Floyd Paterson dies aged 71.

[reds4ever]

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=2441248

RIP.

[Ninot]

Seems to have lead an eventful life.

RIP

[The Emperor Fabulous]

RIP

After reading that article, I now know what the reference to "Liston beats Patterson" in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" is.

[reds4ever]

Liston knocked him out in 2mins 40 (ish) of the first round and took all of six seconds longer in the rematch!!

[Agathon]

I'm gutted. He was a fine man.

Thanks Floyd.

[BlackCat]

It seems that he lived the life he wanted - rare.


RIP

[Agathon]

"There is so much hate among people, so much contempt inside people who'd like you to think they're moral, that they have to hire prizefighters to do their hating for them. And we do. We get into a ring and act out other people's hates."

[Agathon]

I'd like to point out that Patterson was the last heavyweight champion to conduct himself as a gentleman inside and outside the ring.

The sport needs his like again.

In a Bad Sport, Patterson Stood Tall as a Good Guy
By John Scheinman
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, May 12, 2006; E01

Floyd Patterson, who died yesterday at age 71, was a sensitive, soft-spoken man who became champion in the most violent sport of all and then was swept up in his times.

"I once asked him how he described himself," remembered the boxing historian Bert Sugar, a longtime friend of the former heavyweight champion. "He said, 'Incongruous.' "

When Patterson became the first fighter to recapture the world heavyweight title by avenging his loss to Ingemar Johansson at the Polo Grounds in New York on June 20, 1960, he picked up and carried his knocked-out opponent back to his corner.

He was one of the most popular sports stars of the 1950s: a middleweight gold medalist in the 1952 Olympic Games, who became the youngest heavyweight champion at 21 when he moved up in weight four years later and knocked out 42-year-old Archie Moore to win the title.

He was a precursor to Muhammad Ali, bringing blinding hand speed to a division known for fighters of lumbering power. He also was a clean-cut, good-guy champion.

"Floyd was a laid-back guy and reflected the entire decade," Sugar said. "The Fifties was a laid-back era. Our biggest concern after Korea was whether you can shoot Elvis Presley above the waist on television. Most heavyweight champions reflected their age. Ali was the chaotic Sixties. Joe Louis was the patriotic Forties."

One of 11 children, Patterson grew up troubled in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, running away from home, skipping school and sleeping in alleys. He was caught stealing and sent to reform school at age 10. By 14, he was learning to box in the care of one of the great trainers of the time, Cus D'Amato, who later took on another reform school prodigy, Mike Tyson, who eclipsed Patterson when he became the youngest heavyweight champion at age 20.

"Boxing gave him a way to become himself and reconcile the brutality inside the ring and the sensitivity outside of it," Sugar said of Patterson. "It gave him a life."

Patterson's sensitivity and well-mannered personality made him popular with both white and black fans. He was an heir to Louis, who had helped erase the divisive memory of Jack Johnson, the controversial black heavyweight champion decades earlier.

At a time when blacks in America were gathering momentum toward the Civil Rights Era, Patterson was champion. Then along came a fearsome, terrifying black fighter named Sonny Liston, known to be managed by mobsters.

D'Amato wanted nothing to do with Liston and neither did the NAACP, which came out against a Patterson-Liston fight, calling Liston the wrong kind of fighter to represent black America. President Kennedy also spoke out and said he hoped Patterson would retain the title.

"He was extremely well-handled by Cus D'Amato, who knew he couldn't beat Liston," said Nigel Collins, editor of the venerable boxing magazine The Ring. "Cus tried everything he could to keep them away from each other."

Ultimately, Patterson signed for the fight, even though he, too, knew he couldn't beat Liston. The night of the fight, Sept. 25, 1962, Patterson brought a fake beard with him to Comiskey Park in Chicago. He wore the disguise as he left the stadium that night, humiliated, knocked out by Liston in just more than two minutes.

Liston knocked out Patterson in one round again the following year, but Patterson remained a popular heavyweight, even more so with the rise of Ali.

"Liston was an antiestablishment figure controlled by the mobsters and was an ex-con," Collins said. "By the time Ali came around, [Patterson] was sort of forced into the Uncle Tom role. Floyd was sort of a foil with both of those guys and the establishment always sided with him because he was the kind of black guy they liked. I don't think Floyd was an Uncle Tom. I think he was forced into that role by the times and circumstances."

Patterson refused to call Ali by his chosen name, continuing to refer to him as Cassius Clay. In the book "Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times," author Thomas Hauser quotes Patterson as saying before the two first fought in 1965, "I have been told Clay has every right to follow any religion he chooses, and I agree. But by the same token, I have the right to call the Black Muslims a menace to the United States and a menace to the Negro race. I have the right to say the Black Muslims stink. I am a Roman Catholic. I do not believe God put us here to hate one another. I believe the Muslim preaching of segregation, hatred, rebellion and violence is wrong. Cassius Clay is disgracing himself and the Negro race."

Ali tortured Patterson when they fought on Nov. 22, 1965. He taunted, "What's my name? What's my name?" with nearly every shot he landed. The fight was stopped in the 12th round.

Patterson retired in 1972 after a rematch with Ali. For years after, he worked with troubled youths in upstate New York, and in 1995 was named chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, which oversees boxing in the state.

Three years later, giving a deposition in a court case, Patterson had trouble remembering anything about his storied career. He was forced to leave his job, again deeply embarrassed.

"Most likely, his Alzheimer's was brought on by the damage he took inside the ring," Collins said. "I don't think it was any more of a disgrace to Floyd Patterson than it is for Muhammad Ali. It's just the price you pay for being a prize fighter."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/11/AR2006051100818_pf.html

[Grandpa Troll]

Thanks for your contributions to Boxing

[reds4ever]

C'mon you geeks, some left wing Dutch artist dies and the thread goes to 6 pages!!!