Who was the most successful Olympic medalist (not necessarily a gold medalist) to turn professional and win major titles before Floyd Patterson?
Pascual Perez. Jackie Fields. Ingo won silver at same games as Patterson. It wasn’t really until after the war that the Olympics became the gateway for great pros that we have since become accustomed to.
Hi Buddy. Along with previous answers, Jackie Fields was an olympian who won a world title, also spotted 51 wins out of 54 amatuer fights. Mike.
Quickly looking over the larger fighters and I came up with Alberto Lovell, Otto Von Porat, Soren Peterson and Samuel Berger at HW and Carmen Barth at MW. Lovell and Porat made the Ring top 10. Berger and Porat are the one's who got the most attention and "hype". Them being Olympians comes up when you are looking up other people. Barth fought for a world title, Petersen fought for Charles for the IBU after after they'd stripped Schmeling and Uzcudchun. Porat had an eliminator to Phil Scott he lost on DQ. But Lovell probably was the best as he won a 5 fight series with Godoy. World class fighter he just never left regionals. He's one of those 100 elite HW's from Louis's era I keep yammering about.
I like the films of Papp as an Olympian. A real entertaining two fisted fighter. Intelligent as well. If I'm not mistaken he was past his mid thirties when the Communist Hun government forced him to retired.
Argentinian Pascual Perez won gold as a flyweight in the 1948 Olympics. He then went home to have a very successful professional career as a longtime Ring Magazine flyweight champion.
