2. Her name has been spelled variously as “Annabelle” and “Anabelle.” The Social Security Death Index lists her as “Annabelle,” so I use that spelling.
3. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, Victory over Myself, 11.
4. Lucy Freeman, “A Twenty-Cent Bag of Candy,” in Celebrities on the Couch: Personal Adventures of Famous People in Psychoanalysis, ed. Lucy Freeman, 122.
5. Jimmy Breslin, “The Title Is the Champ’s Life,” New York Journal-American, June 27, 1960.
6. Freeman, “A Twenty-Cent Bag of Candy,” 122.
7. Patterson’s accounts of his youth were sometimes inconsistent. In Victory over Myself, he said it was not a case but a few bottles of soda in a paper bag. And he claimed he didn’t steal them; the culprit was some other kid, who ran off after giving the bag to Floyd, leaving Floyd to take the rap. But a few years later, in an interview with author Lucy Freeman published in Celebrities on the Couch, Patterson admitted to being the thief. He also told Freeman it was the soda-theft incident that led to his being sent to reform school, which is at odds with how he describes events in Victory over Myself.
8. Patterson, Victory over Myself, 19.
9. Freeman, “A Twenty-Cent Bag of Candy,” 129.
10. Author interview, Cliff Arnesen.
11. International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, The Wiltwyck School, February 28, 2010, http://www.sitesofconscience.org/sites/eleanor-roosevelt/how-is-it-remembered/the-wiltwyck-school.
12. Patterson, Victory over Myself, 37.
2. Taken Up with Boxing
1. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, Victory over Myself, 39.
2. Frank and Billy Patterson never established careers as professional boxers. Billy Patterson fought a few pro fights, but a detached retina ended his days in the ring. Frank was more of a natural boxer than Floyd and won a Golden Gloves championship but failed to become a successful pro.
3. Author interview, Geri D’Amato Olbermann.
4. Gay Talese, “Suspicious Man in the Champ’s Corner,” New York Times, September 23, 1962.
5. His real name was Gerardo, Anglicized to Gerald, though he was popularly called Gerry.
6. Talese, “Suspicious Man in the Champ’s Corner.”
7. Robert Friedman, “Raging Calf,” Inside Sports, August 1981.
8. “In the pocket” is a boxing term meaning that an attacking boxer has minimized the space between himself and an opponent and is fighting very close in. Typically a boxer does not want to remain in the pocket for too long. Fighting in the pocket is sometimes called fighting “in the phone booth” because of the space constraints.
9. Friedman, “Raging Calf.”
10. Barney Ross, Fundamentals of Boxing, 27. Ross won the world lightweight, junior welterweight, and welterweight titles and is widely considered one of the best prizefighters of all time. Published in 1942, Fundamentals of Boxing has become a kind of classic among boxing manuals.
11. Robert H. Boyle, “Svengali Returns!” Sports Illustrated, April 12, 1965.
12. Patterson, Victory over Myself, 47.
13. George McGuane, “Eight ‘Gloves’ Titles on Block,” Lowell Sun, March 19, 1951.
14. Patterson, Victory over Myself, 52.
3. Floyd Patterson Is Out of This World
1. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, Victory over Myself, 37.
2. Sometimes he threw a straight punch accompanied by a leap. This punch was also called a “gazelle.”
3. The Olympic weight divisions differed somewhat from their American amateur boxing counterparts. The Olympic middleweight class was divided into two categories: heavy-middleweight (165 pounds) and light-middleweight (156 pounds).
4. “Patterson Steals Show in Ring Tryouts in Albany,” Berkshire Evening Eagle, May 27, 1952.
5. Patterson, Victory over Myself, 66.
6. Murray Rose, “U.S. Fighters Should Capture Four Titles,” Corpus Christi Times, July 11, 1952 (Associated Press article).
7. Ibid.
8. W. C. Heinz, “The Floyd Patterson His Friends Know,” Sport, November 1960.
9. A portion of Smith’s article is reprinted in Patterson’s Victory over Myself, page 68.
10. Even though the fight lasted just twenty seconds, Patterson was warned twice during that brief time for rules violations, which suggests that he was correct in being concerned about the impartiality of the judging if the fight ended in a decision.
