Floyd Patterson

by W. K. Stratton

  That next step was the Gramercy Gym, which was situated across the river in Manhattan. It occupied a rundown space upstairs at 116 East Fourteenth Street. The neighborhood was familiar to Floyd. After leaving Wiltwyck, he began attending classes at the Cyrus W. Field School, a vocational elementary/junior high school better known as PS 614. It was one of two “600 schools” for “maladjusted” students that had recently opened in New York, and it was located on East Fourth Avenue, not too far from the Gramercy. With their emphasis on teaching trades, the schools catered to students who stood little chance for academic advancement. Floyd excelled at PS 614, just as he had at Wiltwyck. But the Gramercy offered him the chance to learn skills that would prove far more valuable than any training he received at school. The boxing gym was also far more demanding.

  Just getting from the street to the gym involved a test of will. The street entrance was a heavy, zinc-plated door on which had been painted “Gramacy Gym,” owing to a sign painter’s careless ways. Before boys could get to the sparring ring and heavy bags upstairs, they had to open that big door. Some never could screw up enough courage to do so, fleeing instead to the candy stand next door, never to consider boxing again. But some did continue. On the other side, past some garbage cans, were two flights of dimly lighted rickety wooden stairs that disappeared into darkness. Who knew what really waited at the top? Climbing the stairs took even more courage—it was almost as if you were climbing the steps of a gallows—and many boys made it no farther than halfway up before they turned tail and hustled back to the candy stand. The boys who did make it all the way to the top encountered another door in the shadows. This last barricade dissuaded a few more. A square had been cut in the door and covered with chicken wire, and behind that square was a snarling German shepherd. That was enough to scare away even some tough kids. But those who braved the dog and pushed the door open entered a kind of dingy wonderland of sights, smells, and sounds guaranteed to entice most boys, a wonderland lorded over by a stocky, middle-aged man named Cus D’Amato. Floyd passed these tests of courage and entered the Gramercy Gym for the first time, trailing Frank Lavelle and his brothers.

  The gym’s size impressed Floyd. He thought it looked like the inside of a big barn. The odor of stale sweat clung to the walls—hardly pleasant, but oddly inviting, evidence of serious work getting done. The windows were closed tight—they were never opened—and the air felt hot against Floyd’s skin. He let his eyes travel around the enormous room. Men sparred in the ring. A couple of boxers slugged away at the two heavy bags. The hypnotic rat-tat-tat of speedbags drowned out conversations. Across the way, fighters shadowboxed in front of cracked mirrors. Someone who’d finished his workout lay face-down on a table for a rubdown. There were some steel lockers, a few showers. Floyd took all this in and knew he belonged here, though he wasn’t quite ready to tell that to the odd white-haired proprietor. “My old-time embarrassment kept me from it for a while,” Patterson said. “It wasn’t the fear of getting hurt. It was the fear of starting something new.”1 So he just watched his brothers go through their drills.2

  Patterson was now fourteen, already closing in on six feet tall but weighing just 147 pounds, with rounded shoulders and long, straw-thin arms. But he had learned, at the Carlton branch YMCA and during scuffles at school, that he could hit. After watching his older brothers work out a few times, he approached D’Amato and said he wanted to fight. D’Amato was definitely interested; Lavelle had already told Cus that Floyd might have the right stuff to become a pro. Cus asked him how old he was. Fearing he might be turned away for being too young, Floyd fibbed, telling Cus he was fifteen. D’Amato agreed to give him a shot at boxing and explained what the deal would be: he would allow Patterson to train at the Gramercy; provide him socks, trunks, T-shirts, a no-foul protector, and the other equipment he would need; and permit him to spar with the other Gramercy boys—all at no charge, with the understanding that D’Amato would be Patterson’s manager, guide his career, and, if he turned pro, claim a percentage of his purses. None of this was written down, but Floyd accepted the offer, and the spindly Bed-Stuy kid became one of D’Amato’s protégés. No relationship was more important in shaping Floyd’s life.

