Floyd Patterson

by W. K. Stratton

  The visit helped energize Floyd. Sportswriters in town to cover the fight were impressed by his workouts. The consensus among them was that he looked sharper than at any time since the fight with Moore in 1956. “Patterson gave [sparring partner Ike] Thomas a hard body pumping in Sunday’s workout,” wrote an Associated Press reporter. “He floored him once with a quick left-right combination and then with a hard left hook to the jaw.”27 It seemed likely that London would be in for a hard night. In spite of D’Amato’s fears about the lack of publicity, ticket sales turned out to be brisk. About ten thousand fans filed into Indianapolis’s Fairgrounds Coliseum, expecting to see Floyd knock out London in his warm-up for the real fight with Johansson to take place six weeks later. Johansson himself was among the VIPs seated at ringside.

  But Floyd wound up fighting methodically at best against London, showing little inspiration through the first ten rounds. It was just enough to keep him ahead on the judges’ scorecards. Finally, early in the eleventh, Patterson went into full attack mode, delivering a flurry of hard punches topped by a devastating left hook. London went down with a thud, quivered on his back, and then rolled over to kiss the canvas, as an old trainer might say. London remained motionless for more than thirty seconds after the referee signaled him out.

  Once London’s handlers were finally able to get him back on his feet, Patterson raced across the ring and hugged his vanquished foe. Time magazine dismissed the fight as comic opera, “a tea-and-cakes farce from the beginning.”28 At ringside, Johansson was baffled by what he’d just witnessed. Why had Floyd taken so long to end the fight? Why did he hug London afterward? What was up with this guy? He shrugged it off and traveled back to Sweden, never guessing that he was about to enter one of the most celebrated rivalries boxing has known.

  8

  Lightning and Toonder

  AT EHSAN KARADAG’S TRAINING facilities in Summit, New Jersey, Floyd felt confident that he would perform better against Johansson than he had against London. In fact, he even quantified it: he’d be 50 percent better at their Yankee Stadium title fight on June 26, 1959. What that meant was anyone’s guess. Did he expect to knock out Johansson in five rounds instead of the eleven it had taken him to floor London? Patterson had less than two months to prepare, but he had never been in better physical condition, so that wasn’t too much of a worry. To ensure that Floyd had the mental toughness he needed, D’Amato put him through more than five hundred sparring rounds, forcing Floyd to keep battling after he felt spent, no pulling punches. Partners left the ring with bloodied noses, blackened eyes, and sore torsos. The undefeated Johansson was a bruiser, and Floyd would have to hurt him to win. And so the sparring-ring carnage mounted.

  When it was finished each day, Floyd retired to the most austere of accommodations. “The single room in which I slept,” he said, “was only a couple of nails above a squatter’s shack . . . It is a hard business.”1 But Johansson didn’t see much that was hard about it. Not in the way he approached it, at any rate. While Floyd practiced self-denial in New Jersey, Johansson lived the high life at a resort hotel in the Catskills known as Grossinger’s. It was a training camp the likes of which no one had ever seen. Johansson had hired Whitey Bimstein to act as his American trainer. Bimstein’s cornerman pedigree went back to Gene Tunney and beyond, but Bimstein was unable to impose any old-school discipline on Ingo, as Johansson was popularly called, an imperious man, not one to forgo life’s pleasures. Johansson’s notion of training was playing golf, riding horses, and swimming. He made frequent trips to New York for entertainment, taking in the comedians appearing at the Terrace Room and going dancing. He imported a chef from a world-class ski lodge to prepare his meals. His parents, his sister, his brother, and his brother’s fiancée were enjoying the good life with him in the United States. As was one Birgit Lundgren, a Swedish beauty who captivated the press covering Johansson’s camp. About to make the transition from his “secretary” to his fiancée, she appeared everywhere with him, nuzzling his ear, fondling his arm, staring into his deep blue eyes. It was clear to everyone who witnessed it that much more than ear nuzzling occurred when the couple were alone in Johansson’s room.2 Rocky Marciano was among the many appalled by the spectacle.

