Were the criticisms of D'Amato during Patterson's reign justified?

What nobody says, or wants to say, is that Pete Rademacher was a decent fighter. He had a good jab, good overall technique and ring generalship. But when you start your pro career by fighting the champion and a highly rated challenger in your first two fights, you're going to be behind the eight ball. Rademacher was always treated like a joke, but he wasn't a joke.

 

Would you feel safe on the other side going against Fat Tony Salerno and his crew?

 

An amateur fighting for the biggest prize in all of sport without a single pro fight IS a joke.

It’s not whether Pete could throw a jab properly, it’s that he wasn’t even a pro fighter when he stepped into the ring to fight for the world title.

It’s like inviting a high school team to play in the World Series or a good intramural team to play in the Super Bowl.

It was a mockery of the sport.

As for McNeely, nobody has a problem with Floyd taking a tuneup, but it should be against a real contender. It doesn’t have to be the top contender, but it should be someone deserving of a shot.

 

I'm old enough to remember (vaguely) that there was a lot of interest in Patterson vs. Rademacher, more interest than for many, many heavyweight title fights. Maybe it was because of the novelty. All I can say in retort is that amateurs often do compete with professionals in other sports, for example golf. However, I realize that's a weak argument. Floyd was 22 when they fought. Rademacher was older and very experienced in the amateur ranks, and among them he was the best. And he did well for two rounds. Later, after a handful of pro fights he was good enough to defeat George Chuvalo over ten rounds. Rademacher was actually a pretty tough guy.

 

Sure, he was tough. Put together a nice journeyman career.

But he was in no way whatsoever a qualified world championship challenger.

 

Byrd yes, but not Ruiz. Ruiz wasn't even the WBA mandatory at the time that Lewis defeated Holyfield. Henry Akinwande was. He beat Holyfield in November 1999 and by January Akinwande was still medically unfit to fight, so Lennox signed to fight Grant. WBA then instated Ruiz as the mandatory, allowing Lewis to fight Grant and giving him 180 days to face Ruiz. Don King however challenged the decision in court and won, so WBA was forced to strip Lewis. It's not that Lewis didn't want to fight him (he was aiming to do it next instead of facing Botha), it was Don King who didn't want Ruiz to face him. Ruiz, who was nowhere close HW Top 10 at the time and was best known for getting sparked out in 20 seconds by David Tua, while Grant was universally recognized number 1 contender. No similarity there. If he faced Ruiz instead Grant that would be similar. Byrd on the other hand, was the number 2 contender in the world (behind Wlad) at the time and Lewis just vacated the belt looking for the rematch with Tyson.

 

You're right, Saintpat, Rademacher wasn't qualified for a title shot. But it was a smart move by Cus. It made a lot of money for his fighter while the contest posed little risk -- although if Pete had won it would've been a great humiliation for Patterson. The fight generated its share of criticism from boxing writers but the public took an interest and here we are 68 years later still arguing about it. I'd say it was a successful promotion.

 

Yes it was, exactly a 3 week gap between the Jackson and Rademacher fights.