  During his heyday, in the 1950s and ’60s, Constantine “Cus” D’Amato was a mysterious figure to sportswriters and boxing fans alike. No one doubted that he was a veteran of the rough-and-tumble boxing scene in New York, though he never fought professionally himself. But whence he came and why he wound up doing what he did seemed to be anyone’s guess. Newspaper accounts of the time sometimes mentioned that he had no family and suggested his age was unknown. In fact, he did have family, and his birth date was available. He was born on January 17, 1908, to Italian immigrants living in a tenement in the Bronx’s Clason Point section. His father was Damiano D’Amato, a one-time Italian folk wrestler who loved boxing. Damiano was a strong-willed man who had taught himself to read and write as an adult.3 He passed on that willpower to his sons.

  Cus’s mother, Elizabeth, died of pneumonia not long after his fifth birthday. “I don’t remember my mother,” he once said, “and I was fortunate, because I was self-reliant at a very early age. I was not confused by the ideas, the thoughts of mothers and fathers who, well-meaning though they may be, mess up the minds of their children.”4 The world he encountered outside the D’Amato home was difficult, too. Their Clason Point neighborhood wasn’t an easy place, and the five D’Amato brothers discovered they’d have to get tough—and tough in a hurry—if they were to survive. Cus’s brother Tony developed a fearsome reputation as a street brawler. Family legend had it that Tony could take on four or five police officers single-handedly and walk away from the fracas when it was over, leaving the cops stretched out cold in the street.

  Cus’s brother Gerry proved to be the most talented with boxing gloves.5 An attractive, strong man, Gerry soon developed into a promising up-and-comer in New York’s featherweight ranks. Outside the ring, he dazzled friends and family with his creative gifts. He drew cartoons, painted everything from miniatures to murals, and designed logos for boats. The New York Public Library once exhibited his art at its main building. But a drunken altercation with a New York City cop ended Gerry’s life when Cus was sixteen.

  Hardened by the violent demise of the beloved Gerry, Cus tried to adopt his brother Tony’s credo—never let anyone step on you—as he made his way through life in the Bronx. Cus was much like any other street tough except that he became something of a philosopher. He paid close attention to what went on around him and pondered the meanings of cowardice, strength, courage, and survival. Cus flirted with politics, served in the Army during World War II (perhaps the happiest time of his life; he loved military asceticism),6 then became a boxing manager. Through it all, he learned that taking charge of fear was key to success in the world as he knew it.

  “The first thing I do with a young fighter,” D’Amato said, “is explain fear. Most people don’t know much about fear. They think it’s a sign of being yellow. But fear is normal. It’s like fire. If you let it get out of control, it will destroy you and everything around you. If you can learn how to control it, you can make it work for you. Fear is just nature’s way of preparing you to fight.”7

  D’Amato soon had the opportunity to teach Patterson his first lesson in confronting fear.

  Floyd trained at Gramercy Gym for a couple of weeks, awkwardly trying to mimic the things he’d seen his brother Frank do in the ring. When D’Amato decided it was time for Floyd to attempt some serious sparring, he paired Patterson with an experienced boxer—Frank. For his part, Frank Patterson believed Floyd had no business trying to box. Frank knew his little brother would cry if you hit him too hard. So Frank was not shy about taking young Floyd to school in the ring. At one point, Floyd stepped in the pocket to fire some close-range punches at Frank,8 but he made the novice mistake of failing to hold his right hand high enough to protect his head. Frank uncorked a hard left hook to Floyd’s temple that sen
t the younger Patterson staggering.

