Who beat Jose Torres in 1956? Genadiy Schatkov, URS Actually, I think Hayes "Ed' Sanders beat Ingemar Johansson in 1952, so he beat him to the punch.
It was Laszlo Papp who defeated Torres (in the final!) in '56. The man we're looking for was before Sanders.
Yes he was... and for that he was refused his silver medal. For years it was debated, whether this was really fair... and some 30 years later he was finally given his medal.
Papp himself wrote an article which discussed his watching of Sanders-Ingo years earlier, and clearly remembered it as being, "Sanders, all the way," regardless of whatever tactics Johansson was allowed to use. Big Ed was a lock to win Gold. (Papp's superb article was penned prior to the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and was primarily an assessment of Stevenson's chances to match Papp's own Gold Medal three-peat.) He was then a coach for the Hungarian team. He did not express an opinion one way or the other about why Sanders-Johansson was stopped, or whether or not Ingo deserved a second place medal, only that Sanders was a guaranteed first place winner.
No, hh... we have to go even further back than that. And also further back than 1932. Hint: The man we are talking about, would go on to become a world champ himself.
Waldemar Holberg lost to Matt Wells in 1908. I didn't know that you wanted to know the 1st future Champion to lose.
I didn't! As the question states, I wanted to know, who was the first man to BEAT a future champ in the Olympics... and the answer, as you correctly found out, is Matt Wells.