  Could any two boxers be more different? It hardly seemed so. And yet the two men shared one thing: neither had ever wanted to be anything but a successful prizefighter.

  Johansson believed he was born to be a boxer. He had watched prizefighting for the first time at age twelve. Standing at the top of a Swedish Masshäll, looking down at the spectacle, he was immediately taken by it all—the whole atmosphere of the thing, from the boxers themselves to the colorful characters outside the ring. After that, boxing was all the Swedish working-class kid could think about. He was a big, strong boy, with a physique that set him apart from his classmates. At age thirteen, he already weighed 141 pounds. A little more than two years later, he was fighting as a heavyweight. He looked to a fellow Swede named Olle Bengtsson—the first boxer he knew by name—as a role model. Bengtsson was a crowd favorite in the small Swedish venues where he boxed, fair-haired, wearing a gold vest and black trunks. And, more important: Bengtsson seemed to always knock out his opponent. Inspired by Bengtsson, Johansson began training in earnest. Eventually he sparred with Bengtsson and discovered that he could supply the older, more experienced fighter with all he could handle.

  After finishing school, Johansson knocked around, working various odd jobs at the Gotëborg harbor, portering bananas, wrestling sacks, sweeping snow. Then he went to work for Edwin Ahlquist’s dockside company. That changed Ingo’s life. Ahlquist was a familiar face in Swedish boxing circles, such as they were. Because of its violence, pro boxing was controversial in Sweden, and politicians debated outlawing it. But Ahlquist loved prizefighting, and, like Cus D’Amato, dreamed of taking a heavyweight prospect all the way to a championship title. His attempts at developing a contender had been disappointing.

  Ahlquist knew about Johansson’s fighting ability before Ingo came to work for him. He saw Ingo in action during amateur fights at Gotëborg’s Lorensbergs Circus, where he witnessed for the first time Ingo’s powerful right-hand punches. He saw one such blow connect with the chin of an older boxer. Abruptly the other man was out. Not staggered, but completely knocked out. Impressed, Ahlquist introduced himself to the fourteen-year-old Ingo. A few years later, after Johansson began working for Ahlquist on the docks, he began managing Ingo’s boxing career. Time after time, Ahlquist witnessed Ingo’s dispatching other boxers with that nearly mystical right, and he began to think that he might have found a ticket to the heavyweight title.

  As an amateur, Ingo became a phenomenon in Sweden and, to a lesser extent, internationally. He awed Chicago fight fans in 1951 when he visited with a troupe of European amateurs to battle the city’s Golden Gloves champs, and he enjoyed positive write-ups in the Chicago papers. Yet, on the same tour, he left an entirely different impression on fans in Washington, DC. Claiming his hand hurt, he refused to take part in the amateur bouts scheduled for the Swedish boxers in the nation’s capital. An American official said that Ingo had to fight, at least make a show of it for one round before withdrawing. Ingo refused. Swedish boxing writers were outraged as well. They accused Ingo of faking his injury because he was afraid to box the American scheduled for him, Norvel Lee. Johansson stood his ground. In boxing, he said later, you have to learn “to stand up against a campaign of backbiting, threats, and slanders.”3 He didn’t care if he developed a reputation as a fistic prima donna for doing so.

  Regardless of what happened in Washington, Johansson seemed likely to be a serious contender for the 1952 Olympic gold medal as a heavyweight. He qualified to be a member of Sweden’s team. Reluctantly. He viewed the Olympics as something he had to endure before he could begin fighting for money, which was his ultimate goal. But he felt pressured by Ahlquist and others to take part in the Helsinki games. He went into camp out of shape and feuded with trainers who attemp
ted to remedy that. “I was regarded by people who never boxed and don’t understand boxing as lazy and unwilling to train,” he said. “I never do well if I’m messed about in this way—it has never suited me.”4

