Floyd Patterson, heavyweight pioneer and enigma, dies aged 71
May 13, 2006
The two-time champ seemed ill suited to boxing's brutality, writes Mike Kupper.
FLOYD Patterson, a heavyweight boxing champion with a heavyweight inferiority complex, died on Thursday at his home in New Paltz, New York. He was 71.
Patterson had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for about eight years and had prostate cancer, his nephew, Sherman Patterson, told the Associated Press.
Fighting out of a defensive crouch from behind his gloves - it came to be known as Patterson's peekaboo style - Patterson was a devastating puncher in some fights, a human punching bag in others, and almost always a mystery as a boxer.
The first man to regain the heavyweight title when he knocked out Ingemar Johansson of Sweden in 1960, Patterson was hailed as a boxing superstar. Two years later, after he had been knocked out in the first round by Sonny Liston, he was voted "flop of the year". The late Jim Murray wrote in The Times: "An intense, gentle, tormented young man, perpetually sad, perpetually bedevilled by nameless anxieties, Floyd Patterson is pathetically miscast as a pugilist."
New York columnist Red Smith characterised him as "a man of peace whose life has been devoted to beating men with his fists".
After knocking out Johansson in 1960, Patterson confessed that he didn't like what that fight had done to him. "I was so filled with hate," he said. "I wouldn't ever want to be like that again."
And yet, he took his failures in the ring hard. After the first-round knockout by Liston at Comiskey Park in Chicago, a shamed Patterson sneaked out of the ballpark - in fact, clear out of town - wearing dark glasses and a false beard. Had he not been arrested for speeding two states away, the disguise probably would have worked.
Patterson, who later fought, and was beaten by, the best heavyweights of his day - Liston and Muhammad Ali - knocked out an ageing Archie Moore, the light-heavyweight champion for the vacant heavyweight title in 1956, at 21 becoming the youngest heavyweight champion.
Had it not been for Johansson, though, Patterson's career, and championship, might have passed with little notice. After winning the title, he defended it successfully, knocking out light-hitting Tommy "Hurricane" Jackson and Olympic heavyweight champion Pete Rademacher, then stopping journeyman Roy Harris.
Johansson, who was accompanied almost everywhere he went by an entourage that included his fiancee, Birgit Lundgren, was ridiculed by some for what appeared to be lax training practices and was called a coward by others for having backed out of an Olympic championship bout several years earlier.
Even so, the unbeaten European champion loomed as Patterson's first big test when they fought in 1959 at Yankee Stadium in New York.
As it turned out, Johansson was far too big a test. After two rounds of sparring, the Swede clocked Patterson in the third with a left to the head and a right to the jaw, dropping him for a nine count. Six more times in the round, the
relentless Johansson floored Patterson. There were still 58 seconds left when the fight was stopped.
A year later, this time at the Polo Grounds in New York, a newly dedicated Patterson showed up. He took charge immediately, escaped potential trouble in the second, then gave Johansson a fearful beating in the fifth.
After working on the Swede's closing left eye, and connecting with body blows as well, Patterson floored him with a left hook, a groggy Johansson taking a nine count.
Punching at will, Patterson unleashed a thunderous left hook that ended Johansson's heavyweight reign six days short of a year. The punch knocked Johansson flat on his back, where he lay, out cold, one foot spasmodically twitching.
"He lay there, kicking," Patterson said. "I didn't figure then that he was gonna get up."
Los Angeles Times
