Perhaps it was Patterson’s Catholic faith that compelled him to reach out to those who had offended him the most. Without question, he was devout. He became a Eucharistic minister, giving Communion to New Paltz shut-ins. He was a mainstay in the town’s Knights of Columbus activities as well. As a Christian, Floyd found it important to present himself as a decent person. At times, during his boxing career, an air of penitence seemed to hang around him. Howard Cosell, for one, thought it was a fraud designed to win Floyd public approval. But it persisted after Patterson left the ring, which suggests it was not an act. Floyd’s finances during his years in New Paltz were often tight, contrary to what sports columnists reported, in large part because of his generosity. “Floyd never could say no to a cause he thought was worthy,” said his longtime upstate friend Bill O’Hare.42
Floyd had to feel fortunate as the years passed by when he compared his own life to the fates of some of his rivals: Sonny Liston died in Las Vegas with heroin in his blood. Eddie Machen was sleepwalking when he fell to his death in San Francisco. Tommy “Hurricane” Jackson became a cab driver and died from injuries inflicted when he was struck by a car as he washed his taxi. Jerry Quarry died of dementia pugilistica, a malady boxers can develop from taking too many blows to the head. Oscar Bonavena was shot to death after engaging in an affair with the wife of the owner of a Nevada brothel. Jimmy Ellis was spotted aimlessly wandering the streets of Louisville, another victim of dementia pugilistica. Floyd’s great rival Johansson wound up spending months in a Swedish nursing home before he died of either Alzheimer’s disease or dementia pugilistica or both. Muhammad Ali lived on, eventually settling in Arizona, but Parkinson’s disease, which he undoubtedly developed after taking too many blows to the head, had largely silenced the Marvelous Mouth.
For years, it seemed that Floyd would escape such a destiny. He served twice on the New York State Athletic Commission, the last time as chairman. During his term as chairman, however, it became apparent that Floyd was experiencing some sort of mental decline. Thomas Hauser, an attorney and author, spoke to Patterson at a reception in 1995. Hauser had interviewed Patterson for a Muhammad Ali biography a few years earlier, but Floyd seemed to have changed between the time of the interview and the night of the reception. “Floyd had become one of those guys who could talk about things that happened years ago but couldn’t remember what he ate for breakfast,” Hauser said.43 Hauser believed that as time went on, the athletic commission office functioned incompetently because of Floyd’s diminished state.44
Floyd’s cognitive difficulties became painfully apparent in 1998. As the commission’s chairman, Patterson was giving a videotaped deposition concerning mixed martial arts contests, which were banned in New York at the time. As the attorneys representing the MMA interests grilled him, Floyd’s memory collapsed. Among other lapses, Patterson couldn’t remember beating Archie Moore for the championship in 1956. Floyd couldn’t even remember his secretary’s name. Patterson blamed his miserable performance on lack of sleep, but it was obviously something much more serious than that. The damage was done. Patterson had to resign his post. He retreated to New Paltz, where an Associated Press reporter tracked him down a few months later. Patterson refused to discuss the disastrous deposition with the reporter, “but his face crumples when the subject is raised. Friends say what hurts him the most is the feeling that he let the governor [conservative George Pataki, who appointed Floyd to the post] down.”45
Floyd steadily became further lost in dementia’s fog as the old millennium played out and the new one began. Prostate cancer also afflicted him. The old champ who prided himself on being the boxer who got back on his feet more than any other was finally floored for good on May 11, 2006. He was seventy-one years old.