  As Floyd spent his free time in Helsinki smuggling food to the city’s impoverished, Johansson spent his at a Finnish golf course. Meanwhile the luck of the draw worked to Ingo’s advantage in the heavyweight boxing brackets. He made it to the medal round, hardly working up a sweat against the less-than-stellar Olympians he met in the ring. But in the finals, he had to box the counterpunching American Ed Sanders, a talented amateur who seemed to have a future as a pro fighter.5 Patterson sat at ringside to cheer on his fellow American Olympian. He watched as Johansson rather shamelessly ran from Sanders in the ring. The crowd hooted its disapproval, and the referee warned Johansson for failing to fight. But Ingo continued to try to evade Sanders. Finally, the referee ended the match and disqualified Johansson. Under normal circumstances, the loser of the championship round would have received the silver medal. But because of the disqualification, the Olympic committee declined to give it to Johansson. The other Swedish boxers did nothing to disguise their disgust at their teammate. Floyd, the patriotic American boxer, could not fathom what he’d just witnessed. To his mind, an Olympic boxer was a representative of his nation. How could Johansson have let down his country this way? Floyd was certain that Johansson had performed the way he did because he was scared of Sanders.

  But once he became a pro immediately after the Helsinki games, Johansson redeemed himself somewhat to European boxing fans as he notched win after win. His strong right hand grew even more effective, becoming one of the most devastating right-hand punches heavyweight boxing has ever known. Most of his ring opponents never saw it coming and never had a chance to react. Except for that one lightning-fast punch, he had no ring speed. In fact, he looked rather awkward when he fought. His jab was substandard, but Johansson felt no need to improve it, since all his moves were subservient to his nearly supernatural—at least in Ingo’s mind—right hand. Johansson just let it fly, investing full faith in the punch to the exclusion of almost everything else in terms of technique. Eventually it even gained a name. It flew with the power of lightning and thunder, which came out as toonder when Johansson pronounced it with his Swedish accent.

  Floyd discounted the mystique that Ahlquist and Johansson built up around the toonder. What kind of malarkey was that? A punch so fast it couldn’t be seen? A punch that supposedly acted on its own, striking without Johansson even knowing he was throwing it? Ridiculous. “I don’t want to hear about Johansson’s right hand,” Patterson told Al Buck of the New York Post. “I wouldn’t want to be watching the right and get knocked out by a left hook.”6 The more Patterson thought about the fear he’d seen in Johansson’s eyes in Helsinki and the absurd legend that had been built up around his right hand, the less respect he felt for the Swedish challenger. As the bout approached, Patterson felt himself getting bored and losing enthusiasm for the fight.

  The people surrounding Floyd had no idea what was going through his mind; as often was the case, he kept his thoughts buried within himself. To boxing writers he looked sharp and seemed to have an appropriate mental edge. But deep down, Patterson just wanted to get the fight over and move on to the next one. He and his entourage motored from his camp in New Jersey to Manhattan, where he put up at the Edison Hotel. The weigh-in for the fight occurred on a rainy June 25 across town at the Commodore Hotel. With dozens of sportswriters looking on, Patterson tipped the scales at 182 pounds; Johansson, at 196 pounds. Patterson didn’t dawdle afterward to talk to the press. He changed into his street clothes and hurried out to a waiting car, Cus D’Amato, Dan Florio, and the other members of his party trailing him. “Drive downtown on Third Avenue,” Patterson said, “and then go east on Fourth Street.”

  “What’s this?” D’Amato said.

  “I’m late now.”

  “Late for what?”

  “The graduation.”7

  Patterson had made it a point to return to the PS 614 graduation ever since he had received his own diploma from the school for troubled kids. He hadn’t missed a single ceremony, and he wasn’t going to miss that day’s, never mind that he was scheduled that night to face the toughest opponent yet to challenge him for his heavyweight crown. The ceremony had already begun by the time Patterson rushed into the school. But he was able to present the Floyd Patterson Trophy for sportsmanship, and he went through the lunch line with the other boys—the principal ensured he received an extra carton of milk.