11. The 1952 Olympic boxing team was the best America fielded until the 1976 team matched its gold-medal wins.
12. Joseph M. Sheehan, “Eighty More Olympians Return, Including Five Boxing Champions,” New York Times, August 8, 1952.
4. Cus Answers the Questions
1. Cus D’Amato, “The Two Battles of Floyd Patterson,” Look, June 23, 1959.
2. Peter Heller, Bad Intentions: The Mike Tyson Story, 26.
3. Floyd turned to Charles Schwefel to look over the document, and Schwefel assured Patterson it was on the square. Schwefel also did some snooping into D’Amato’s background and reported to Patterson that he could be trusted.
4. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, Victory over Myself, 71.
5. “Reputed Front Man Silent,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 16, 1960 (Associated Press article).
6. Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires, 104.
7. Patterson, Victory over Myself, 85.
8. Milton Gross, Speaking Out, New York Post, September 23, 1953.
9. Raymond Fraser, The Fighting Fisherman: The Life of Yvon Durelle, 87. Newspaper accounts and other records of the fight show Durelle weighing as much as 171 pounds. But Durelle told novelist Raymond Fraser that his actual weight was just 158.
10. Caswell Adams, “Beaten Durelle Brings Out Patterson’s Ring Failings,” New York Journal-American, February 16, 1954.
11. To ensure that bigtime boxers would sign contracts, promoters typically provided “guarantees” in writing against a draw of “the gate” (ticket sales) and from other sources of revenue the promoters might have set up for the fight, such as radio and television broadcast rights.
12. Robert Friedman, “Raging Calf,” Inside Sports, August 1981.
13. Patterson, Victory over Myself, 110.
5. Do I Have to Fight Floyd?
1. Raymond Fraser, The Fighting Fisherman: The Life of Yvon Durelle, 92.
2. Budd Schulberg, Ringside: A Treasury of Boxing Reportage, 46.
3. Paul O’Neil, “Meet the Next Heavyweight Champion,” Sports Illustrated, January 30, 1956.
4. Ibid.
5. W. C. Heinz and Nathan Ward, The Book of Boxing. The 1999 “Total Sports Illustrated Classics” edition includes an authoritative list of heavyweight championship bouts from 1892 through March 1999, including weights of the boxers. It is printed on the reverse side of the book’s dust jacket.
6. Some lists had Jackson as the number two contender, behind Archie Moore.
7. Moore was the undisputed best in the light-heavyweight ranks at the time. Between fights, his weight typically swelled up to more than 200 pounds (he also went through a grueling weight-loss regimen to prepare for a fight). Because of this, he had designs on moving up in weight to box as a heavyweight.
8. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, Victory over Myself, 131.
6. Youngest King of the Mountain
1. According to columnist Jack Murphy, Moore called himself “the Mongoose,” an animal known for its agility, sharp-sightedness, and speed. As Moore progressed in age, some sportswriters referred to him as “Old Man River.” The two nicknames eventually came together as “the Old Mongoose.”
2. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, Victory over Myself, 136.
3. Archie Moore and Leonard B. Pearl, Any Boy Can: The Archie Moore Story, 87.
4. Budd Schulberg, Sparring with Hemingway: And Other Legends of the Fight Game, 80.
5. Author interview, Gay Talese.
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br /> 6. “Word of the Week,” Jet, June 18, 1959.
7. Frank Mastro, “Moore to Get $200,000,” Chicago Tribune, November 30, 1956.
8. Jim Jennings, “B’klyn Claims Floyd as Own,” New York Daily Mirror, undated clipping from the Center for American History, University of Texas.
9. Light-heavyweight champion José Torres was close to both Muhammad Ali and Patterson and observed them when both men were at their respective career peaks. He believed that Patterson, at the time he beat Moore, was the one heavyweight who might have successfully challenged Ali in his prime.
10. Mike Fitzgerald, The Ageless Warrior: The Life of Boxing Legend Archie Moore, 134.
11. Ibid., 135.
12. Moore, Any Boy Can, 156.
13. Arthur Daley, “Post Bellum Musings,” Sports of the Times, New York Times, December 3, 1956.
14. “Floyd Patterson: Fighter of the Year,” The Ring, February 1957.
7. A Black Champion in America
1. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, Victory over Myself, 144.
