Floyd Patterson Appreciation Thread

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I've always found Patterson to be very underrated.

 

One of my favorite heavyweights. Sounds like an oxymoron but it's true. Invincible types are boring. They don't need to show the strength of character necessary for a Floyd Patterson or a Bobby Chacon or Arturo Gatti to succeed. Having to really suffer for your art is far more interesting, and more inspiring too.

 

He's become my second favourite heavyweight over the last few years, after Joe Louis. What an exciting fighter and an inspiring man.

 

Floyd's heart was the size of North Carolina and New York combined! He was as courageous as they get! And he was "The Gentleman of Boxing!"

 

My third after Liston and Frazier.

 

Love the music.

 

A genuinely thoughtful man and the epitome of class. Never has a gentler soul held the title. A true role model for children and there fathers even there grandfathers. A grudgeless, egoless loving boy that Floyd. Wish I was more like him.

“You can hit me, and I won’t think much of it,” he said, “But you can say something and hurt me very much.”

(Visiting Sonny after he lost the title)
“Sonny,” Patterson said, “you haven’t really lost anything.”

Then Patterson shook Liston’s mighty right hand, the very hand that once beat him senseless.

Above the youngster's bed was a picture of him with two older brothers and an uncle, all boxers. Referring to himself, he often told his mother, "I don't like that boy," and once he scratched three large X's over his face in the picture.

(Recapturing the title)
"It was worth losing the title for this," Patterson said. "This is easily the most gratifying moment of my life. I'm champ again, a real champ this time."

(About the Liston rematch)
"If I stopped now, that would be running away."
"I did that when I was a kid," he added. "I've grown out of that."

"I would not like to see boxing abolished. I come from a ghetto, and boxing is a way out. It would be pitiful to abolish boxing because you would be taking away the one way out."

(Random encounter during road work)
"No, I'm his brother, Raymond."

"Don't tell me you're not Floyd Patterson. I know what Floyd Patterson looks like."

"Okay," Patterson said, shrugging, "if you want me to be Floyd Patterson, I'll be Floyd Patterson."

"So let me have your autograph," said the man, handing him a rumpled piece of paper and a pencil.

He signed it—"Raymond Patterson."

"It is not a bad feeling when you're knocked out," he said. "It's a good feeling, actually. It's not painful, just a sharp grogginess. You don't see angels or start; you're on a pleasant cloud. After Liston hit me in Nevada, I felt, for about four or five seconds, that everybody in the arena was actually in the ring with me, circled around me like a family, and you feel warmth toward all the people in the arena after you're knocked out. You feel lovable to all the people. And you want to reach out and kiss everybody—men and women—and after the Liston fight, somebody told me I actually blew a kiss to the crowd from the ring. I don't remember that. But I guess it's true because that's the way you feel during the four or five seconds after a knockout. . . .

"The worst thing about losing is having to walk out of the ring and face those people"

(About not making eye contact)
"At the Liston weigh-in, the sports writers noticed this, and said it showed I was afraid. But that's not it. I can never look any fighter in the eye because . . . well, because we're going to fight, which isn't a nice thing, and because . . . well, once I actually did look a fighter in the eye. It was a long, long time ago. I must have been in the amateurs then. And when I looked at this fighter, I saw he had such a nice face . . . and then he looked at me . . . and smiled at me . . . and I smiled back! It was strange, very strange. When a guy can look at another guy and smile like that, I don't think they have any business fighting.

"I don't remember what happened in that fight, and I don't remember what the guy's name was. I only remember that, ever since, I have never looked another fighter in the eye."

(His daughters school troubles-Dealing with Bullies)
"I'm not going to work out today," he said. "I'm going to fly down to Scarsdale. These boys are picking on Jeannie again. She's the only Negro in this school, and the older kids give her a rough time, and some of the older boys tease her and lift up her dress all the time. Yesterday she went home crying, and so today I'm going down there and plan to wait outside the school for those boys to come out, and . . ."

"How old are they?" he was asked.

"Teen-agers," he said. "Old enough for a left hook."

"Jeannie," Floyd Patterson said, rolling down his window, "point out the boys who lifted your dress."

Jeannie turned and watched as several students came down the path; then she pointed to a tall, thin, curly-haired boy walking with four other boys, all about 12 to 14 years of age.

"Hey," Patterson called to him, "can I see you for a minute?"

All five boys came to the side of the car. They looked Patterson directly in the eye. They seemed not at all intimidated by him.

"You the one that's been lifting up my daughter's dress?" Patterson asked the boy who had been singled out.

"Nope," the boy said, casually.

"Nope?" Patterson said, caught off guard by the reply.

"Wasn't him, Mister," said another boy. "Probably was his little brother."

Patterson looked at Jeannie. But she was speechless, uncertain. The five boys remained there, waiting for Patterson to do something.

"Well, er, where's your little brother?" Patterson asked.

"Hey, kid!" one of the boys yelled. "Come over here."

A boy walked toward them. He resembled his older brother; he had freckles on his small, upturned nose, had blue eyes, dark curly hair and, as he approached the station wagon, he seemed equally unintimidated by Patterson.

"You been lifting up my daughter's dress?"

"Nope," the boy said.

"Nope!" Patterson repeated, frustrated.

"Nope, I wasn't lifting it. I was just touching it a little . . ."

The other boys stood around the car looking down at Patterson, and other students crowded behind them, and nearby Patterson saw several white parents standing next to their parked cars; he became self-conscious, began to tap nervously with his fingers against the dashboard. He could not raise his voice without creating an unpleasant scene, yet he could not retreat gracefully; so his voice went soft, and he said, finally:

"Look, boy, I want you to stop it. I won't tell your mother—that might get you in trouble—but don't do it again, okay?"

"Okay."

"What could I do with those schoolboys?" he asked. "What can you do to kids of that age?"

It still seemed to bother him—the effrontery of the boys, the realization that he had somehow failed, the probability that, had those same boys heckled someone in Liston's family, the schoolyard would have been littered with limbs.
(After the fight)
"... How could the same thing happen twice? How? That's all I kept thinking after the knockout. . . . Was I fooling these people all these years? . . . Was I ever the champion? . . . And then they lead you out of the ring . . . and up the aisle you go, past those people, and all you want is to get to your dressing room, fast . . . but the trouble was in Las Vegas they made a wrong turn along the aisle, and when we got to the end, there was no dressing room there . . . and we had to walk all the way back down the aisle, past the same people, and they must have been thinking, Patterson's not only knocked out, but he can't even find his dressing room. . . .

Lots of great articles on our boy Patterson. I'd suggest those who like these quotes do some reading. He's my favourite to read on by far he has a way with words I wish I had, He had a manner about himself maybe only a champion totally sure and unsure of existence can understand. "Keep my enemies confused" the philosophy of Cus seems to have only wounded Floyd- a man who's greatest enemy he felt was his good nature.

 

Isn't it a sad subject. I don't think kindness should bewilder or shock anyone even in boxing. Goodness should be as common as cut grass and running water in the city. Floyd was one of the most human men I've read about and is deserving of every compliment. Sad, even in his later years when his mind let him down in a job with no responsibility he pinned it down to "Always letting folks down" and was deeply saddened and profoundly apologized to everyone he worked with for not being able to remember peoples names...

 

Lots of interesting videos!
Coincidentally, I also watched the following video. It's nothing special but interesting nonetheless. It shows him in his 60s and also a short boxing training session. He was still in pretty good shape and talks to the kids more relaxed and less formal than in many other interviews.
He was a legendary Champion anyway, but a very likeable man as well!

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