The Pecan Park Eagle

Sam Houston Coliseum, April 25, 1960: Roy Harris makes a brief upright appearance in the ring with Sonny Liston.

Sam Houston Coliseum, April 25, 1960: Roy Harris makes a brief upright appearance in the ring with Sonny Liston.

April 25, 1960 seems like yesterday. The old Pecan Park Eagle had his little world by the tail back then. He had an intelligent, beautiful, funny, and talented musician for a girl friend and he was now just a short hop away from graduation at UH with a degree in psychology that strung minors in sociology and radio/tv communications behind it like a kite tail. Prospects for a mental health scholarship to graduate school were good and there were still places around MacGregor  Park to play some pick up baseball and tennis when one could steal the time.

Stealing time was the key. We didn’t have a big “sign-up-for-life” national student loan program for us dollar-challenged students back in the day. We either went to school slower, or we worked ourselves faster. Work was my choice and, because I had taken on the presidency of my college fraternity as a junior, I was now behind in the hours I needed for graduation. My response was to take a full-time, 40-hours per week job at Rockwell Manufacturing Co. while taking 15 semester hours at night and on Saturdays in the fall and spring of my senior year. I was handling the load OK, but I would still need 12 additional semester hours over the summer to get my degree in August 1960.

It was do-able. You just had to commit to being an automaton for the short time it would take to accomplish these goals. Still, every now and then, one had to break out and do stuff that freed the spirit. And, as it turns out, April 25. 1960. ended up feeling like one of those spirit-freedom nights. As a boxing fan from our early TV days, and as an amateur participant in some of the little backyard boxing matches we staged back in our Pecan Park sandlot days, I was very excited about the big heavyweight match that was set to go from the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston that night. So was my fraternity brother roommate, Irish Bob Murphy, a redheaded kid from rural Minnesota and an accounting major at UH. Bob worked and went to school like me too. Heavyweight Roy Harris of Cut and Shoot, Texas was going up against the brute force of Sonny Liston from Philadelphia in a 15 rounder. We just had to see it. Or so we thought.

The fight was set for 8:00 PM, I think. Bob and I decided to skip everything we were supposed to be doing that night and get ourselves downtown from the UH area by fight time. Trouble was – we made the pick awfully late. We also knew we could not afford the scalp it would take to get into the live fight at the Coliseum, but we felt we could handle the $5.00 tab to watch the fight on closed circuit TV from the City Auditorium. It was a race against time and the speed limits to get there.

After missing all the preliminary matches, we stood in line for tickets at fight time. “Has it started?” We asked. “It’s just about to start!” The ticket man answered.

Oh, well, so what if we miss the first round, we chattered, as we scurried down the long entry to the viewing area. There’s more to a fight than the first round.

Not so this night.

By the time we came into view of the screen, there was Roy Harris, laying flat on the floor. And there was the referee, raising Sonny Liston’s arm in victory.

“In 2 minutes and 45 seconds …. the winner by a TKO ….. SONNY LISTON!

Bob and I slowed to a strolling pace. – No need to even find a seat. – We had each paid five dollars to see a televised picture of the unconscious Roy Harris and a rarely smiling mean man named Sonny Liston.

Then we grabbed a beer on the way back to the house and found a way to laugh off our impetuosity. Even if we missed the fight, the struggle to get there was a lot more fun than what we would have been having with the books as per usual.

Here’s how the Associated Press reported the fight the next day in the Galveston Tribune:

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My ‘Easiest Fight’ Says Liston of Harris Affair

Houston, Tex (AP) – Sonny Liston started with a left and ended with a right and had Roy Harris on the floor four times. It took the big Phi;Philadelphia heavyweight just 2:35 of the first round yo score a technical knockout of the Cut and Shoot schoolteacher before a record Texas crowd and closed circuit TV fans in 10 other cities.

Harris just barely had time to get in three left jabs before he was in trouble.

A left hook was the damaging blow. Harris took an eight-count under the ropes. More of a push than a punch brought another eight count. Then Harris slipped and fell to the canvas and Liston was ready for the kill.

Liston cut loose with a right that caught Harris squarely on the chin.

Referee Jimmy Webb did not take time to start counting. He just raised Liston’s hand.

“It was my easiest fight,” the Philadelphia Negro said after extending his record to 20-1 and recording his 20th knockout.

“He’s a better puncher than Patterson,” said Harris in taking his second defeat of his 30 pro fights.

In 1958 Harris lost a 12th round TKO in a Los Angeles title fight to former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson.

Harris said he was surprised when Webb stopped the fight.

“But I wasn’t doing anything but getting up and down,” he said as an afterthought.

Both fighters agreed the left hook set up the quick ending.

“Patterson never hit like that,” Harris said.

The Coliseum gate of $70,200 was a Texas record. Liston and Harris each drew about $17,500, plus a cut from income from the closed TV circuit.

… Associated Press, Galveston Tribune, April 26, 1960, Page 7.

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If you want to see the fight, you will see more here at this link than Bob Murphy and I did back on April 25, 1960. It’s only 2 minutes and 25 seconds long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYA4qt-LBmA