Floyd Patterson

by W. K. Stratton

  Legend has it that Patterson carried a grudge against Harold Valan for years. Such was not the case. Charles Valan, Harold’s son, said that his father and Patterson actually dealt with each other amiably in the years after the fight: “Floyd Patterson was always a gentleman and understood that boxing is a judgment sport and the referee goes by what he sees in the ring. I have had the opportunity to view the fight and am amazed at how one-sided the crew of ABC were and how from the start they favored Floyd.”26

  Cosell no doubt believed Floyd had every right to be angry at Valan. The sportscaster was growing weary of what he believed was Floyd’s perfect-gentleman act. “There is no question that this posture continually appealed to the public . . . ,” Cosell said. “But equally in my mind there had been no question it was a posture, and this was confirmed for me forevermore in 1968 . . . It was exactly what the fans wanted to hear, and Floyd instinctively knew it. He always did know how to appeal to the public.” Cosell eventually dismissed Floyd as a fighter “whose career had been a fantasy.”27 Cosell’s gift for hyperbole was clear when he made that statement—Floyd’s career was far from a fantasy, and Cosell had to know that. But, in fact, Cosell was finished with Patterson, in spite of their earlier close relationship. Floyd had become yesterday’s news to Cosell, who by this time had inextricably wed his career to Muhammad Ali. Ali was brash, hip, part of the baby boomer generation. Floyd was none of these things. Patterson could no longer be of benefit to Howard Cosell.

  At the end of 1968, Floyd fired Julius November as his attorney. November, Patterson said, had made four large investments of Patterson’s money, all of which had failed. Patterson said he was suing November for a full accounting of his money. With November now gone, all of Floyd’s old entourage had fallen by the wayside. Floyd plodded onward to whatever inevitability awaited him.

  Floyd fought ten more times over the next four years, but none of the bouts were title shots. They were just paydays. Floyd might have been only a shadow of the boxer he’d been at his peak, but as a man, he had not lost the capacity to surprise people he met along the way. In May 1971 he battled Terry Daniels. Daniels’s cornerman that night was Doug Lord, a Dallas-based trainer and manager who’d earlier guided Curtis Cokes to the world welterweight title. Patterson won a unanimous decision. After the fight, Floyd found Lord and asked if he would mind staying up to talk for a while. Patterson didn’t feel like sleeping just yet. Lord said he’d be glad to. He accompanied Patterson to the apartment where Floyd was staying while in Cleveland for the fight. Patterson introduced him to Janet and the couple’s two small daughters, Jennifer and Janene. Once Janet and the girls retired, Lord and Patterson began talking and continued to do so until dawn. The conversation centered around Terry Daniels’s ring possibilities. Patterson was certain that Daniels had no chance to win the championship, but he was also convinced that Daniels could make some money out of boxing if he handled his career the right way, and Floyd shared his opinions about how that could happen. After dawn, Lord left the apartment amazed. In all his years in boxing, he had never met an opposing boxer who wanted to talk the night away after a fight.28

  In 1972 Floyd was thirty-seven, well beyond the typical retirement age for most boxers of the time; Rocky Marciano retired at thirty-two, for instance. Yet Floyd kept on fighting. Nine months after the Daniels fight, Patterson took on Argentinean Oscar “Ringo” Bonavena, a heavyweight whose career was both colorful and controversial. Bonavena had emerged as one of the division’s top contenders. He was the first boxer to knock down Joe Frazier. The Ring editor Nat Fleischer called Bonavena the most powerful fighter he’d ever seen. Bonavena used that power to defeat contenders like George Chuvalo, Zora Folley, and Karl Mildenberger. In December 1970 Bonavena gave Muhammad Ali (back in the ring after his three-year banishment) a very tough fight for the North American Boxing Federation’s heavyweight title. Ali won the bout, but it took him fifteen rounds to do so. Bonavena was a born brawler, and his passion for fisticuffs was not confined to the ring. Once, Bud Shrake traveled to Argentina to profile Bonavena for Sports Illustrated. The piece was never finished because Argentinean authorities mistook Shrake for a political opponent of the regime then in power and jailed him. While he was there, though, Shrake was able to see Bonavena in action on the Buenos Aires streets. One night Ringo, given the nickname because of his Beatles-like haircut, abruptly floored a man. When Shrake asked him why he’d done it, Bonavena explained that the man was standing where he wanted to stand.29

