction was for armed robbery when he was about 22. He was sent to Missouri State Penitentiary where his natural athleticism and talent for fighting were soon spotted by Father Alois