if pattersons chin was like ali's ???

The "Patterson had a glass jaw is pure b***s***"!
frank, he could have NEVER stayed at LH!
He was, simply, a cruiser by modern standards.
If he had tried to stay at 175 (IMPOSSIBLE) he'd have been nothing more than an asterisk in boxing history. He had grown to 182 by the Moore title s****.
NO ONE put him down for the count! Sonny? Once, maybe twice? He was getting to his feet BOTH times. He fought a stupid 'people's fight' both times. Up against INGO in the 1st fight.
Many of his KD's were simply the result of his being off-balance.
His most difficult opponent was HIMSELF!
We all saw the most jaw-dropping combos in HW history from him...but...he so seldom used them given his passive nature.
Was Floyd ever on his face (or his back) hearing the ref call 8-9-10! yer' OUT! NEVER.
Take away the two Liston-Ali fights, give him the Maxim decision, and (if he'd come in like the 2nd INGO) give him a 3-0 against Jerry and Jimmy and he'd have been 59-1!! As a little heavy.
But we continue to have all the generation x and y boxing fans that want to trowel out his being overrated. atsch
Total BS!

 

What if Patterson had the courage to fight the top contenders when he was champion?
What if pigs could flap their legs and fly?

 

He probably would have lost more. Patterson fought Ingo was his number 1, and Sonny Liston who was, well number one. I mean Machen was his number one but they fought eventually. And he won that one pretty decisively. But I'm of the opinion that Floyd got better after he lost the title.

And of course questioning Pattersons courage is ridiculous.

 

Well, one time, in June of 1960 he was...but he had to go against the very grain of his personality and psyche in working up a real hatred for his opponent...which he said later that he wasn't willing to ever do again. That rematch with Johansson in '60 was a glimpse of how Floyd might have been if he had let his darker side prevail more often.

 

BillB has the right to feel the way he does about Patterson's place in heavyweight history, but I wish that he would do so without that over the top hatred and lack of respect for the man.

 

I agree with you Jowcol!!:deal I think Floyd would have been the greatest cruiser in boxing history if campaigning in that class were an option for him.
Even his accomplishments as heavyweight champion were massive, ...the youngest to win the title, the first to regain the title and I'll always think that he deserved the decision over Jimmy Ellis in '68...which would have made him the first 3 time heavyweight champion. And aside from all that, I think i have more respect and veneration for him as a MAN, and as a true representative of the sport of boxing than any other fighter....with the possible exceptions of Harold Johnson and Joe Louis.

 

your post reminds me of this...


................


"I often wonder what other fighters feel, and what goes through their minds when they lose," he said, placing a cup of tea on the table.

"I've wanted so much to talk to another fighter about all this, to compare thoughts, to see if he feels some of the same things I've felt. But who can you talk to? Most fighters don't talk much anyway. And I can't even look another fighter in the eye at a weigh-in, for some reason.

"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."

- Floyd Patterson

 

No more interesting, intelligent or introspective man ever occupied the heavyweight throne IMO than Floyd Patterson. Thank you for posting this doug.ie, as I'm a long time Floyd Patterson reader as well as a fan. I read his autobio "Victory Over Myself" and it was fascinating....a very deep man he was.

 

deep indeed fella...like his reaction to beating johansonn to regain the title...

....


"I was full of hate. He was a thing to me - not a human. When he hit the canvas the first thing I thought was "I got him!!"
Only after that did I realise I had won the title again and that he was lying there with his leg twitching.
I don't ever want to feel like that again."
- Floyd Patterson

 

Shortly after Floyd Patterson had defeated Eddie Machen in 12 rounds of boxing that would never frighten Cassius Clay back into training, Floyd received two visitors in his Stockholm dressing room. One, wearing a neat, gray Ivy League suit, was Ingemar Johannson. "You too nice, Floyd," said Ingemar. The other, wearing a jaunty bow tie, was Nat Fleischer, the publisher of Ring magazine, who announced triumphantly that Floyd Patterson had moved up, that he was now the No. 2 challenger for the heavyweight championship.

Both were right, of course. Floyd is a nice man, too nice to be a professional fistfighter, but despite this he is also unquestionably superior—just as he has always been—to the five men over whom he had just leapfrogged from his old ranking down in seventh place: Doug Jones, Zora Folley, Cleveland Williams, Ernest Terrell and Machen. It was a little difficult to understand, however, why Floyd was so cheered by Fleischer's statement. For one thing, still above him stand Clay and Sonny Liston, and exactly why Floyd should ever want to fight either of them—he has plenty of money and his health—is a question that not even Patterson can adequately explain. Beyond that, his sudden rise in Ring's form chart had no more relation to reality than his precipitous drop from the top to his place behind Jones, Folley, etc. immediately after his back-to-back and back-on-the-canvas first-round knockouts at the hands of Liston. He was no worse a fighter after his losses to Liston than he had been before, and he is no better a fighter now after his wins over Machen and Sante Amonti, the inept Italian heavyweight he defeated on points in Sweden last January. He is still fast and strong and game—but he still is easy to hit. He still is acutely aware of helplessness, in himself or in others, including those he hurts in the ring. He still lacks the egocentric concentration of the true athlete, the single-minded aggressiveness of the great fighter, the consuming need to conquer or destroy everything in his way.

In the 11th round of the fight last Sunday he caught Machen against the ropes and hit him with a powerful right hand that sliced open Eddie's face and sent him to his knees. The mandatory eight-count rule, which requires that fighters knocked off their feet must take a count of eight before resuming battle, had been waived for the meeting, and Machen popped back to his feet at once, though dazed and with blood streaming down his face. It was an opportunity—an opponent momentarily helpless—that would have been capitalized on immediately by a Rocky Marciano or a Cassius Clay or a Sonny Liston. But Patterson stood quietly by and waited, looking at Machen with a curious half smile on his face. He did not move in for the kill, and Machen quickly recovered.

