Floyd Patterson: Underrated, Overrated, or Perfectly rated?

Top 20, and underrated.

 

Top 4,000.

 

Floyd Patterson was very underrated, he was the first to regain the title in 1960, defeating Ingo by KO 6. His two devastating losses to Sonny Liston in Sept 1962 and July 1963 were demoralizing. But Floyd continued on defeating the likes of Eddie Machen, George Chuvalo, Henry Cooper and his humiliating defeat to then champion Muhammad Ali in Nov 1965, TKO 12 and losses to Jerry Quarry, and a controversial defeat to WBA Champion Jimmy Ellis in Sept 1968. Later Floyd defeated Oscar Bonavena, then in his last pro bout was defeated by Ali on Sept 20 1972 by TKO 7. Patterson was the youngest man to become champion on Nov 30 1956, when he knocked out Archie Moore in round 5. Later Floyd was associated with the New York Boxing Commission. Patterson was a fine man and a good example to the youth of America.

 

too small. ahead of Mike Weaver

 

So far I’m the only one who feels he’s right where he belongs. Top 20 is probably fair

 

Yeah, he's definitely top 20

 

Depends who he gets matched up against in fantasy fight s, imo.
Some, just cos they punch a little Hardy, automatically get put above Floyd cos of his chin.
As we know, that's not always the case in real life.

 

You could argue top 15, top 20 is fair. Beyond that, you're probably underrating or overrating him.

One thing about Patterson, he was quite the overachiever and has a hell of a resume regardless of the outcomes. Could have been the first 3x champ.

 

Yeah that's what I was getting at. Like Norton, Hearns, Whitaker, etc, Patterson is one of those boxers whose all time ranking could have changed drastically with a different verdict in otherwise close or controversial fights. Boxing is weird like that because no matter how good you are, you only have so much control over your career. Unless you knock your opponent out, you're still very much at the mercy of judges who use their own personal, subjective criteria to evaluate you. One of the only sports on the planet that has this problem.

 

Yeah I saw the tweet by Catterall where he seemed to be sinking into depression and wondering why he was even boxing. It's really sad.

Jimmy Young went through something similar and eventually got hooked on drugs because of all the dodgy verdicts.

 

Whether rightly or wrongly, Floyd's rating will always suffer from his 2 first round losses to Sonny Liston. Because of those 2 fights, he's probably SLIGHTLY underrated by most people.