Patterson’s death received significant coverage. Most accounts eulogized him as a gentleman in a sport in which gentlemen are rare indeed, noted the rivalry with Ali, the Liston disasters, the triumph over Johansson. But some commentators mined his contributions more deeply. One was Gregory Kane, an African American sports columnist for the Baltimore Sun. Kane weighed in on the accusations that Floyd exhibited Uncle Tom–like behavior. He wrote that Patterson’s decision to fight Sonny Liston had showed he was “a man of integrity, not an Uncle Tom. It sounds like a man who would stand for what is right, not just what’s convenient. That sounds like a man we should have more of these days . . . I’d wager Ali appreciates him now.”46 Others argued that Patterson’s boxing skills were underappreciated, none more so than Floyd’s friend light-heavyweight champion José Torres, who said in an NPR interview, “You know, he knew that he was a good fighter, but he never spoke about it. And if he was champion, he had to know that he was the best.”47 The man who had to know he was the best was laid to rest in the New Paltz Rural Cemetery, his headstone engraved with “A Champion Always.”
Epilogue
Invisible Champion
ON A JULY NIGHT in 1997, over-the-hill former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes bested a little-known boxer with a checkered record named Maurice Harris. The fight meant little, but as chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, the governing body for the match, Floyd Patterson attended. Afterward, Floyd stepped out of Madison Square Garden and moved through the summer night toward a waiting automobile. Fans milling on the sidewalk quickly surrounded him, asking for autographs. Floyd, happy to be recognized, obliged, then climbed into the car. The fans dispersed, the last one calling out, “Good night, Mr. Patterson.” In his gentle voice, Floyd said, “Call me Floyd.” Then he sped off into the darkness.1 By the late 1990s, Floyd Patterson’s name was still familiar. As a trainer, manager, and commission member, he remained a public figure in the years after he stopped fighting. But certainly few people on that sidewalk knew much about his career, other than that he’d been one of Muhammad Ali’s foils. His achievements as a heavyweight title holder were lost to them. He was, for all practical purposes, an invisible champion.
Behind that cloak of invisibility lay the accomplishments of a significant American boxing champion. They included no small number of important firsts: For decades Patterson held the distinction of being the youngest heavyweight in history; he was the first to win the title twice; he fought in the first championship bout in Las Vegas, which shortly thereafter became the mecca of bigtime boxing; he was the first heavyweight with lightweight hand speed; he was the first world champion who trained and managed a world-champion son. Most important, he was the first black heavyweight champion to use the prestige of his title to speak out against bigotry and to demand that seating at his fights not be segregated by race.
In addition to those firsts, Patterson gave Archie Moore, one of boxing’s all-time greats, a sound thumping, and he defeated contenders like Eddie Machen, George Chuvalo, Henry Cooper, Roy “Cut ’n Shoot” Harris, Brian London, Tommy “Hurricane” Jackson, and Oscar Bonavena. Floyd likely should have been awarded victories over Joey Maxim and Jimmy Ellis, both world champions, and Jerry Quarry, a top contender, as well. Without question, Patterson was a solid champion. “Floyd, like Sonny [Liston],” said Sports Illustrated’s Mark Kram, “was the real thing. No stranger or more interesting figure ever worked the landscape of sports.”2 The “stranger” aspect of Floyd’s career came to overshadow all those firsts. He came to be remembered more for the fake beard, the covert nighttime escape, the fumbling to help an opponent recover a mouthpiece, the ring embraces, and the time he kissed Ingemar Johansson. And he was remembered for the seven-knockdown loss to Johansson. Finally, more than anything else, he was remembered as Muhammad Ali’s rival.
Ali ranks with Joe Louis as the best heavyweight boxer of all time. As a media idol, Ali towers above everyone. In addition to his unassailable greatness in the ring, Ali was a remarkably effective self-promoter—no one has ever been better. He had the ability to compose doggerel on the fly—or, at an opportune moment, recite doggerel thought up by others and make it seem like his own. He had leading-man good looks and sex appe
al and a one-of-a-kind voice. His sense of humor was uncanny and effective. Yet he had a way of making poignant statements about serious matters, always delivered at just the right moment. He was all those things, yet that never seemed to be enough for an American public that once vilified him, then later became obsessed with all things Ali. A bloated mythology inflated around him, obscuring other worthies such as Floyd Patterson, rendering them invisible except to students of boxing history. Ironically, much of that mythology is dependent on the likes of Patterson.
