Floyd Patterson, a sweet-tempered boxer who rose from a troubled boyhood to become the heavyweight champion of the world, died on Thursday at his home in New Paltz, New York. He was 71.
The cause was prostate cancer, Bill O'Hare, a family friend and spokesman, said in a telephone interview. Patterson had also suffered from Alzheimer's disease for about eight years.
In the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Patterson, with five knockouts in five bouts, won the middleweight gold medal. Then, in a 20-year professional career, he won 55 bouts, lost eight and fought to one draw. His total purses reached US$8 million, a record then.
PHOTO: AP
He won the heavyweight title twice, knocking out Archie Moore and Ingemar Johansson and becoming the first fighter to regain the title. He lost it twice, defended it successfully seven times and failed to regain it three other times. He generally weighed little more than 180 pounds, light for a heavyweight, but he made the most of mobility, fast hands and fast reflexes.
He was a good guy in the bad world of boxing. He was mild, sweet, retiring, reclusive, impassive and ascetic. He spoke softly and never lost his boyhood shyness. Constantine "Cus" D'Amato, who died in 1985, trained Patterson throughout his professional career and called him "a kind of a stranger." Red Smith, the New York Times sports columnist, called him "the man of peace who loves to fight."
Patterson acknowledged his sensitivity.
PHOTO: AP
"You can hit me and I won't think much of it," he once said, "but you can say something and hurt me very much."
W.C. Heinz, the boxing columnist, found a fundamental difference between Patterson the fighter and Patterson the person.
"In expressing himself as a fighter," Heinz wrote, "Patterson knows almost complete security. Outside the ring, he knows no such security. A shy, sensitive soul-searcher, he volunteers little. He might be called a conversational counterpuncher. When he does speak out, however, it is with a purity reminiscent of Joe Louis."
Floyd Patterson was born Jan. 4, 1935, in a cabin in Waco, North Carolina, the third eldest of 11 children. His father, Thomas, was a manual laborer and his mother, Annabelle, was a domestic who later worked in a bottling plant until the family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.
Above the youngster's bed was a picture of him with two older brothers and an uncle, all boxers. He often told his mother, "I don't like that boy," and once he scratched three large X's over his face in the picture.
He became a frequent truant who fell behind in school. At age 11, he could not read or write. He would not talk, and when someone talked to him, he refused to look the person in the face.
His mother had him committed to Wiltwyck School, a school in upstate New York for emotionally disturbed boys. His new teachers helped him learn to read and encouraged him to take up boxing there, which he did.
A year and a half later, Patterson returned home. He attended Public School 614 for maladjusted children and Alexander Hamilton Vocational High School before quitting after one term to help support his family.
At 14, he started working out at the Gramercy Gym on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a battered gym owned and run by the iconoclastic D'Amato. In 1950, he also started boxing as an amateur. In 1951, he won the New York Golden Gloves open middleweight title. In 1952, after his Olympic success, he turned professional.
His first professional bout earned him only US$300, but by 1956 he had become a leading heavyweight. When Rocky Marciano retired that year as the undefeated champion, Patterson was matched against Moore, the light-heavyweight champion, for the heavyweight title.
For the fight, on Nov. 30 in Chicago Stadium, Patterson rode to the arena with Sam Taub, the veteran broadcaster and reporter. As Taub recalled, "He sat there gazing out of the window like he was going to the movies."
When they arrived, Patterson put on his trunks, socks, boxing shoes and robe, stretched out on a rubbing table and went to sleep. A few hours later, he stopped Moore in five rounds and at 21 became the youngest heavyweight champion to that point.
Patterson defended the title willingly but uncomfortably. In 1957, he knocked out Pete Rademacher in six rounds in Seattle, and in 1958 he stopped Roy "Cut 'n' Shoot" Harris in 12 rounds in Los Angeles after both had knocked him down.
On June 26, 1959, at Yankee Stadium, Patterson lost the title when Johansson knocked him down seven times before the referee stopped the bout in the third round. But he became the first heavyweight to regain the title when he knocked out Johansson in the fifth round at the Polo Grounds on June 20, 1960.
"It was worth losing the title for this," Patterson said. "This is easily the most gratifying moment of my life. I'm champ again, a real champ this time."
The glory days ended with Patterson's two title fights against Charles "Sonny" Liston. On Sept. 25, 1962, in Chicago, Liston knocked out Patterson in the first round and became the champion. An embarrassed Patterson drove home wearing dark glasses, a mustache and a beard. But he insisted on a return bout because, he said, "If I stopped now, that would be running away."
"I did that when I was a kid," he added. "I've grown out of that."
The return bout came on July 22, 1963, in Las Vegas, and the result was the same -- Liston by a knockout in the first round. Patterson kept fighting after that, but never at his championship level.
In 1965 in Las Vegas, with Patterson hiding a back injury, Muhammad Ali all but tortured him before winning in 12 rounds. In 1970 in Madison Square Garden, Ali opened a seven-stitch cut over Patterson's left eye and beat him in seven rounds.
After Patterson retired in 1972, he became a respected front man for his sport. In 1983, he told a congressional subcommittee: "I would not like to see boxing abolished. I come from a ghetto, and boxing is a way out. It would be pitiful to abolish boxing because you would be taking away the one way out."
From 1977 to 1984 he was a member and from 1995 to 1998 the chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, which supervised boxing in the state. He led a successful campaign to have the state mandate thumbless gloves and thus reduce eye injuries.
In April 1998, while giving a deposition, his short-term memory failed. He could not remember the names of his two fellow commission members or his secretary or office routines. He resigned the next day.
He was voted into the US Olympic Committee Hall of Fame in 1987 and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991. The public loved him. As Dave Anderson wrote in 1972 in the Times:
"He projects the incongruous image of a gentle gladiator, a martyr persecuted by the demons of his profession. But his mystique also contains a morbid curiosity. Any boxing fan worth his weight in The Ring record books wants to be there for Floyd's last stand. Until then, Floyd Patterson keeps boxing, the windmills of his mind turned by his own breezes."
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but