Was Cus D Amato too over protective of his fighters? Floyd Patterson.

Exactly when did Butterbean ever fight on the same card as Ricardo Lopez and make more than him?

You make it seem like they fought on the same cards regularly. I don't recall it ever happening even once.

In fact, Ricardo Lopez was promoted by Don King. And Butterbean was promoted by Bob Arum. I can't recall a single Don King show Butterbean ever appeared on.

 

You are correct and I am mistaken.
However, Butterbean was making 50k a fight when Ricardo Lopez was making less fighting on under cards. Along the same theme there were world rated flyweights that refused to fight at the Forum for 7500 when they learned that the winner of the Miss Ringsider contest was paid 10,000.

 

I don't think any of this is accurate. Rosendo Alvarez said recently to Ring Magazine that Don King paid him $265,000 to fight Lopez in Mexico (in the Julio Cesar Chavez-Miguel Angel Gonzales co-feature).

Ricardo Lopez was making more than $50,000 a title defense. (LOL)

He was certainly making more than Butterbean and Ring Card girls at the Great Western Forum when he was one of the top fighters in the world in the 90s.

 

That was a lot of indignation without answering the simple question if Dempsey faced even one nr. 1. Did he? Did Johnson?

Jackson was ranked nr 1 both by NBA and The Ring, I think. Should Floyd have skipped him just because you don't rate him? Who was there that should be clearly ahead of Jackson in early 1957 you mean? Neither NBA or The Ring could identify one.

And do you seriously think that Ingo hadn't deserved his nr 1 spot by levelling Machen? I take for granted that you think Liston was a deserving nr 1. So, no, I certainly don't see what you have an issue with when it comes to my statement that Floyd defended against his nr 1 challenger three times. What is absurd about it, you mean?

And frankly I don't understand all this fury about Rademacher as a filler (three weeks after a defence against the nr. 1). I'd much rather see a champion face the best amateur in the world than someone like Stander or Coopman. At least Rademacher was very good, albeit in a different format. He wasn't a great defence, but as fillers go he wasn't that bad.

Stander and Coopman and fillers of similar quality that Louis and Holmes and others had, were already proven not to be good pros. In Rademacher's case there was always the question how much he could transfer his undoubted quality to the pro format. As with Loma in his first pro fights. Did you also think Loma-Salido was a farce? I sure didn't.

Liston was certainly the best of that era and I would put Ingo next, excepting Floyd himself. So Floyd faced the two best out there as a champion. There are several lauded champions that can't be said about. So, no, while I'd liked Floyd to have faced either Folley or Machen in 1958 and Liston already in 1961, I really don't understand what all this fuss is about.

 

Some great discussion is happening here. My issue with Patterson as champion isn't really who he fought, but how often. The years Floyd defended his title twice, well, those involved "easy" defenses piggybacked onto legit defenses. Smart from a managerial standpoint, but not good for his legacy. I like champs to fight a good three times a year. Or at least twice. That's where Floyd could've had a more impressive reign, by defending against a few more guys he proved he could beat after he lost the title - Cooper, Machen, Chuvalo, Powell - all top 10 (at least) when Patterson was champ.

 

Well, I think we know what the result against Liston would have been. Even though I think that was the best version of Liston. If Id'd put him in a fantasy match-up, that's the one I'd use. Rested, with a good camp and supremely motivated. And it showed.

 

Yeah, that would have made his reign better. There are a few reigns that had both quality and quantity. Louis's, Ali's first, Rocky's (the gold standard really) and Tyson's spring to mind immediately. Floyd's doesn't stack up quite to that, but it's not the worst either. More on the level of Charles's I'd say.

So while there are valid criticisms to make, the purely rational reason to pick on Floyd's reign as much as is done completely escapes me.

 

I think Terrell would have got a decision in a quite boring fight. He had the height, reach, jab and spoling style to frustrate Floyd I think.

 

I'm not a great fan of Patterson's title reigns, but the issue of the number of his quality defenses is complicated by the USA's then ninety-percent marginal tax rate. If he fought two big-money fights in one year, he would have been fighting the second one for almost nothing. My biggest gripe of all of D'Amato's ploys is his choice of Roy Harris in 1958 for Floyd's big-time defense when Eddie Machen and Zora Folley were obviously light years better than Harris. D'Amato used his feud against the IBC as an argument to shield Patterson from having to fight either one of them just because they had engaged in fights which had been promoted by the IBC (like almost every good fighter had to do at the time to get a fight). The thing is, neither Machen or Folley were "IBC fighters" in the sense of having signed an exclusive contract with the IBC. Had they fought and defeated Patterson, they would have been free agents to sign with any promoter they wanted, especially in light of the fact that the federal judge was then in the process of breaking up the IBC's monopoly powers. D'Amato's actions were an obvious dodge against having to match Patterson against his most dangerous challengers.

 

In hindsight Machen and Folley were certainly clearly better than Harris, but I don't think it was that clear in 1958. This is what SI wrote at the time:

"It took the champion 12 bloody, bruising rounds to beat Harris, the best of the three men he has met since winning the title and very likely the second-best heavyweight."

 

There was a period, a long period, where he was making considerably less than he was making at the time that he fought Rosendo Alvarez.
I did not say that Ricardo Lopez made less than the ring card girl. If my memory is correct it was Joey Olivo, the LA flyweight a few years before Paul Gonzalez, that raised the issue. I believe he was to be paid 5000 the same night that the Miss Ringsider winner was paid 10k. The story was in the LA Times.