When the cloud of Ali mythology is removed, Floyd stands as a distinctive and important champion. Few have attempted to pull him into focus in the years since he left the prizefighting ring. David Remnick shined some much needed light on Floyd in the modern classic King of the World. Gerald Early did the same in books like The Culture of Bruising and Tuxedo Junction. But theirs is only an incomplete portrait of a compelling figure. A more thorough study has long been needed. Hence, this book.
It was Early who wrote, “Cultural observers are wrong who say that Muhammad Ali was the most complex of American heroes, although he was surely one of the most luminous; Patterson, during his days as an active fighter, was the most disturbed and disturbing black presence in the history of American popular culture.”3 A key word here is hero. Floyd was one.
When he was young, black culture in America valued achievement and status. Patterson certainly achieved—he won titles, he made a lot of money, he became famous. He had status. He lived out the Horatio Alger dream at a time when it was still credible, with nice homes in classy neighborhoods and expensive cars. He never let go of those values, even as black Americans began to question them shortly after Floyd won the heavyweight title for a second time. By the time he was thirty-five, he was perceived by many as a living, breathing anachronism. To his benefit, Floyd didn’t seem to care much. He stuck by his principles, thus becoming Early’s disturbing presence. He was a staunch anti-Communist, supported the war in Vietnam, believed in Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent approach to social change while younger, more revolutionary blacks thought that the time to pick up the gun had arrived. As a result, many politicized young black Americans joined Muhammad Ali in attacking Floyd as an Uncle Tom.
It was an absurd slander. An Uncle Tom would not have sent money to support integration efforts in Fort Smith, Arkansas. An Uncle Tom would not have demanded desegregated seating for the audience at a title fight in Miami. An Uncle Tom wouldn’t have braved the violence of Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. But Patterson did all these things and more. After he retired, he occasionally addressed students at the State University of New York branch in New Paltz, urging them to adopt moderate political stances. Most of the students he spoke to had nothing but disdain for his positions. But Floyd held his ground, always with class. Heroically.
His eyes looked into the eyes of presidents, a pope, and a Nobel laureate. He viewed foreign capitals and the Great Sphinx in the Egyptian desert. He saw himself basking in victory. He saw himself hiding in shame. He was a truant, a thief, a reformed juvenile delinquent, a great athlete, a record setter, a national hero, a role model, a fallen knight, a scorned has-been, and a respected gentleman. He was also a family man, a churchman, a social reformer, and a public servant. And he was an important boxer whose story demands telling.
“When I was small,” Floyd once said, “I could never look people in the eye. When I tried to look them in the eye, it always seemed that they could read my mind. There was nothing on my mind, but it seemed they could read it anyway. I tried very hard, and then one day I woke up and I could look people in the eye. It had kind of sneaked its way in.”4
The story of Floyd Patterson’s life is in that statement. At first he couldn’t, and then he could. He tried very hard, and things kept sneaking their way into his life until he had accomplished much more than even the most fanciful of dreamers could have envisioned. Patterson, the invisible champion, could well have been trapped in the world of the Invisible Man. Like the narrator of Ellison’s novel, he could have ended up at exactly the spot where he began—in Floyd’s case, the mean streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant. But Floyd found a way out of the circle. His escape route involved leather gloves tied on his hands, a padded mat, and a roped-off square curiously called a ring. “My career has shaped my life,” Floyd once said, “and I have learned much. I have met people from all over the world, the highest to the most humble. The finest of these people accept a man for what he is.”5
It’s easy to accept Floyd for what he was. He began life with nothing. Through determination and hard work, he reached the pinnacle of his field. Some people close to him thought that he could have put his work ethic into a safer endeavor. “It broke my heart,” Gay Talese said, “that someone I cared about that much did what he had to do for his career. He had the capacity to do any number of things. I never understood it. Why boxing?”6 But Floyd never lost his love of his chosen field, the field that defined him. For everything else he was, in the end, the invisible champion was a boxing man through and through, with a fascinating back story and a significant place in American popular culture—and one hell of a left hook.