  After that, the entourage returned to the Edison, where word awaited them that the rain had forced the promoters to delay the outdoor fight at Yankee Stadium by a day. Patterson, more anxious than ever to get the fight into the record book, felt deflated. It rained the next day as well, letting up just an hour before the evening of fights was set to begin. Everything was drenched in the famed stadium, and the air was muggy, but the promoters decided not to delay again. Promoter Bill Rosensohn had Yankee Stadium set up to accommodate 80,000 spectators. Seats were expensive, too, with ringside going for $100 a pop. But just 21,961 people braved the humid night. After arriving in the Bronx and getting to his dressing room in the soggy House That Ruth Built, Patterson still felt bored, missing his usual prefight edge.

  Johansson was in an entirely different state of mind.

  He had little respect for Patterson as a champion, outside of the difficulty Patterson presented with his unorthodox peek-a-boo style and his hand speed. Johansson believed that Patterson was no more than an overachieving light-heavyweight. Ingo disdained Patterson for so seldom defending his crown and for the quality of his challengers, and he could not fathom that the heavyweight champion of the world allowed himself to be knocked down as much as Patterson did. If other fighters could floor Floyd, so could Johansson. And his toonder was much more powerful than any weapon Patterson’s other challengers possessed. After watching Patterson fight London in Indianapolis, Johansson told Ahlquist in private that he could knock out the champion of the world. Ahlquist thought the same thing but told Johansson not to mention a word of it to anyone. It was their little secret to keep.

  And the secret remained a secret. Certainly no one in the press picked up on it. Jimmy Cannon suggested that the United Nations should step in to prevent Patterson from slaughtering Johansson, a fighter he considered no better than Brian London, Pete Rademacher, or Roy Harris. Johansson discounted whatever Cannon and the rest of the American press had to say about him. He believed the writers were unfriendly to him because he refused to bow down to Americans and their belief that he didn’t train with the seriousness the writers thought worthy of a world champion. Johansson would read accounts of his frolicking with Birgit Lundgren in a pool or dancing in New York City nightclubs and shake his head. The American press simply didn’t understand him or his ways. He had been confident at the weigh-in, and he was confident, relaxed, and cheerful on the night of the fight.

  In the makeshift canvas-walled dressing room set up for Johansson beneath the boxing stage,8 he put on his trunks and listened while Dan Florio’s brother, Nick, representing the Patterson camp, complained that Johansson’s beltline was too high. Whitey Bimstein dismissed the complaint and sent Floyd’s man packing. It was the typical sort of sniping that went on before boxing matches. When the time came, Johansson climbed into the ring to enthusiastic applause, which surprised him, given what he’d read about himself in the papers. When Patterson, as champion, entered the ring, Johansson noticed that the applause was scarcely, if any, greater than he himself had received. Perhaps it was an omen.

  Referee Ruby Goldstein called the two fighters to the center of the ring and recited the rules of the fight. Johansson didn’t listen. He was too busy testing his footing on the ring’s odd canvas-covered foam rubber mat. Patterson stood head bowed, looking at Johansson’s shuffling feet. By this point in his career, Floyd avoided stare-downs with his adversaries. In fact,
he could not even bring himself to look them in the eye in the moments leading up to the first round. How could he be expected to demolish another fighter after he’d seen the light in his eyes?

  Watching from the press seats was a toupeed attorney from Brooklyn who’d given up practicing law in order to forge a most unlikely career as a sports broadcaster. Howard Cosell was making his debut anchoring an ABC Radio Network broadcast of a heavyweight championship fight to a national audience. Five years earlier, Cosell had been a complete boxing novice. But then he’d been introduced to Cus D’Amato through W. C. Heinz, whom Cosell regarded as the best boxing writer he’d ever read. Thus began Cosell’s association with prizefighting. By 1959, Cosell counted D’Amato and Patterson among his friends: “I became absorbed with Floyd—with his personal life, his softness, both of manner and voice, the way he would express interest in a variety of things—religion, family, hobbies. He converted to Catholicism and seemed utterly at peace with himself. He was that way then as a fighter. ‘If Cus says I can win, then I can win,’ he would say.”9 Cosell spent hours with D’Amato and Patterson at their training camps and at the Gramercy Gym, and though he had yet to broadcast a fight live, he covered many of Patterson’s bouts as an ABC sports reporter, including Floyd’s triumph over Archie Moore in Chicago.