Floyd Patterson KO5 Archie Moore

fastest, yes. hardest? no. Walcott and Louis hit harder

 

According to a source, Pattersons freinds claimed that D amato wasnt about to throw Patterson in vs a live marciano and wanted to make sure he showed signs of slipping before they sent him in vs rock. Rockys management confronted pattersons camp in ealry 1956 to talk about a potential fight and Damato turned them down, saying Patterson is a year away from being ready to fight rocky, so the earliest this fight would have come off was probably 1957 in which rocky was turning 34.

 

He was facing a defensive wizard that could make anyone miss badly at times. I thought rockys defense was fantastic in the moore fight.


you have to remember this is the Archie Moore who beat up the top young studs in the division Clarence Henry, Nino Valdez twice, and Bob Baker.

 

I was stimulated by this thread to watch the youtube fights of Moore against Marciano, Parker, and Patterson. What impressed me was Moore lack of movement against Patterson. Moore was not a mover, but against Marciano and in the brief clip against the huge Parker, he does utilize lateral movement. Against Patterson it is as if his feet are riveted to the floor. He relies on blocking punches. He looks much slower against Patterson, and I don't think it is entirely relative because of Patterson's speed.
That said, my take was that Moore fought pretty well against Patterson until the knockout which appeared to come largely out of the blue. Floyd caught him with a perfect left and Archie was finished. I would have had the fight about even up to that point.
The Marciano fight was also about even through five until Marciano came on.
Interestingly, I don't see Moore ever beating Marciano because he gave it his best shot. Patterson, I don't know. Moore seemed to be fighting a deliberately paced fight to take it into the later rounds. He had trailed Johnson, Valdes, and Pompey late and then had come on. I think this was the game plan against Patterson, but he got caught and never got to the later rounds.
Another thought on Moore--except for Pompey, all his 1956 fights had been against heavies, mainly big heavies such as Parker. I think he might have been wiser to have fought a couple of fights with smaller, quicker moving men to prepare himself for Patterson.

 

Marciano was not a young man for a swarmer. I see no reason he should have dragged out his career into his mid-thirties. With the possible exception of Louis because of his ko of Walcott in 1948, what earlier ATG champion had done anything to improve his status after the age of 32.

 

I hate to take away Pattersons tremendous performance and victory over moore, but I do agree with this. Marciano was a well known ruiner, perhaps he took more out of archie than realized at the time.

Keen observation!

 

although at the later stage of pattersons career...he was able to beat henry cooper {ko 4} easier than ali..