  After taking the blow, Floyd wanted nothing more than to escape the ring as fast as he could. His head spinning, he fled to the locker room and began to cry. Presently, D’Amato was standing over him. Typically the no-nonsense tough guy, D’Amato had a gentle, nurturing side, and at that moment he revealed it to Floyd, assuring Patterson that getting tagged with a hook happened to many kids attempting to box for the first time. D’Amato did not dismiss Floyd as a crybaby not man enough for boxing, as many managers would have done. Instead he encouraged Floyd to keep trying. He knew what Floyd was up against. “Boxing,” he once said, “is seventy-five percent psychological and only twenty-five percent physical.”9

  Patterson responded to D’Amato’s psychological ministrations in the same way he had to Vivian Costen’s at Wiltwyck. He determined to prove that D’Amato’s faith in him was not misplaced. The bond between manager and fighter was set.

  Patterson’s confidence increased as, under D’Amato’s tutelage, he picked up the rudiments of boxing. Just six months after Patterson began training under him, Cus decided it was time for Floyd’s first amateur bout. Patterson would fight under the auspices of D’Amato’s Empire Sports Club, which was an accredited member of the New York Metropolitan Amateur Athletic Union. At his stated age of fifteen years old and weighing 147 pounds, Patterson would compete in the subnovice class of a city AAU tournament for his first fight. It occurred at an old boxing club in Queens, and Floyd won without breaking a sweat—his opponent failed to show. Still, it was a victory. He now had an amateur record of 1-0.

  This “win” advanced him to the tournament’s second round, held at the Downtown Athletic Club. There, with Cus and his brother Nick D’Amato working his corner along with Frank Lavelle, Floyd faced a full-grown Navy man. Patterson made a typical novice mistake when he gave in to the adrenaline rush prompted by the bell and began throwing punches wildly through the first round. Sensing he had a chance to defeat an inexperienced kid, the Navy man came at Floyd fast and hard in the second round. But somehow Patterson landed a punch on his opponent’s jaw, and the sailor went down. Floyd didn’t think he’d hit him all that hard. He’d seen cowboys in the movies take what appeared to be much harder punches, and they were able to pop back up and continue slugging. So he expected the sailor to do the same. But Floyd learned that real fights were different. In real fights, you could clip your opponent in just the right place with a relatively short punch, and that would be enough to knock him out. The sailor failed to make it back to his feet before the referee’s count ended. Patterson had his first real victory: a knockout at thirty-four seconds into the second round.

  Patterson enjoyed a few days of exuberance before his third tournament fight. On that day, egged on by his brother Billy, he went for a run in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. That night, he felt drained. His opponent had enough ring savvy to understand that Patterson was fatigued, and beat Floyd handily. Up to that time Floyd and Billy had had an uneasy relationship, at best. Floyd decided that Billy, who was more knowledgeable about training, had encouraged him to run that day to ensure he lost the contest. Floyd held it against him for years.

  Floyd lost his next two fights as well, but he could not blame his brother for those. Floyd’s amateur record stood at two wins—and one of those was by way of forfeit—against three losses. That record would be enough to discourage many kids from continuing, but not Floyd—boxing was the only thing providing him with direction in life. He wasn’t about to turn his back on it. D’Amato and Lavelle saw the problem with Patterson’s ring performances so far: simply put, he was getting hit too much. So they began schooling Floyd in protecting himself, emphasizing an unconventional boxing stance that became known as the peek-a-boo.

  Conventional strategy called for a right-handed boxer like Patterson to stand more or less sideways, left shoulder aimed at his opponent, knees bent slightly, feet spread shoulder-width apart to provide good balance, right hand high and close to the chin, left hand also high but a bit lower than the right, left elbow in tight to protect the midsection, chin tucked into the hollow of the left shoulder. “That’s a good place to keep it, too,” observed the great prizefighter Barney Ross, who won world titles in three weight divisions. “You’ll avoid a lot of trouble.”10

  In the peek-a-boo, however, a boxer stood with his gloves cupped around his face, his arms so close that his elbows were nearly touching. This created a kind of shield that the boxer could use to block punches. “I call it a tight defense,” D’Amato said. “It enables you to move in aggressively without leaving any vulnerable openings.”11 But for the stance to be effective, the peek-a-boo fighter stood squared up to his opponent, and even D’Amato admitted that throwing blows with power from this position was a challenge. He also recognized that a peek-a-boo fighter always faced risks when battling a boxer with a good uppercut.

