Charles L. "Sonny" Liston was born in St. Francis County, Arkansas — the same Delta country Jim Quessenberry grew up in — one of 25 children of a sharecropper. He became the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion in 1962 by destroying Floyd Patterson in the first round, and held the title until his two controversial losses to Cassius Clay in 1964 and 1965.
Jim cited Liston alongside Conway Twitty and Johnny Cash to place his story in the specific culture of the Arkansas Delta — men who came from that same hard, flat country and became something the whole world knew about.