Were the criticisms of D'Amato during Patterson's reign justified?

Floyd fought three nr 1 contenders and one nr 3. Wilder hasn't even fought anyone in top 5, I think.

People here make a lot out of very little. Yes, you could always say that he should have faced Folley/Machen instead of Harris, but there isn't much in it. Harris was undefeated and was described by Sports Illustrated (according to Boxrec) as "very likely the second-best heavyweight". And Floyd would later face the man who destroyed Machen and after that the one who KO'd Folley.

Then you could also say that the Ingo trilogy occupied the title for a bit too long.

But that's all. How much ink is it really worth?

 

There's no evidence that Tony Salerno financed the fight at all though.
Bill Rosensohn claimed Salerno never actually came up with any money, kept telling him he didn't have it right now.
Salerno's true value, according to Rosensohn's story, was that after he (Rosensohn) agreed to give a third of the profits to Salerno and a third to Black, he had no problem getting D'amato to commit to the Johansson fight.
Prior to that, D'amato had been keeping Rosensohn on hold - and Rosensohn was getting desperate because he had Johansson's signature but that was about to expire if he didn't get Patterson's.

So, Salerno's role was ostensibly more of a "fixer". Once Salerno and Black had been cut in on the deal the services of D'amato were secured.

The story you tell isn't the story D'amato told. He denied all knowledge of Salerno's involvement. He denied knowing who Salerno was.

Of course, the whole affair leaves D'amato some wriggle room, up to a point. But it doesn't escape notice that you're so eager to give it to him. But in other instances, you're so quick to label other managers as "mob connected".

You're virtually a fanatical D'amato hagiographer.

You say D'amato didn't want to do business with Carbo, but based on what ?
You mention the Roy Harris fight, and Jack Hurley and Bill Rosensohn but the only reason Rosensohn was brought in as promoter was because D'amato's original choice for promoter, AL WEILL, was barred from California.
Al Weill was a long-time business associate of Frank Carbo, and regular acquaintance of.

We don't know who exactly did business with Carbo. But it's clear D'amato was not concerned with Carbo, who'd been around forever.
D'amato was at war with the IBC, not Carbo. D'amato was manager of the heavyweight champion of the world and he resented someone like Jim Norris (a rich boy who'd inherited his wealth) being more powerful than him in boxing. That's understandable.

I'm not alleging anything specific regarding D'amato-Salerno, because contrary to what you say, no one ever got to the bottom of it.
Unless we get into D'amato's attempts to foist an American manager on Johansson as a precondition to challenge Patterson at this tuime, which was certainly UNETHICAL, we can't say exactly what D'amato knew at the time. We can't say what D'amato's involvement in the Black-Salerno-Rosensohn arrangement was. Neither Black nor Rosensohn claimed D'amato was at those meetings.
D'amato completely denied knowing those people or knowing anything about it.

What isn't in dispute is that Charlie Black spent a lot of time around D'amato, was a good friend of his, and then brokered deals or made meetings between the promoter of the Patterson fights AND Tony Salerno.

D'amato was supposedly famed for not trusting anyone really. But Charlie Black was an old man he seemed to regard as his best friend. Charlie Black was given money by D'amato, who was a very generous man.
D'amato and Black were probably really good people, harmless middle-aged or old men, I don't dispute that.

However, while D'amato was supposedly conducting a "cloak and dagger" campaign against the evil forces that dominated boxing (in his own dubious way, imo), his best friend was getting the hopeful-promoter Rosensohn to cut Salerno in on the deal (undisclosed, as an invisible partner), in return for SECURING D'amato/Patterson's services.

If you can't see what's wrong with that picture then that's a lost cause.

Yes.
But D'amato also failed to show up.

 

Cus D'amato was in the same Guild as Bill Daly and Charley Johnston. He collected the money, presumably appointed by them to do so .... or by the people who appointed them.
This was the re-constituted, Carbo-influenced Guild. The one that was banned.

Charley Johnston, who who say was paid to kill the Guild, actually publicly protested the ban on the Guild.

You can concoct imaginary factions and then place D'amato in "the good" faction but that won't wash. If what you're claiming is true, then prove your claims.

D'amato collected the damned money for them in their dying days, so he obviously wasn't on some "outside" hard-done-by faction of the Guild.
A mob-infiltrated Guild wasn't going to let some "anti-mob crusade" guy be a collector of kickbacks for appearing on the IBC-promoted-TV shows.
That makes no sense.
Clearly D'amato wasn't seen as any sort of rabble-rousing anti-racket, anti-Carbo guy.

You're all over the place.

The payments weren't actually union dues, they were termed "donations".
They were kickbacks.

You're trying to say all these kickbacks and graft were ethical and fine and dandy simply because you have an agenda to defend and canonize D'amato at every turn.