Acknowledgments and Sources
For a number of reasons, writing this book turned out to be particularly difficult. To say that the material concerning Floyd Patterson is voluminous and often contradictory is an understatement. So there was much that I had to sort out. Compounding matters, the book was written during a particularly stressful time, both at my day job and in my personal life. In the midst of the project, I had to contend with some health problems that, while not life threatening, posed more than a distraction. Several friends died as I worked on this book, some of them shockingly young. Family members dealt with various crises that required my attention. At times I felt completely bogged down, both in my life and in my writing. My more than capable editor Jenna Johnson helped me get back on the road, along with the help of her adept assistant Johnathan Wilber and the rest of the good folks at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. My thanks go out to them and to everyone who had a hand in making this book a reality. I’d like to give a special shout-out to my agent, David McCormick. I feel blessed to have McCormick & Williams representing me. This is my third book with David, and I hope there are many more in our future.
Several people important to the Floyd Patterson story died during my work on this book: Ingemar Johansson, George Kimball, Norman Mailer, Budd Schulberg, Edwin “Bud” Shrake, José Torres, and Vic Ziegel. May they rest in peace. When I was young, Shrake was one of my writing heroes; I learned much about how to write nonfiction from studying his Sports Illustrated and Harper’s articles. Kimball and I communicated for the last time just days before he succumbed to cancer. There are too few souls like Kimball’s in this dreary world. A poet, novelist, one-time political radical, anthologist, and hail-fellow well met at the legendary Lion’s Head back in the day, he was also a great sports columnist and was recognized by many as the best boxing journalist of his generation. He was not at a loss for projects during the last few months of his life, yet he took the time to read my manuscript; I’ll always be grateful.
I want to single out the assistance of my good friend John Schulian. John has many accomplishments as an author, sports columnist, magazine writer, screenwriter, pop culture critic, and TV writer and producer. Like George Kimball (his sometime collaborator), John is one of the finest boxing writers of our time, respected and beloved by many; with his enthusiastic approval to do so, I dropped his name numerous times to open doors for this project. John led me to Dave Kindred, another outstanding sportswriter, and Dave’s assistance proved invaluable early on. I owe them both special kudos. But John also provided me with essential help when this project was stuck in the mud. Without his help, I never would have gotten it back on its way again. For that, I’ll be forever in his debt.
I’d like to recognize Tom Dodge and Bob Compton for their continuing support of my projects, especially this one. My day-to-day existence is n
ot exactly literary in nature, and I continue to look up to my longtime friends Jesse Sublett, David Marion Wilkinson, Jan Reid, Tom Zigal, and, in absentia, Christopher Cook, as examples of what being a writer is all about. Jan Reid in particular stands as an inspiration, and he gave significant help to me for this book. R. Lord’s Boxing Gym in Austin seems to be connected to everything in the world by no more than the proverbial six degrees of separation. Contacts I’ve made at the gym certainly benefited this project, and I’m thankful to Richard Lord, his wife, Lori—they are among my best friends—and Richard’s parents, Doug and Opal Lord, as well as the whole boxing gym crowd. In particular, I want to thank Jésus, Anissa, Armando, Johnny C., “Mad Dog” Marvin, King, Eddie V., El Gallito, Gabe, David, José, Josea, Phil, Steve, Julian, Don, Jake, Morgan, Chuy, Sam, and, in particular, Joe Bernal, for the ring lessons they’ve given me over the years. It was through R. Lord’s Boxing Gym that I met James “Gentleman Jim” Brewer, professional boxer, film and television actor, and entrepreneur—and my good friend. Jim knew the Hollywood side of Floyd and provided meaningful insight.
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