Nice little scrap between a young, upstart Floyd and another top LHW prospect at the time in Don Grant. Great exhibition of clean in-fighting from these two, with Patterson always one step ahead. I wonder how Patterson's career would've panned out had he kept at the weight. He seemed a daunting task for any LHW to conquer with his great offensive skills. He was already mastering the D'Amato taught bob and weave style, and combined with his physical attributes at the weight he could've been one of the best ever at the weight, methinks. Dazzling combination of power and handspeed. At mid to close range you rarely see this kind of ability at the upper weights. [yt]1LYm8vQgwzM[/yt]
The leverage he gets on his shots (in combination) on the inside and the accuracy of them is absolutely marvelous. The flurry at 6:30 is amazing, throws every shot in the book in the space of a few seconds and transfers his weight for the text book double right uppercut perfectly. Its like watching an instructional manual on how Tyson should have fought on the inside, instead of smothering himself and relying only on his closing mid-range too much.
Sweet Pee, that's a great vid. FP would've been a great LHW. The loss to Joey Maxim was robbery, btw.
Those fast hands of Patterson are fantastic....if he had a cruiserweight class in his time, he would have been champion for a decade.
when you think floyd beat the LH champ to win the HW title it may as well have been for the LH title. you can argue he proved it, he was never a real heavy till 65-66 his best heavyweight wins were over machen, cooper, chuvalo,bonavena and the robbery with ellis when he had more man-streangth. I would have loved to have seen the pure boxing on offer had he met pastrano or harold johnson in the lightheavys. without the ordeal of the liston and johanason defeats at heavyweight he could have moved up in 65and maybe he would have made a beter chalenge against ali? that said, as an amateur he suffered a very bad KO against charley wiliams so he still knew what a ko felt like. also giardello did a much beter job against wilie troy at about the same time as patterson.
Patterson still beat Troy to a pulp so it's not really a big deal to me. It's not like Patterson struggled with him. He ran through almost everyone he faced at 160-175. Harold Johnson vs Floyd Patterson would've been a great match-up.
Just proves how good Floyd was. He get´s underrated so often with people saying he is too small, too chinny. But Marciano wasn´t bigger than him. And doesn´t make this those two greater? Having success hw despite beeing so small? I think so.
exactly bodhi, it is never taken into acount how much more work it is to chop down a bigger guy. for all the people who rave on big powerhouse types like foreman and liston they never count how often these two had size advantages. its so much easier when you are bigger with the streangth to take rests when you want and not having to force it out all the time. marciano was a bigger guy with shorter legs but both he and floyd gave away weight and still did it with that handicap.
I've never lowrated Floyd for the defeats he's suffered at the hands of the relatively giant heavyweights on his record.