  Bonavena was the clear favorite going up against Patterson, a hellion with the capacity to rough up the older boxer. “The ghost of Floyd Patterson walked in Madison Square Garden last night,” said Red Smith of the February 1972 fight, “and the sad part of it was that the ghost won. Looking no more like a two-time champion of the world than one would expect of a thirty-seven-year-old in his twentieth year as a professional fist fighter, Patterson still had enough to win a unanimous decision in ten rounds with rough, inept Oscar Bonavena.”30 The 17,958 fans present were euphoric about the decision. Although, as Smith mused, some must have had misgivings about the outcome, because it would encourage Patterson to keep fighting. Patterson had let it be known that he wanted a fight with Joe Frazier. But such a contest was not in the works. Instead, Patterson would get one more shot at Muhammad Ali.

  As he was training for his September 1972 match with Ali, Patterson took a break to make another visit to the White House, this time to meet with a Republican president, Richard Nixon. Over the previous ten years, the United States had changed greatly on the political front. Floyd had changed little. In the early 1960s, the Left had embraced Kennedy’s military action in Vietnam, which Floyd supported. By 1972, liberals had turned against Vietnam. But Floyd continued to support American involvement. In the early 1960s, the Left dismissed radical organizations like the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers. But by the early 1970s these groups had gained credibility among liberals. Not so with Floyd, however. Many on the Left accepted Muhammad Ali’s jabs that Floyd was just an Uncle Tom. So, largely abandoned by liberals, Floyd had no qualms about meeting with the politician who stood as their fiercest bogeyman. Nixon, facing reelection in November, no doubt welcomed the opportunity to meet with a high-profile African American like Patterson; few black voters supported the president. By the time of their meeting—just past noon on August 8, 1972—Nixon hardly needed to fear losing the election to George McGovern. Yet, as the Watergate episode proved, Nixon was not one to take any election for granted.

  So Patterson and his wife and their two daughters appeared at the White House for what was essentially a photo opportunity. The meeting between the president and the former heavyweight champion lasted just seven minutes, sandwiched between other meetings on a busy White House calendar. Nixon was awkward during the session, as he usually was in situations that required small talk. He called Patterson “champ” and attempted to chat with the Patterson daughters: “All little girls are shy.” Floyd and Nixon talked a bit about Clifford Evans, a longtime reporter and Nixon friend. Then, surprisingly, Nixon blurted out that he’d never seen a prizefight. “I mean, I’ve followed professional sports for many, many years,” Nixon said. But the president did manage to talk a bit about Archie Moore and Joe Louis. Nixon wound down their brief conversation by telling Patterson he’d been a “great credit to the sport.”31 Patterson and his family departed, and Nixon returned to matters of state. If Patterson’s first visit to the Oval Office a decade earlier had been big news, this visit was anticlimactic and, ultimately, meaningless. No one in the press cared much about it. Boxing was slipping in importance as a sport, and as the years progressed, presidents would find little to value in a professional fighter visiting the Oval Office. Floyd was one of the last to do so, although the sensational champion Manny Pacquiao received a White House invitation to meet with President Barack Obama in February 2011, reviving the practice of Oval Office visits by boxers.

  Ali’s return to boxing had been
nothing short of remarkable. While his draft-evasion conviction worked its way through appeals courts, efforts began to find an American location that would be willing to host an Ali fight. Finally, in 1970, the city of Atlanta granted him a license to box. A match was made with Jerry Quarry, which Ali won in three rounds. Shortly thereafter, the New York State Supreme Court lifted Ali’s ban from boxing. Allowed to fight in New York once more, Ali eventually signed to fight Joe Frazier for the world heavyweight championship. Hyped as the “fight of the century,” the Madison Square Garden contest occurred on March 8, 1971.32 Though Ali dominated the first three rounds, Frazier took command of the fight, knocked Ali down in the final round, and won a solid unanimous decision. Ali put together seven victories in a row following his loss to Frazier. Yet another title shot for Ali seemed remote at the time. And Floyd had been written off as a potential champion long ago.

