"I felt sorry for him. The press never really gave him a break. They never let him forget that he was once a convict, they never really gave him the credit that was due to him. It wasn’t until he lost the crown and went to Las Vegas that you began to see pictures of [Sonny] Liston smiling. I think they treated him very poorly. I never had any personal contact with him but I felt if they didn’t criticise him so much I felt he would’ve been so different, he would have smiled a lot sooner. When I saw him get knocked out by Cassius Clay in Lewiston, Maine, I went back to his hotel. There weren’t many people at his hotel. They were all over at Clay’s hotel. I went up to his room and had a talk with him. I’d never had any conversation with him before but I explained to him that I knew how he felt, because I had experienced the same thing. I told him people who were with him before would still be with him and I told him not to go into hiding as I did, just go out and be yourself." - Floyd Patterson Here we have a professional boxer who was brutally knocked out by his opponent twice. He was so embarrassed he wore a disguise to try to avoid having to delay with the press. And yet he has enough empathy to visit the same man who beat him to give him a pep talk. Pretty remarkable. Also, Patterson had gots. There's an interview where he expressed a desire for a THIRD fight with Liston. Can you imagine that?
He was, I saw an interview where he talked about his daughters puppy dying and he couldn't bare to tell her, and weirdly they forgot all about it and years later she said "what happened to that puppy?" he realised they'd both forgotten about the dog. He attributed to God intervening. A complicated but kindly decent man.
He was a very kind and sensitive man..."Freudian Floyd" they used to call him. I remember reading more about that talk with Liston where he told him that one day he would wake up and it would feel different, and he would be better. Charles was cut from that mode himself. Never needed personal animosity, and would literally give friends the shirt off his back.
Guts? More like suicide tendencies... But I agree my man Floyd was always class. It is good to see how there were no hard feelings between Floyd and Sonny and there was mutual respect. Actually, there is a story that after Sonny beat Floyd he was interviewed by obnoxious jounalists who were mocking Floyd and calling him a coward. They expected Sonny to do some trash talking too. But he would have nothing of that, but commended Floyd's courage and effort: “There's a big difference between having fear in you and being a coward, I can have fear in me, too, and that kind of fear is good. Then I'd go into the ring and because I had this fear I'd try to take the other guy out as quick as I could. Patterson had fear in him but he wasn't no coward. He got in there with me, and he did his best."" Sonny was portrayed by the media like a brutal criminal, but actually he was a just a guy who had a tough upbringing and got few lucky breaks. Behind his fearsome image, Sonny was naturally kind and warmhearted, specially with with children. This content is protected Unfortunattely this negative image on Liston continues to this day.