2. Author interview, Gay Talese.
3. Gay Talese, “Origins of a Nonfiction Writer,” in Beyond the Godfather: Italian American Writers on the Real Italian American Experience, ed. A. Kenneth Ciongoli and Jay Parini, 74.
4. “Jackson in Hospital with Bruised Kidney Suffered in Fight with Patterson,” New York Times, July 31, 1957.
5. Ibid.
6. Hurricane Jackson fought only one other fight of any significance, then gave up the ring in 1961 after a series of fights in out-of-the-way venues. The one-time top heavyweight contender then eked out a living shining shoes. He died in early 1982 after being struck by an automobile a few weeks earlier as he was polishing his cab in New York.
7. John Lardner, “A Summer Dream,” Newsweek, August 26, 1957.
8. Dale Wright, “Champ Avoids Bright Lights,” Jet, February 6, 1958.
9. The Wrigley Field in Los Angeles opened in 1925. The more famous Wrigley Field in Chicago is an older ballpark; first known as Weeghman Park and then as Cubs Park, in 1926 it received its current name. Both were named for chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr., who owned the Chicago Cubs and the now-defunct minor-league Los Angeles Angels (not to be confused with the current Major League Baseball team of the same name). A handsome stadium with Spanish architectural flourishes, the Los Angeles Wrigley Field was demolished in 1966.
10. Martin Kane, “You Watch Out, Ali!” Sports Illustrated, November 14, 1966.
11. Joe David Brown, “A Tall Texan Tale,” Sports Illustrated, August 18, 1958.
12. Author interview, Roy “Cut ’n Shoot” Harris.
13. John De La Vega, “Patterson Eyes Another Title Defense in ’58,” Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1958.
14. Gene Ward, “Floyd Wants Sept. Bout, But Who Will He Fight?” New York Daily News, August 20, 1958.
15. Author interview, Roy “Cut ’n Shoot” Harris.
16. Steve Springer, “A Lone Star Memory; Harris, from Cut N’ Shoot, Texas, Hasn’t Forgotten Title Bout He Lost to Patterson 45 Years Ago in LA,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2003.
17. Jimmy Cannon, column, New York Journal-American, August 20, 1958.
18. Red Smith, “Morning After,” New York Herald Tribune, August 19, 1958.
19. Finding challengers to Patterson’s crown had become a somewhat desperate pursuit for D’Amato. There were even negotiations around this time for Patterson to fight Oklahoma’s Danny Hodge, a three-time NCAA national champion wrestler and Olympic silver medalist who had begun a professional boxing career. Hodge had won a national Golden Gloves title as a boxer before he turned pro, and he’d won eight of ten professional fights, but he was in no way an appropriate challenger for the heavyweight championship. Hodge went on to become one of the early stars of televised professional wrestling. In some quarters, there was speculation that Patterson would go down in weight to fight the great Sugar Ray Robinson, but nothing ever came of such talk.
20. “Title Fight Discussed,” New York Times, November 25, 1958.
21. Cooper was knighted in 2000 for his boxing career.
22. The Lonsdale Belt was awarded to British boxing champions between 1909 and 1987. It was named for the award’s patron, Hugh Lowther, Fifth Earl of Lonsdale.
23. William J. Briordy, “British Heavyweight Drilling in Gym on East Side,” New York Times, April 16, 1959.
24. Martin Kane, “The Two Faces of Cecil Rhodes,” Sports Illustrated, April 27, 1959.
25. “Talkative Challenger Says It’s Great to Be a Fighter,” New York Times, April 17, 1958 (Associated Press article).
26. Janet Langhart Cohen, with Alexander Kopelman, From Rage to Reason: My Life in Two Americas, 28.
27. “Patterson and London Floor Spar Mates,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 20, 1959 (Associated Press article).
28. “Comic Opera,” Time, May 11, 1959.
8. Lightning and Toonder
1. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, Victory over Myself, 180.
2. “Ingo Meets His Match,” Sports Illustrated, June 8, 1960.
3. Ingemar Johansson, Seconds out of the Ring, 51.
4. Ibid., 58.
5. Sanders, an enlisted man in the Navy, began fighting professionally after his tour of duty was complete. Badly battered in his ninth pro fight, he died of his injuries three days later.