  So Ali-Patterson II was greeted by yawns at best from the moment it was announced. Fans expecting histrionics from Ali were disappointed. The press conference at which the contract was signed was a subdued affair, with Murray Chass of the New York Times writing that Ali acted as if he’d just finished a dual course with Amy Vanderbilt and Dale Carnegie. In fact, Ali used the occasion to show his respect for Patterson. “I thought he was finished,” Ali said. “But like a ghost, he keeps coming back. It’s something to see him still going like he is. He came back after Johansson, he came back after Liston, he came back after Quarry, he came back after me. Now he’s in the lights of Madison Square Garden again.

  “If Floyd Patterson whups me, Joe Frazier will look like nothing to him. Floyd Patterson is a better boxer than Frazier. He’s a scientific boxer. He’d be like a schoolteacher to Frazier.”

  Even the old issue surrounding Ali’s name failed to provoke him. “He still says Clay,” Ali said, “but I can’t even get mad at him, he’s so nice. Everybody else calls me Muhammad and he calls me Clay. He’s the only one who can get away with it.”33

  Oddsmakers wouldn’t even touch the contest. They provided no betting line on the fight, a rarity in the world of betting. In at least one influential corner, though, Ali’s making a match with Patterson elicited outrage. Howard Cosell went on the air to say the fight should not be sanctioned. Not only was Patterson beyond his prime, Cosell said, but even in his prime, Patterson was no match for Ali. Cosell reiterated his long-held belief that their first fight lasted as long as it did only because Ali had carried Patterson.

  Madison Square Garden used Cosell’s remarks as part of its PR campaign for Ali-Patterson II: Patterson intended to “show the Cosells of the world.”34 Ali predicted that the fight would go all the way, last all twelve rounds. But surely few of the 17,378 who showed up at the Garden actually bought into that, even though they did give more cheers to Patterson than they did to The Greatest.

  The genial nature of the prefight activities could be explained, at least in part, by the reason the fight even took place. Much was made in the prefight publicity about how Patterson had earned $8 million in the ring, which was more than any other boxer in history had earned up to that point. Speculation held that he’d managed to keep up to $4 million of that, which was certainly a sizable fortune by 1972 standards. But the reality was that Patterson was anything but rich at the time, a fact that shocked Cosell when he learned about it.

  In a private conversation between Ali and Cosell, Ali promised he would not harm his old boyhood hero in the ring. He said he had agreed to the fight only to help Floyd out. Patterson needed money, Ali told Cosell. Cosell found that hard to believe, given Floyd’s reputation for managing his money well. “No,” Ali said. “His taxes were all mixed up and the Internal Revenue has got all of it.”35 Surprised by this revelation, Cosell contacted Bob Arum, Ali’s tax attorney at the time and later famous as a fight promoter. Arum confirmed to Cosell what Ali had said: Patterson was broke. The bout was built on Ali’s desire to help Patterson—not exactly a situation that would boil the blood of either combatant.

  Ali outweighed Patterson by almost thirty pounds. Compared to the Ali of the 1960s, the Ali of the early 1970s looked overstuffed and wooden, his footwork significantly slower than it was at his prime. Still, Floyd was no match for him. There was one key blow, a sixth-round straight right that ripped open a deep cut above Patterson’s left eye. Patterson somehow hung on for the rest of the round and through the next one, although wobbly with blurry vision. The fight doctor examined Patterson and decided he should not continue. Referee Arthur Mercante awarded Ali a seventh-round knockout.

  Afterward, Ali insisted to reporters that Patterson was a better fighter now than he’d been seven years earlier when the two fought for the first time. The judges’ scorecards had given some of the early rounds to Patterson. Still, Patterson looked like a used-up boxer. If he won some of the early rounds, it was due more to Ali’s own lackadaisical performance than to any dominance on Patterson’s part. The whole affair ended with an air “more conducive to pathos than a prizefight,” in the words of sportswriter Dave Anderson.36 But the fight accomplished what its enablers set out to do in the first place: Ali took a step toward regaining his lost title, and Patterson took home a generous purse for a one-time great now on his last legs—$100,000 guaranteed against 20 percent of the total receipts.

