Hello everyone, new guy Yancey here. I was a big boxing fan in my youth, the 60s and 70s, and have really been away from the scene since the greats of that era faded away. Does anyone here remember Jimmy Ellis and Floyd Patterson fighting in Sweden back around 1968 for the WBA title? I recall watching the entire fight live on TV at the time and thought Patterson got robbed. The scoring system in that fight was strange to me. My memory may be a bit faulty, but I'm thinking only the referee, Harold Valan (sp?) got a vote. Any thoughts on that fight?
Yes - and for the one hundreth time Ellis won 9-6 by the only scoring referee - and the score was about right. I am one of Floyds greatest fans and he did not win that night. I don´t know how many times I have seen that fight. Woller
Must dig it out-i remember it as a close fight with hysterical commentary in Floyds favor-and i too was a Patterson fan. He looked better but didnt do eneough to make that count on the refs card.
really woller? i thought it was just about the worst decision i have ever seen. patterson knocked him down and broke his nose, and outboxed him. i had patterson winning at least 9 rounds
Hey; resident Patterson nut-hugger here. I saw the fight live on TV in the sixties and was in the dumps for days afterwards. Finally got a copy and watched again in 2002 and again thought Floyd clearly won. However, a boxing friend Cliff (TKO 11) over at cyberboxingzone, in attempting to put the scoring in perspective, forced me to reanalyze the decision. Patterson clearly landed the better punches and was unmarked at the end whereas a bloody, swollen, Ellis looked like he'd been thru a war. However, in retrospect, the problem with Floyd was that he spent the majority of many rounds doing nothing in between his impressive brief spurts. Do you favor Patterson's impressive work for 30 seconds each round over Ellis's 2 1/2 minutes of busier, mediocre work? That's the issue here, I think, and one that I had to admit did have some validity. I watched again, turned the sound down, re-scored it, gave Ellis the benefit of the doubt and had it 7-5-3 Jimmy. Maybe a draw should have been the correct call but IMHO Patterson should have been more aggressive from the get-go and basically gave the fight away with his passivity (remember, this is the same guy that inexplicably took 24 rounds to finally do away with Roy Harris & Brian London). In retrospect, I have to admit that it's not the out & out robbery that I once thought it was. My $0.02
It may of been a blessing for Floyd that he lost out to Ellis, but got a lot of smpathy and priase for his effort, if he had been given the nod .......Mr Frazier awaited the winner.....!