6. Al Buck, “Working Press,” New York Post, June 1959.
7. Patterson, Victory over Myself, 35.
8. Patterson, as champion, used the permanent dressing room of the Yankees beneath the stands instead of the virtual tent out on the grass.
9. Howard Cosell, with Mickey Herskowitz, Cosell, 155.
10. Floyd Patterson as told to W. C. Heinz, “I Was a Champion,” American Weekly, May 15, 1960.
11. Johansson, Seconds out of the Ring, 173.
12. Patterson as told to Heinz, “I Was a Champion.”
13. John Lardner, “As Advertised, It Came,” Newsweek, July 6, 1959.
14. Cosell, Cosell, 158.
15. Patterson, Victory over Myself, 187.
16. Ibid.
17. Joseph M. Sheehan, “Loser Ruefully Admits Failure to See Punch That Began End,” New York Times, June 27, 1959.
18. Ibid.
9. Not the Time to Quit
1. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, Victory over Myself, 191.
2. Ernie Prevatte, column, Florence Morning News, June 28, 1959.
3. “Tunney Praises Swedish Champ,” Montana Standard, June 28, 1959 (Associated Press article).
4. Milton Gross, “Floyd Tells How Ingemar ‘Tricked Me with Right,’” New York Post, June 29, 1959.
5. Howard Cosell, with Mickey Herskowitz, Cosell, 158–59.
6. Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson, 363.
7. Letter to Floyd Patterson from Archie Moore, date unknown, reprinted in Patterson, Victory over Myself, 194.
8. Harry Grayson, “Tunney, Others Called Turn on Built Up Patterson,” Modesto Bee, July 9, 1959 (NEA article). The Cardiff Giant Grayson mentions was a hoax that received national attention in the 1800s. The Cardiff Giant was supposed to have been the petrified remains of a ten-foot-tall giant unearthed in Cardiff, New York. In fact, the “giant” recently had been created and planted by a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Though the hoax was rather quickly dismissed as a fake by archaeologists, promoters were successful in charging people to see it, enough so that P. T. Barnum created an imitation. The expression “There’s a sucker born every minute” came into use as a result of the Cardiff Giant affair.
9. Author interview, Jan Reid. Reid is a novelist and journalist who has written extensively about boxing.
10. The plot was built around the death of the white commander of a Marine rifle platoon who, with his dying words, puts a black sergeant, played by Poitier, in charge. Thus the film’s conflict involves Poitier and the white Marines under his command more than the war between the Americans and the North Koreans—a
touch of irony, given the racial implications of Johansson’s defeat of Patterson.
11. Oddly enough, Johansson failed to win a similar honor in Sweden, where sportswriters polled selected soccer player Agne Simonsson as the nation’s top athlete for 1959.
12. Johansson, as it turned out, would be the last white man to be considered the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Later, a few white men—in particular the Ukrainian Klitschko brothers in the early 2000s—would rise to dominance in the heavyweight ranks, but by that time, the alphabet soup of sanctioning organizations made determining an undisputed champion virtually impossible.
13. IBC president Jim Norris was found guilty of violating antitrust laws in 1957; that conviction was upheld by the nation’s highest court two years later. Frankie Carbo went down in 1959 on charges of conspiracy, undercover management of boxers, and undercover matchmaking. He was sentenced to two years. Almost immediately after his release from prison he was brought up on federal racketeering charges; convicted, he was sentenced to twenty-five years at Alcatraz.
14. Montieth Illingworth, Mike Tyson: Money, Myth, and Betrayal, 29–30, and author interview, Montieth Illingworth.
15. Cosell, Cosell, 159.
16. Lucy Freeman, “A Twenty-Cent Bag of Candy, in Celebrities on the Couch: Personal Adventures of Famous People in Psychoanalysis, ed. Lucy Freeman, 133.
17. Jimmy Breslin, “Trainer’s Tip Made Champ Big Fighter,” New York Journal-American, June 28, 1960.
18. Arthur Daley, “Sports of the Times: Continued Story,” New York Times, April 11, 1960.
19. Charles Schwefel, who had served as Floyd’s major financial adviser, died unexpectedly on August 21, 1956. With his passing, Patterson turned to others for advice on financial matters, among them, of course, D’Amato. But by the time of the second Johansson fight, attorney Julius November had become Patterson’s foremost business adviser.
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