How come Frazier and Patterson never fought?

I know the Ellis and Quarry fights erased his chances in that tournament, but in the late 60's Patterson was still a credible scalp to add to a resume...

I recently did a Patterson/other 60's and 70's heavyweight marathon over a couple weeks... I came away from it seeing that Patterson was alot physically stronger than I previously thought, and the top of the heap over everyone not named Frazier or Ali.

He manned Quarry around and won the first fight comfortably on my card, and also won the Ellis fight comfortably in my opinion. He also did the pushing around in the Bonavena fight...

So why did this fight never come off?

What happens if the meet in say '69 or '70?


I believe Patterson wouldn't do worse than Ellis, and Frazier would have ground him down mid-late, but Floyd could have made it interesting given his sharp punching and versatility.

 

I'm sure there will be mixed responses regarding the outcome, the overwhelming majority of which will be in favor of Frazier, and all that feedback is welcome.

My real question is, why it never came off? Patterson was still making noise in the division, was is strictly because he was on the wrong end of those decisions?

 

Officially, or on paper, he was neck and neck. If you were going strictly off the records, you could easily argue he was a shade lower than Ellis and Quarry...

Having seen the fights, I scored the first Quarry fight and the Ellis fights as Floyd winning quite easily on my card... I don't know what kind of politics were involved, but those were fights Patterson should have been the official winner.

Ellis whipped Quarry's ass comprehensively, and I don't see what the big controversy was about... Actually, I was impressed with how strong and physical Ellis was... He made Quarry look totally ordinary.

When Ellis, who was clearly better than Quarry and Bonavena, fought Patterson, I was expecting Ellis to be the aggressor and generally the boss. It was the opposite. Patterson did some backing up, but generally owned Ellis. Patterson robbed of a knockdown in the 14th due to a bad call by the ref.

I'm not saying Patterson beats Frazier, I'm just saying he'd be more competitive than given credit for.

Even washed up Patterson whipped the **** out of Bonavena, and took those punches. If that fight had never happened, people would generally pick Bonavena to hit him with something big and have him out of there at some point. What happened was, Bonavena couldn't hardly hit him and ate punches all night. Even when he landed, Patterson took the punches well.


I'm just saying it's a shame it never happened, because I think Floyd would have made it interesting for as long as it lasted, which is mid-late in the fight. Floyd liked to mix it up a little too much for his own good.