Do you consider Floyd Patterson a devastating puncher/puncher?

He definitely was. Like Tyson if Patterson got his preferred range he could knock anybody's head off. That said Patterson was a very emotional guy and could sometimes cave to pressure before even stepping into the ring, which happened twice against Liston and in some of his other fights.

Here is a Patterson interview going into the Liston rematch in 1963.

There was a picture in the paper the other day of heavyweight champion Sonny Liston mowing the lawn outside his Denver home. Commenting on the photo, Floyd Patterson said: "I hope he doesn't get his hand caught in that mover like that ball player did."

It was an idle remark, but it reflects the former heavyweight title-holder's impatience to have their 3-times-postponed return bout over with. Floyd begins working out again Thursday. By Saturday he hopes to be boxing in a resumption of training that will end with their meeting at Las Vegas July 22.

Yet along with the impatience there isn't the same sense of urgency that devoured Floyd the only one ever to regain it that somehow his adversary isn't the man in the ring with him but his own embittered anticipation of how the world will accept him.

As a youngster he felt he had to prove he had stamina. As a contender he had to prove he was a puncher. As the ex-champion kayoed by Ingemar Johansson he had to prove he wouldn't be glove-shy against the first man to park one on his chin for keeps.

Tired

"I'm just getting tired of having to prove myself," Floyd said.

"Let's face it, the way people talk about me and write about me, I started out as a bum, I've been a bum and when I hang them up they'll be glad the bum is out. People will see me one way no matter what happens."

We were sitting together around a kitchen table here at Patterson's secluded training camp as Floyd gently rubbed vaseline around a knuckle of his right hand on which minor surgery had been performed a few weeks ago.

I asked Patterson if the emotional aftermath of his period between fights has been as difficult for him as the one after the time he had lost his title to Johansson. Then Floyd had remained in seclucsion for weeks, seeing nobody, trying to understand how the lights went out on him. This time of regret and retreat has been shorter. "Not half as bad," Floyd said.

It took many months before Patterson would consent to look at the films of the Swede punching him into oblivion. He has already looked at the movies of the Liston defeat three times.

"I wasn't doing enough." he said. "Maybe he wasn't giving me a chance to do enough. He was throwing too many punches. He threw a lot more than I did and he disregarded mine. He just wanted to throw his. I though I was doing all right until I got hit. I'll try to do the same thing and not get hit the next time."

The way Patterson sees it now he was hit with an uppercut as he was coming down in a vertical bob. "I usually go side to side," he said. "This time I was going up and down. He threw a jab that missed, and moving down I went straight into the uppercut."

So many of those who saw the fight still claim they did not see the punch which was the beginning of the end for the champion.

Terribly Groggy

"Anybody who knew anything about fighting would have known it was a good punch," Floyd said.

"It left me groggy, terribly groggy."

Sitting there in the kitchen so far removed in space and time from last September, Patterson disclosed for the first time that he regained his feet in the ring after the kayo, he asked trainer Danny Florio, "was I counted out?"

"You were counted out," Florio replied.

Standing behind Florio at that point in the ring was Cus d'Amato, Floyd's former manager into d'Amato shoulder an wept yet Patterson now rejects the word of those who saw him do it.

"It couldn't have been me. It had to be somebody else. Or else I didn't know what I was doing," Floyd said as we discuss the incident.

Maybe this moment more than any other is the most authentic testimony to the force of Liston's blow and the depth of Patterson's unconsciousness. Yet a week later Patterson was very much conscious of the public's reaction to his knockout. He had fled into the night in embarrassment and the things he read and things he heard made him feel that the public felt he had been intimated by the hulking man who had beaten him so easily.

"Do you know what I would have done a week later after I'd read some of the write-up?" Patterson said. "If I saw Liston I'd have walked up to him and punched him in the mouth just to prove to them I wasn't afraid. I don't feel that way any more. I think Liston respects me. I don't know why he does after a one-round knockout, but I know he does."
https://imgur.com/4aE1Oiy

 

He's top 10-20 in heavyweight history as far as
power in his left hook is concerned.
When the speed of his hook is added in, it's
easily with in top 10-15.
The power he could hit with in comparison to modern
so called super heavyweights , shouldn't be
underestimated , and demonstrates the importance
of technique , speed and timing.
But Especially technique.. Getting proper leverage on
any punch, and in particular the left hook is the difference
between a "pop" and a "boom" on the heavy bag.
Doing it properly against a live target is much harder.
Patterson proved he could hurt and ko live targets
many times.
Sometimes devastatingly....

 

Floyd's power is underrated, today he'd spark many heavy's out. Like Joshua,,,,,

 

Very fast and hard hitting. Most .modern-day giants would be sparked if Floyd lands one on the chops

 

Hard puncher. Murderous at around 175. And that hand-speed...

 

Well, Henry Cooper rematched a 201 pound Ali, and then Floyd, back to back. Cooper said Patterson had faster hands, and in fact, while Muhammad did miss Henry a few times, it doesn't seem that Floyd missed much, if at all. And in the early going of Ali-Patterson I, witnesses said Floyd's hand speed was indeed a match for the GOAT's.

 

Under 190 yeah, above 200lbs many fighters punched heavier.

Bob Satterfield punched harder than Patterson even knowing that Bob was a LHW.

 

For a natural small heavyweight he was a terrific puncher with that left hook. He could really crack.

 

Excellent. Thanks for that.