This was the maneuver—or rather, the nonmaneuver—that upset Johansson. "You take a step back when you should not," he told Patterson in the dressing room. "You had him hurt maybe five, six times. Why you don't move in? You must take a step forward, Floyd." Patterson looked at him enigmatically and did not reply. Later, however, Patterson said, "I was winning the 11th round when I hurt him, and I looked in his face and I saw hurt and defeat. This is a man who has had a hard life. He has been broke and in a mental institution. Should I knock him down further for my own good? I was winning. I didn't have to hurt him." Then he added, "He fought a good fight. He deserves a shot at Clay more than I do. He's broke and he's been down, and he deserves it."

This kindliness of Floyd's, a reflection of his hunger for friendship, for approval, for recognition, has its counterpart in his fear and resentment of disapproval, his touchiness, his moodiness. Before the fight in Stockholm (from which he earned $100,000, as a crowd of 40,000 damp Swedes paid approximately $300,000 dollars to watch on a rainy northern evening), Floyd annoyed even his enthusiastic Scandinavian admirers by sequestering himself like a moody Garbo in a small resort town 300 miles from Stockholm. He strained the abundant friendship most of the Swedish press has for him by making himself very hard to find for interviews. "I spent three days in Ronneby trying to talk to him," one Swedish reporter said, "and finally I got to see him for 20 minutes. Is this the Patterson we liked so well? I do not think so."

"He misses Cus D'Amato," said a man who is close to Patterson, referring to Floyd's first and longtime manager, from whom he is estranged. "He tries to do everything himself now—run the camp, worry about the money, take legal advice, everything. D'Amato used to do all that and keep him away from everyone so that he could concentrate on fighting. And then you have to remember that he was raised by Cus. When Cus first got him he was just a kid who didn't know anything about anything. All he knows and all his attitudes he got from D'Amato, including his suspicions and prejudices and his quickness to resent. He's got all of D'Amato's craftiness without D'Amato's background and intelligence."

In one of his rare colloquies with a member of the press, Patterson said, "I have to prove something. If I could preview a fight and see that I would be destroyed I would still fight. If I had to fight every day for seven days I would do it to prove myself." He focused all of his attention on the task at hand: beating Machen, proving himself. Although his brother Ray, who served as a sparring partner in his camp, could have had a fight on the card with Floyd and Machen, Patterson turned thumbs down on the grounds that he had to give his entire concentration to his own bout and did not want to have to worry about his brother at the same time.

(Sports Illustrated - July 1964)



...................................


i can't post photos here....but this page has a photo of how patterson and machen were after their fight, showing them out on the town (stockholm) drinking together after the fight...

https://www.facebook.com/classicboxingsociety/posts/560160944128923:0

 

Thanks again doug.ie,...your contributions are the very meat and gravy of boxing as far as I'm concerned...being a "classicist" by nature. This is why I come to this forum.

 

Probably, for me anyway, Patterson is the most interesting man in the history of boxing.

 

i don't mean to take over the thread with these....last one...

................


In the small room is a large bed he makes up himself, several record albums he rarely plays, a telephone that seldom rings. The larger room has a kitchen on one side and, on the other, adjacent to a sofa, is a fireplace from which are hung boxing trunks and T-shirts to dry, and a photograph of him when he was the champion, and also a television set. The set is usually on except when Patterson is sleeping, or when he is sparring across the road inside the clubhouse (the ring is rigged over what was once the dance floor), or when, in a rare moment of painful honesty, he reveals to a visitor what it is like to be the loser.

"Oh, I would give up anything to just be able to work with Liston, to box with him somewhere where nobody would see us, and to see if I could get past three minutes with him," Patterson was saying, wiping his face with the towel, pacing slowly around the room near the sofa. "I know I can do better. . . . Oh, I'm not talking about a rematch. Who would pay a nickel for another Patterson-Liston fight? I know I wouldn't. . . . But all I want to do is get past the first round."

Then he said, "You have no idea how it is in the first round. You're out there with all those people around you, and those cameras, and the whole world looking in, and all that movement, that excitement, and 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' and the whole nation hoping you'll win, including the President. And do you know what all this does? It blinds you, just blinds you. And then the bell rings, and you go at Liston and he's coming at you, and you're not even aware that there's a referee in the ring with you.

". . . Then you can't remember much of the rest, because you don't want to. . . . All you recall is, all of a sudden you're getting up, and the referee is saying, 'You all right?' and you say, 'Of course I'm all right,' and he says, 'What's your name?' and you say, 'Patterson.'

"And then, suddenly, with all this screaming around you, you're down again, and you know you have to get up, but you're extremely groggy, and the referee is pushing you back, and your trainer is in there with a towel, and people are all standing up, and your eyes focus directly at no one person—you're sort of floating.

"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. . . .

"But then," Patterson went on, still pacing, "this good feeling leaves you. You realize where you are, and what you're doing there, and what has just happened to you. And what follows is a hurt, a confused hurt—not a physical hurt—it's a hurt combined with anger; it's a what-will-people-think hurt; it's an ashamed-of-my-own-ability hurt. . . . And all you want then is a hatch door in the middle of the ring—a hatch door that will open and let you fall through and land in your dressing room instead of having to get out of the ring and face those people.

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

Then he walked over to the stove and put on the kettle for tea.

(by Gay Talese - 1964)

 

Patterson's problem was not so much that he had a weak chain, as that he was just too small, and had a come forward style.

 

Yes, Floyd Patterson fascinates me...and in ways that goes beyond merely in a boxing context.