Becoming heavyweight champion, while no small accomplishment, is one thing. Keeping the title, defending it and standing above the heap consistently is something else entirely. Only Tommy Burns and Joe Louis made it into the double digits of heavyweights title defenses, and both were accused of facing multiple subpar opponents in doing so.

It must be said that heavyweight champions are under tremendous pressure from all angles, and the pressure only increases when fighting in the wake of a great heavyweight champ who retired.

After Rocky Marciano announced his retirement in 1956, the mad scramble for the throne left the title in the hands of Floyd Patterson, and ultimately Patterson’s infamously overprotective trainer and manager Cus D’Amato. What followed was a widely-criticized string of challengers as D’Amato guided his fighter around dangerous and heavy-punching fighters who deserved a title shot.

When Sonny Liston destroyed Patterson in 1962, most saw it as a champion living on borrowed time finally getting got. Then Liston made one defense, and Ali waltzed over to steal the throne. Ali was loud, confident to an aggravating degree, and for white America, somehow worse than the brooding Black ex-con they hadn’t finished trashing before Ali took his place.

The current era of consumer gluttony would have loved 1960s-era Ali. Everything the heavyweight star said and did provoked a media reaction, and public scrutiny couldn’t be higher. Writers pondered the new heavyweight champion’s allegiance, particularly after he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Cassius X and ultimately Muhammad Ali. His contract with the Louisville Sponsoring Group, a network of local Kentucky businessmen who joined forces to mastermind Ali’s early career, would end a few fights into his reign and most assumed he would then sign everything over to the Nation of Islam.

Ali’s first few title defenses were a mixture of addressing unfinished business and doing what he could with bad options. The short and controversial rematch with Liston and a subsequent battering of Patterson for the ex-champ’s perceived insolence qualified for the former, while facing tough puncher George Chuvalo on about two weeks' notice was the latter. After that, Ali gave old foe Henry Cooper a crack at the title in a nod to Cooper’s left hook that put Ali on the deck a few years earlier.

Immediately following the rematch with Cooper in London, Ali floated several next fight options to boxing media in attendance. The only one laughed off was the idea of the heavyweight champion returning to London to face Mr. London courtesy of Mr. Boxing. Or former British champion Brian London on a card promoted by London, England’s premier fight-pusher Jack Solomons, aka “Mr. Boxing.”

Anyone with a functioning memory immediately recalled Patterson’s low level title defenses from almost a decade earlier, which included one against London. Patterson dominated London before stopping him in 11 rounds, and the Brit entered that 1959 fight with four losses on his record. In the seven years since that fight, London picked up nine losses and only got older.

Behind the scenes, London was actually among the front-runners to be Ali’s opponent after Cooper. The champion’s refusal to be drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War came with political consequences, which were somewhat alleviated by fighting abroad. The match may have been made sooner had London defeated Thad Spencer as intended, but London lost and was subsequently handed a disqualification win over aging fringe contender Amos Johnson to line up the Ali fight for August 6, 1966, 60 years ago today.

In the two years since Ali won the title, ex-champions like Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis and Gene Tunney were summoned forth to downgrade the current champion. Not only was his braggadocio unbecoming of a heavyweight champion, they said, but the way Ali predicted the rounds in which his fights would end and with the nonstop controversy were ruining the gambling always attached to heavyweight title bouts.

Going back decades before Ali, the money generated by fights came from ticket sales and ringside betting. Once radio and video broadcasts entered the equation, boxing was forced to adjust. Ali’s ability to get attention and generate money through controversy once more put the sport on its heels, and as far as the establishment was concerned, the worst thing Ali could then do was grant that kind of power to the Nation of Islam.

Few gave London much hope against Ali. Odds for the fight, if bettors could find them, ranged from 10/1 for Ali to about 15/1, and still 11,000 fans showed up to Earls Court in London to see what Ali could do with this version of an old challenger.

Nat Fleischer, founder and editor of The Ring, wrote:

Ali easily had his way with London, who had no advantage in the ring, tangible or otherwise. The champion easily danced around the slow-footed London, jabbing and circling, before stinging him with a right hand in Round 2. After Ali’s cornerman Angelo Dundee instructed his charge to end the bout, Ali marched forth and dispatched his prey with a 12-punch combination punctuated by two smacking right hands that sent London sprawling under the bottom ring rope for the count. It was a light knockout, booed by the London crowd.

The fight was a formality. Writers were surprised by Ali’s power, and simultaneously disappointed by London’s lack of toughness and inability to do anything on offense. The London Observer’s Hugh McIlvanney called the bout “a farce,” the Sunday People “a disaster.” In The Ring, Fleischer derisively said the fight was “a hoax,” not in the traditional sense, but in that it wasn’t really a fight in the first place.

After the fight, with his commitment to the Louisville Sponsoring Group fulfilled, Ali turned his career over to Herbert Muhammad, son of the Nation of Islam’s leader Elijah Muhammad. The move altered the direction of Ali’s career and made him an even bigger public enemy, overshadowing that his payday of about $250,000 for the London fight coupled with London’s $100,000 take almost certainly put Solomons in the red as a promoter.

A dejected London refused to retire after being booed from the ring for the first time in his career, though there were no upper level wins in his future. The photo of London’s face warping while absorbing a right hand from Ali eventually joined the pantheon of iconic Ali photos, gruesomely writing London’s name in the stars.

According to Fleischer, the outcome of the fight and the gate “gave [Ali] a false impression of his value as an attraction.” It wasn’t the first nor last time Ali was doubted and underestimated. Actually, Ali made a career of overcoming doubt while traversing life’s highest peaks. Each time he stumbled, he somehow only became greater. It wasn’t until years later that Ali became the great champion leaving behind a heavyweight mess, and only then did everyone understand how he increased the worth of the heavyweight title.