What do you think of Floyd Patterson? What was he all about? Where does he rank all time as a Heavyweight?
Great fighter not necessarily a great heavyweight. Mainly because of the Cruiserweight division came a bit after his era. I'm sure Floyd, Jimmy Ellis, I know Jerry Quarry wished that division existed when they were fighting, along with quite a few of their contemporaries'. Stil HOF worthy and a great man outside the ring as well.
He is what I call a third-tier great. First tier is Ali, Louis level. Quality and quantify of goods fights and defenses. Second is guys like Foreman or Frazier, that never quite did have the long, gaudy reign, but no one debates their ability or high end wins. Or conversely, like Wladdy, they had the long run but lack of impressive wins. Third tier is guys like Patterson, Bowe, VitKlit, Norton, Walcott, Schmeling...that just had very problematic careers but still did enough to have a place in history. Patterson was the youngest champ at the time, the first two-time champ, and finished with some very good wins including Moore, Johanson, Jackson, and eventually, Machen. But his reign, maybe through not fault of his own, was disgraceful, with Machen and Foley, both #1 contenders, being passed over. Cleveland Williams was another name that might have given him a great run, although I don't think he ever had the pole position in the ratings. Instead, he fought the guys like McNeely and Rademacher. Part of the problem is that he was really a LHW, and didn't have a great chin at that weight, and he always seemed to be getting off the canvas, even against Rademacher, who was making his pro debut. The two devastating losses to Liston, who fought all the guys that he didn't really put things into perspective. No doubt, he has his place a great, but a minor one.
Good point on him being a real gentlemen. When Ali beat Liston, he sought out Liston to cheer him up.
Title reign could have been better but he was a very skilled fighter who was cheated out of being the 1st 3 time heavyweight champion. The guys he beat later on were as a group better than who he beat as champion.
That’s an interesting point on Cruiserweight. I was watching the Schmelling vs Baer fight and it was advertised as Light-Heavyweight, while they were well over the 175 lbs limit. Like around190 ish. Then you have a guy like Floyd Patterson and he was 182 lbs in the first Johansson fight. Makes me think was 175 - 200 lbs sort of a no man’s land so they would sanction it either LHW or HW? Even the name Cruiserweight suggests something like that to me. Like a place where you can just cruise and hangout if you can’t really be bothered to bulk up or boil down to fight into HW or LHW.
