Everyone listened to Muhammad Ali. As decades wore on, people only listened more as Ali said less. But in the beginning, Ali’s mouth helped him win the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston.

When Liston died in late December 1970, or at least after everyone found out he’d been dead several days, the world held its breath for Ali’s response. The soft-spoken man Liston pummeled twice for the title, Floyd Patterson, opened up and gave a quick eulogy to the press:

“Sonny Liston, to me, was a great fighter. I got to know him personally after our two fights and I rather liked him. I just can’t believe he’s gone. In the beginning, Sonny Liston gave the impression of being a mean, tough guy simply because this is the way, I believe, he had to be. No one ever gave him the chance.”

Ali stayed relatively quiet. “It would be disrespectful [to recall their two fights] at a time like this,” he said.

“The Greatest” had even less to say about Liston to Mark Kram years later: “Liston was the Devil.”

Liston was certainly the only devil with a family bible for a makeshift birth certificate. Then again, that bible was lost. Until the day he died, whichever day that was, Liston didn’t know exactly when or exactly where he was born. It was somewhere in Arkansas, in a little old shack. Liston had brothers and sisters, but he didn’t know how many, if they were still alive or even whether a few were older or younger than he was.

Even the L in Charles “Sonny” L. Liston was a mystery, given to him by a nameless midwife.

Liston’s sullen and often emotionless outward appearance only amplified the idea that he was nothing more than a puzzle. Anyhow, it was better to be perceived as a conundrum than some kind of subhuman.

Before Liston, the heavyweight championship itself seemed to grant its carriers a measure of honor and respect. The heavyweight title turned hobos into heroes, after all. A Black ex-con such as Liston was beyond the magic of the title, however.

“Liston is a baleful bully, a sinister creature, full of hatred for the world,” claimed hall of fame writer Dan Parker of Liston, the champion. Parker named Liston “the least admirable of John L. Sullivan’s successors.”

It’s worth asking what it was about Liston that made him immune to character rehabilitation, unworthy of more chances. It couldn’t have only been his criminal past. Rocky Marciano spent time in military jail for assault, for example, and several previous heavyweight champs had been charged with breaking anti-boxing laws.

The bullying alone wasn’t it, either. Liston was known to dispatch sparring partners with extreme prejudice in training camp, but so did Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis and others. Ali later taunted sparring partners relentlessly.

Lastly, in a sport that doubled as an open sin racket, underworld ties are off the table.

So what was it about Liston that puts him beyond the reach of history’s kindness? The only thing remaining is how Liston made his untimely exit.

Liston’s wife, Geraldine, went home to visit her mother in St. Louis right after Christmas in 1970. At some point between then and Jan. 5, 1971, Liston died in their bedroom in Las Vegas. Various theories as to what happened during that time are fair game.

Geraldine arrived home to find Liston’s body, but left for a friend’s house and had to wait a few hours before doctors and police could process the scene and what was left of the former champion. There was heroin in the kitchen, cannabis in Liston’s pocket and a glass of vodka on the nightstand. On the dresser was loose change, some knicknacks and a loaded pistol. Old newspapers lay at the front door and the television was still on.

The situation was further complicated by an ambiguous autopsy report noting extensive scarring from old injuries and Liston’s complaints about pain ever since a car accident a month earlier.

Law enforcement reports later suggested Liston was somehow tied to local drug trade at worst, and was a recreational user of heavy drugs at best. Family and friends insisted Liston could never be involved with such things, though other associates thought the former champion was distant and potentially depressed since his accident.

Old anecdotes swirled about Liston being afraid of needles, but none was found and there wasn’t enough heroin in his system to be considered fatal anyway. If there was any truth to be found, it was completely obscured by the conflicting motives of those closest to Liston and law enforcement. The best anyone could do to determine what day he died was count up the old newspapers on the porch, which some believed were planted after his death.

From a wooden shack with no ceiling on an Arkansas plantation, to the bench at the foot of his bed in Las Vegas, shrouded in secrets the whole way. Liston wasn’t a monster. A monster would at least have an origin story, an explanation. Maybe that’s what never sat right with people. Liston wasn’t their champion, and for them, he never had a reason for being.

There was simply no other way for him to die. Or, rather, to have been discovered. It was the only fitting end for such a character, and fairness had nothing to do with it.

After Liston destroyed Patterson in 1962, the new champion found himself overwhelmed and cornered a Chicago drugstore by a horde of reporters. He’d already had to defend himself against a drunken Normal Mailer and the frightening, hulking figure ran away. That’s when all-time great Barney Ross saw Liston and handed him a gift, and Liston suddenly found courage.

As it turned out, Liston thrived when treated like a real live human.

By the mid-1990s, it was far too late to see or hear the old Muhammad Ali, but people still listened. Years of hindsight gifted Ali much-needed wisdom and kindness. This time he said of Liston, “I wish I could tell him I was only jivin’. DIdn’t mean half of it. Sonny Liston was the greatest — till I came along.”

If only those words could have made it to Liston’s mysterious ears earlier. Perhaps then he might have known he was champion, and human, and meant for this world.