  Afterward, Floyd had little meaningful to say about his future. He retreated to the upstate New York home he shared with Janet and went into training, as always, though he had no matches lined up. “The thing about Floyd,” said veteran New York sportswriter Vic Ziegel, “is that he never exactly retired. He just stopped fighting. For years people kept waiting to see if he would box again.”37

  Patterson did, in fact, come close to boxing once more. Five years after battling Ali at the Garden, Ali’s people approached him about the possibility of yet another rematch. Ali had regained the title in 1974. But by 1977, Ali, a bloated parody of “The Greatest” of all time, desperately needed a fight against a challenger who was unlikely to give him too hard a time in the ring. Floyd, now in his forties, just might fit the bill. But in the end, Floyd said no. Ali instead fought Leon Spinks, an Olympic champion with just seven pro fights behind him—and he failed to win one of those. It was reminiscent of Patterson-Rademacher, with one huge difference: Spinks rather easily defeated Ali.

  The handful of people who knew about Ali’s offer to Patterson had to sit back and marvel about the fight’s outcome. What if Floyd had agreed to battle Ali? What if Floyd instead of Spinks had been the one to emerge victorious? If that had happened, Floyd would have become both the youngest and the oldest man to win the championship, not to mention the first man to win the title three times.38 But it was all only the stuff of dreams and speculation.

  Floyd’s battles in the ring were behind him.

  Floyd’s career may have ended, but he never left boxing. Like Voltaire’s Candide, he settled in to “cultivate his garden.” Floyd’s garden was New Paltz, less than fifteen miles from Wiltwyck, in the Hudson Valley region that Patterson considered a kind of paradise. He opened the gym on his property to other fighters and began training boxing prospects from the area. All sorts of people worked out at his gym, but Floyd focused his efforts on teenagers, especially those who were poor or troubled—in his own way, carrying on the legacy of Wiltwyck. He attempted to instill in the kids the old-fashioned virtues he valued: He did not drink or take drugs. He was committed to fitness, as he had been throughout his boxing career. He ran with a passion, becoming a marathoner. The boxers he trained also logged many miles. In the gym, he sparred with the kids himself, often more than twenty rounds a day. Floyd didn’t even bother to wrap his hands. He just slipped on some old gloves and climbed into the ring.39

  In 1979 Floyd’s belief that boxing could redeem a kid with troubles led him and Janet to adopt one of the boys who showed up at the gym, Tracy Harris. Tracy was fourteen at the time and had been training at Floyd’s gym since he was eleven. Floyd was forty-four at the time, perhaps a lit
tle old to be adopting a boy Tracy’s age. But Patterson imparted all the fighting knowledge he could to his adopted son, and Tracy thrived in the ring with Floyd as his manager. Fighting as Tracy Harris Patterson, he won two New York Golden Gloves titles before turning pro in 1985. In 1992 Tracy became a world champion, winning the International Boxing Federation’s super-featherweight title. It was a first in the world of boxing—a world-champion father who trained and managed a world-champion son.40 But the relationship between Floyd and Tracy deteriorated as Tracy questioned his father’s management decisions. Finally, Tracy split with Floyd, only to reconcile shortly before Floyd’s death.

  About the time Floyd and Janet adopted Tracy, Floyd was making amends with the man who had been something of a surrogate father to him thirty years earlier. After he left the city, Cus D’Amato had settled in Catskill, New York, not far from Floyd’s home in New Paltz. The two men began to see each other at amateur boxing events and over time started to warm to each other. In 1985 Cus’s health declined, and Patterson went to visit his old manager as D’Amato lay dying of pneumonia in a New York City hospital. During a bedside confession, Floyd finally told D’Amato that it had been the Jim Jacobs television deal that caused him to make the final break with Cus. Floyd said he believed at the time that Cus had betrayed him. D’Amato looked relieved once he heard the explanation. “It’s all right, Floyd,” the old man said. A week later, D’Amato was dead. Floyd thereafter said that firing Cus was the biggest mistake he’d made.41

  Floyd had no compelling reason to rekindle any sort of relationship with Ingemar Johansson. Ingo had said many negative things about Patterson during the time of their rivalry. But the 1980s found Johansson on hard times. He had fallen out of the limelight, had been through a divorce, and had allowed his money to slip away. Ingo lived in a run-down Florida motel he operated with his son, far from the life of lobster and champagne he’d known as heavyweight champ. No longer a pretty boy, Johansson weighed more than 300 pounds. Floyd reconnected with Ingo, and the two men developed into fast friends. Patterson encouraged Johansson to take up running to get back in shape, and Floyd and Ingo made news when they ran in a marathon together. Even after Johansson returned to Sweden, he and Floyd made transatlantic flights to visit each other.