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Photo / Jim Neuger
A 10-foot high bronze statue of Muhammad Ali outside Bates Mill No. 5. in Lewiston. The statue, by Philadelphia-based artist Zenos Frudakis, commemorates Ali’s first-round knockout of Sonny Liston at what was then the Central Maine Youth Center in Lewiston on May 25, 1965. It was unveiled on May 31, 2025. Photo taken on June 3.
Lewiston's Muhammad Ali statue, unveiled recently in front of Bates Mill No. 5, commemorates a famous rematch of two heavyweights, Ali and Sonny Liston, in May 1965.
But it took two local heavyweights to bring the statue project to life.
Tom Platz, an Auburn developer, and artist Charlie Hewitt (known for the "Hopeful" neon artwork at the mill) worked for 10 years to bring the Muhammad Ali statue to Lewiston. Hewitt, who splits time between Maine and New York, had made a film about the fight.
"This goes back 10 years. Tom and I talked about," Hewitt told Mainebiz. "We said, 'we ought to memorialize this with a monument, a sculpture of Ali.'"
"About five years ago, we went at it full blast," Platz said.
Platz worked with the city, helped with the site plan and, after setting up a nonprofit, spearheaded the fundraising efforts through private donations. The statue is on permanent loan to the city.
At the unveiling of the statue, Hewitt said people came up to him and shared their personal connections to the event — "My grandfather went to that fight" or "I listened to that fight on the radio," he recalled.
For Lewiston, "it's a wire in the blood," Hewitt said.
The installation of the statue comes a year and a half after the Lewiston mass shooting that killed 18 people.
“When Ali stood over Sonny Liston yelling ‘Get up and fight,’ he wasn’t just talking to his opponent,” Gov. Janet Mills said at the unveiling. “He was speaking to all of us. And that’s what Maine and Lewiston have done — we get up and fight. We'll never get knocked out. We'll never get knocked down. We're still getting up and fighting every day. This is a city that is strong, loud and proud in a state that is strong, loud and proud.”
The Ali-Liston rematch on May 25, 1965, is one of the iconic events in boxing history, a decade before the Rumble in the Jungle (Ali vs. George Foreman) or the Thrilla in Manila (Ali and Joe Frazier).
The original bout was slated for Boston but was cancelled because of security threats.
A boxing manager in Lewiston, Sam Michael, reached out to the promoters and offered to host the boxing match in Lewiston, at the Central Maine Youth Center (now the Colisée).
With the date set in stone because of pay-per-view television commitments, Michael and the city of Lewiston had just 17 days to turn a youth center into a boxing venue, and prepare the necessary hotel arrangements, security and other logistics.
Ali trained in Auburn, while Liston trained in Poland Spring.
"The town was afire with this," said Platz, who was a seventh grader in Auburn at the time and went to the fight with his dad.
Locals flocked to the event, along with celebrities including Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and Elizabeth Taylor.
In the end, it was over in one minute and 44 seconds — with an Ali knockout.
Once the idea for the sculpture started to move forward and the city was on board, Platz led a fundraising effort (the cost of the sculpture was not disclosed), while Hewitt set out to find a sculptor who could take on a statue of 10 feet.
His quest led him to a Philadelphia sculptor, Zenos Frudakis, who has done sculptures of Ben Franklin, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Einstein, as well as sports figures including Arnold Palmer, Payne Stewart, Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton and boxer James J. "Cinderella Man" Braddock.
"The sports sculptor is Zenos," Hewitt said. "I called and he came up the next day to Jersey City," where Hewitt has a studio.
"He said he'd always wanted to do Ali," Hewitt added.
Lewiston is considered to have the first U.S. statue of Ali of this scope. Another Ali statue, by Andrew Edwards, was erected in Liverpool, England, in 2016, six months after Ali's death.
From the time Hewitt reached out until the statue was installed in Lewiston was three-year project.
The sculptor went to work. Frudakis researched Ali, sought out his training sites and studied dozens of photos of the legendary boxer. He worked and reworked the clay to get the Ali's likeness just right.
"There's a secret formula for the clay — the clay itself — and the tools," Frudakis told Mainebiz.
Getting the pose right was critical. Frudakis shied away from the famous Ali image portrayed by photographer Neil Leifer — from the Lewiston fight, with Ali standing over a knocked out Liston with his arm cocked, yelling at his opponent.
Frudakis went with a light-footed, more nimble pose — a boxer ready for whatever is thrown his way. Hewitt called it a "don't f--- with me" pose that conveys Ali's legendary confidence.
The sculptor said he was proud to do a work for a city that had taken its own knocks. He said the Ali statue gives the city "a human face."
"Like with boxing, the worst thing is not getting back up," he said. "This is the city getting back up."
Amid the work, the city was fast approaching a key milestone — the 60th anniversary of the Ali-Liston fight in Lewiston, which would be May 25. That particular weekend coincided with the Bates College graduation, so the city settled on an unveiling slated for May 31.
After being cast in bronze at a foundry in Chester, Pa., the finished sculpture was trucked to Lewiston. With help from a crane from Cote Crane & Rigging, last week it was lowered onto its pedestal, which is at 10 Mill St. in front of Hewitt's "Hopeful" neon sign.
The sculpture was dedicated on May 31 with Gov. Janet Mills, Mayor Carl Sheline, Hewitt, Platz and Frudakis.
Also on hand was a third-generation Somali-American Ilyas Bashir, a Portland Boxing Club fighter, amateur Golden Gloves champion and 2025 Bates College graduate.
“Muhammad Ali carried weight in our family — not just because he was a boxing legend, but because he was Black, Muslim and unapologetically himself,” Bashir said at the event. “He showed us what greatness could look like."
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