Sonny Liston in a kilt, 1963

[HighPlainsFergus]

My friend Vivien from Edinburgh shared this with me.



From the newspaper article:

"World heavyweight champ Sonny Liston drew a huge crowd of followers in Glasgow in 1963 when he donned full Highland rig, before an exhibition bout at Paisley Ice Rink. The gigantic kilt had been borrowed from a retired drum major.

Ahead of the bout, Liston made himself at home, drinking in city bars, visiting a local distillery, and even trying his hand at playing the pipes (stick to the boxing, big man!).

We see him here, striding past Central Station, in Gordon Street.

Glasgow, in turn, took the boxer to its heart. At the height of the civil rights battle in his native America, Liston said: “I am warm here, because I am among warm people and I feel that and react to it. When I return to the United States I will be cold again, for the people there are cold to me now and have treated me badly in the past.”

Whisper it, but Liston could trace his roots back to slavery and to a Scottish farmer Martin Liston who owned slaves in Choctaw County, Mississippi.

On his return to the States, Liston even inquired about taking Scottish citizenship, although no such thing existed."