Of course it wasn't found to be illegal. The people who set up these things have experience in setting things up in a legal manner.
That's what makes RACKETEERING so pernicious. It's cloaked in vague and technically legal practices.

It was enough for the boxing commissioner to ban it from BOXING though.
And he listed the reasons clearly, as you know. If you've done the research.

D'amato wasn't just bitching about ungrateful fighters he was defending the Guild's POWER to BOYCOTT, BLACKBALL and BLACKLIST a fighter because a manager (or ex-manager!) was in dispute with that fighter.

This is exactly the kind of stuff you say is so bad when the IBC or Carbo are accused of being the instigators.
But when D'amato or his organization (a tool of Carbo, actually, whether you want to believe or not) are carrying on like that, suddenly you find some special way to justify or rationalize.

No, I'm being precise.
Cus D'amato was the collector for the International Boxing Guild (New York) in 1954 and 1955 that we know of, up to the banning of that Guild in December 1955 (i think, maybe January 1956).
I'm not talking about anything while Floyd Patterson was champion.
I'm highlighting something in D'amato's background that suggests his opportunism.

 

I've probably said all I need to say in this thread.

klompton is possibly likely to come back with some more slantedly-interpreted information that bends over backwards to defend or iron out the contradictions in the D'amato myth that he subscribes to.

It's interesting how the burden of proof for D'amato's dubious business practices and history of being complicit in the corrupt structure of boxing is set so high by klompton FOR D'AMATO, but when it comes to fighters he doesn't like or get in the way of the agenda, the managers are so easily dismissed as "mob connected" or "mob fronts".

In a similar way, we have the passionate defense of the Patterson-Rademacher fights, based on monetary reward.
But klompton has absolutely no problem attacking dozens of fighters in history who took easy routes with fights against low opposition. It's one of his trademarks.
But all padded records and easy fights can be defended with the "risk v reward" argument.
Patterson-Rademacher is as "bad" as it gets.
If that fight can be defended for "easy money" reasons, then any fight - any title defence - is defensible.

 

Can't think of any other "easy defenses" of a world title being made around 3 weeks after the champion has stopped his leading contender!
Patterson wouldn't have being fighting anyway for another year, had the Rademacher offer not been made.
Patterson fought all of his mandatories, so why should he not earn his highest, to date, purse as a professional boxer?

 

:
SaintPat meet the alknowing, allprotected, allhating omnipotent KLOMPTON!!!!!!!!!####

 

I'm not criticizing Floyd Im saying Cus maximised his title defences against pretty average challengers which is what he is supposed to do. I say Harris was a definite level below Folley and Machen ,the best man he had beaten was Pastrano really a lhvy.The Ingo trilogy tied up the title for 2 years.

 

He fought the nr 1 contender every year but one, when he fought the nr 3 contender instead. And SI apparently didn't think the nr 3 contender was way below Folley and Machen. In fact, they suggested he was better.

And if Floyd and Cus purposefully avoided them, which seems to be suggested, why would they then first take on the guy that destroyed Machen and then the one who KO'd Folley?

Let' say he faced Machen in 1958, instead of Harris, and then lost to Liston in 1961 instead of 1962. Then no one could have any complaints, but it's not like it would be a much different reign.

 

Floyd said he would fight his grandmother for that sort of purse and, after having beaten his leading contender23 days earlier, I don't see much amiss about this gimmee.

 

Exactly, and it could have happened again, 20 years later, had Teofilio forsaken Fidel for a million and fought Ali.
The Olympic Pete fight likely generated a lot of curiousity, not unlike, a more recent "Floyd" fight.

 

I have hard understanding why this myth of Patterson taking the easy rout in his reign has come into existence in the first place.

I mean, the reign of HW giants Johnson and Dempsey are much worse. There are also more obvious holes in Frazier's and Holmes's reigns, and Ali's second. Not to mention the joke that was Foreman's second.

I wouldn't be surprised if bigger holes also could be found in Charles's, but don't know much about that one. And Lewis not taking on Byrd and Ruiz is probably not that far removed from Floyd not facing Folley or Machen, if at all.

Louis, Marciano, Ali (first) and Tyson had more or less flawless reigns, and Floyd's wasn't quite there, but not far from either.

 

As Klompton posted, Nat Fleischer always had it in for him. I remember The Ring never missed an opportunity to criticise him and D'Amato. Red Smith a famous US scribe did the same in his column. This filtered to the UK, where "eminent" reporters like Peter Wilson, Harry Carpenter, Frank Butler joined in. It must have pained them when he annihilated Henry Cooper, a stone's throw from Our 'enry's own house.

 

And that ignorance still being repeated today...

 

Some myth never vanish, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend

 

I didn't know about that term. Always good to learn something new. But, yeah, pointing the fighter at specifically one country or person is a popular practice to white wash the rest.

My personal, very specific, favorite might be Sean Penn, living in California, saying that Britain should give back the Falklands to Argentina.