  Whatever the peek-a-boo’s drawbacks, D’Amato and Lavelle began training Patterson to use the stance to protect himself in the ring. It proved effective, enough so that they planned to enter Floyd, who in recent months had filled out to become a 160-pound middleweight, in the premier East Coast amateur boxing competition, the 1951 New York Golden Gloves championships, his losing amateur record be damned.

  The Gloves tournament was the brainchild of New York Daily News sports editor Paul Gallico, and had been around for nearly twenty-five years. It proved popular, and other cities began sponsoring their own Gloves competitions. These amateur showcases had become spawning grounds for future professional world champions like Barney Ross, Leo Rodak, Ezzard Charles, Joey Maxim, Harold Dade, and Wallace “Bud” Smith. In 1951 sixteen-year-old Floyd dreamed that his name might be added to the list. The New York tournament’s finals occurred at the nation’s top boxing venue: Madison Square Garden. This third incarnation of the Garden stood at Fiftieth Street and Eighth Avenue, and fighting there was every up-and-coming New York boxer’s dream. Two of Patterson’s boxing heroes, Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, each fought more than ten pro bouts there. When Patterson walked under the Garden’s famous marquee and saw “Golden Gloves” spelled out on it, he must have known he was entering boxing’s big time.

  But just how well he might do was in question, given his poor amateur record. As it turned out, Lavelle and D’Amato’s peek-a-boo strategy worked. It was in the 1951 New York Golden Gloves that Patterson first proved himself to be a boxer likely to have a gilded future. He won his first four fights with surprising ease. “I was credited with two third-round technical knockouts when the referee stopped my first two bouts of the tournament to save my opponents from further punishment,” Floyd said.12 The next two fights ended even faster. Then, on February 19, 1951, he faced Richie Hill, a Police Athletic League fighter, for the New York middleweight championship. A crowd of 12,233 gathered in the Garden to watch, including the mayor, the police commissioner, the district attorney, and former world heavyweight champ Gene Tunney. The bout went the distance. After the final bell, the decision was announced and Floyd Patterson was New York’s middleweight Golden Gloves champion.

  Patterson scarcely had time to celebrate. As the city’s middleweight champ, he qualified to take part in the Eastern Golden Gloves championships. On February 28, winners of elimination fights held earlier in various cities in the East and Puerto Rico battled at Madison Square Garden. Patterson displayed ever-growing confidence and boxing skills in the Eastern Golden Gloves, even winning one fight with just three punches thrown during the first twenty-two seconds. In the three-round Garden final, he decisioned John Gibson from Syracuse to claim his second amateur title. This win set him up to compete for what was essentially the national amateur crown.

  The Intercity Golden Gloves Tournament pitted winners from the Eastern tournament (the New York team) against the winners from the Western tournament (the Chicago team). By 1951, a bitter rivalry existed between the two squads. That year, they clashed in New York, with the finals at Madison Square Garden scheduled for M
arch 19. Patterson and the other New York winners traveled upstate to train at Bear Mountain Inn on the Hudson River before returning home to fight their rivals.

  Floyd went into the tournament with good press behind him. Writers were impressed by his speed, power, and toughness—and especially by his left hook, a power shot he threw while lunging. The Lowell (MA) Sun called Patterson “one of the best men on the East’s team.”13 He was favored to win, but he faced one of the best boxers ever to compete in the Golden Gloves, Richard Guerrero. About five years older than Patterson, Guerrero was a local legend in Chicago. He had already claimed two lightweight championships in 1948 and ’49 in the New York–Chicago rivalry, and after skipping the 1950 Golden Gloves he had moved up to middleweight, hoping to become the first fighter in Gloves history to win three titles. Guerrero fought as a southpaw, which was always a challenge for a right-hander like Patterson.