I never knew fully why. Was it get another good payday. Ok he did rematch Johansson and won, but from what I understand he'd been purposedly avoiding Liston for a long time before finally fighting him anyway. Any info appreciated, thanx.
The Liston avoidance was D'Amato's idea. As to why Patterson wanted Liston again, I dunno........if it was me it would probably have been a mix of professional pride in trying to at least look better than I did the first time. And it's a title shot, what else would he aspire to?
I have an old Ring magazine from before the first fight, it had 50 or 100 "experts" pick the winner and it was about half and half for each fighter. A lot of the "experts" thought Liston was slow with his feet and hands and that Patterson would beat him. Maybe Patterson felt like the first fight was a fluke and that all he needed was to tweak his game plan?
Like someone said, what else was he going to do? There was nothing left for him except to try and become champion again plus like was already mentioned, professional pride. I remember reading where Patterson mentioned that if he were to beat Ali and become champion, he would give Liston another title shot. And I believe he would have.
When you're the heavyweight champion, you're supposed to be able to beat everyone. Patterson had been the world heavyweight champion. And he wanted to be champion again. So he wanted to fight Liston until he beat him. After losing the rematch, he wanted to fight Liston again in private. Just the two of them, because he knew no one would pay for it. He needed to keep fighting him until he beat him. Read THE LOSER by Gay Talese. https://classic.esquire.com/article/1964/3/1/the-loser
I think that it had to do with ego, remember the fake beard and moustache's following his losses to Ingo and Sonny.I did know that Cus D Amato and President Kennedy did not want Floyd to fight Sonny Liston.
Whoever wrote Liston's Wikipedia article is a comedian. This is from the section that goes over the Patterson rematch: "Patterson, a 4-1 betting underdog, was knocked down three times and counted out at 2:10 of the first round. The fight lasted four seconds longer than the first one,".
It's simple. The contract had a return bout clause. Liston had to defend against Floyd or he would have been taken to court. Patterson was eager for a chance to redeem the title as soon as possible like he did against Johansson. There was never any question that he would exercise the rematch clause. Floyd no doubt exercised his right under the clause because he didn't want to take a chance of losing to someone else, which he may have done since he was so demoralized. Cus D'Amato had instituted the practice of inserting the return bout clause into Patterson's contracts. Up until Patterson became champ the promoter always had the right to pick the champ's next opponent, but Cus changed that in a scenario I won't go into right now because it is too far off point. Consequently, return bout clauses were the custom of the time between 1957 and 1961 until the WBA enforced a new rule against rematch clauses and stripped Ali of his title when he gave Liston a return bout. So actually, the WBA rule was in effect at the time Patterson fought Liston the second time, but nobody bothered to enforce it against Patterson. It had been enacted after the third Patterson-Johansson bout so that the division could not be tied up like it had been for three years by the three Patterson-Johansson fights. It was used only after the new WBA president, Ed Lassman, developed a hard-on against Clay (Ali) because he changed his name and joined the Black Muslims. That was the reason the WBA stripped Ali of the title the first time and declared Ernie Terrell champion after he defeated a used-up Eddie Machen. It was a case of blatant selective enforcement because it could just as well have been used to bar the Liston-Patterson rematch, but nobody cared at that time. You can read a detailed explanation about all this in Volume Three of The One Is Jack Hurley.
I heard when he met Kennedy he told him that he was going to fight Liston, and JFK remarked "you have to beat that guy!". Talk about pressure!
That's a fantastic article thanks. This is going off track but reading it kind of got me thinking about Andrew Golota and his one round losses, fouling out, and various meltdowns.
