Floyd Patterson
Page 29
20. Jimmy Breslin, untitled clipping, New York Journal-American, June 26, 1960, from the Center for American History, University of Texas.
21. Jimmy Breslin, “His Boss? No, It’s Floyd,” New York Journal-American, June 29, 1960.
22. Patterson, Victory over Myself, 212.
23. Red Smith, “Behind the Words,” Pacific Stars & Stripes, undated clipping from the Center for American History, University of Texas (syndicated article from the New York Herald Tribune).
24. Frank M. Blunk, “Louis Will Advise Patterson on Title Fight,” New York Times, May 17, 1960.
25. Howard M. Tuckner, “Champion’s Pre-Fight ‘Retreat’ Proves to Be Television Show,” New York Times, June 20, 1960.
26. James F. Lynch, “For D’Amato the Bell Doesn’t Toll,” New York Times, June 12, 1960.
27. Howard M. Tuckner, “Melee Broken Up by Police Detail,” New York Times, June 21, 1960.
28. Milton Gross, column, New York Post, June 21, 1960.
29. Ingemar Johansson vs. Floyd Patterson (video of closed-circuit TV broadcast), 1960. Retrieved July 6, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O68Z7DJxXbo&feature=related.
30. Cosell, Cosell, 160.
31. George Plimpton, Shadow Box, 298.
32. Robert Lipsyte, “Patterson Takes Title to PS 614,” New York Times, June 25, 1960.
33. “It Was a Victory for Us!” Ebony, August 1960.
34. A. J. Liebling, A Neutral Corner: Boxing Essays, 164.
10. Standing at the Peak
1. David Maraniss, Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World, 286.
2. Ibid.
3. Thomas Hauser, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times, 37.
4. Robert H. Boyle, “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here,” Sports Illustrated, February 20, 1961.
5. Ibid.
6. Gay Talese, “Portrait of the Ascetic Champ,” New York Times Magazine, March 5, 1961.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. A. J. Liebling, A Neutral Corner, 134.
11. Ibid., 141.
12. Florida rules required a mandatory eight-count following a knockdown. So while Patterson was up at two, he had to wait until the referee reached the count of 8 before the fight could resume.
13. Liebling, A Neutral Corner, 143.
14. Johansson’s camp claimed that the referee had mismanaged the count in the sixth round, that Patterson should not have been awarded the knockout. But the ref’s ruling stood.
15. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, Victory over Myself, 241.
16. Howard Cosell, Cosell, 160.
17. Jimmy Cannon, “Floyd Wins ‘Hands Down’ at Making Safe Landings,” New York Journal-American, May 16, 1961.
18. Dick Schaap, “How to Succeed in Publishing without Really Publishing,” New York Times Book Review, August 13, 1967.
19. Robert Cromie, “The Bystander,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 1962.
11. Camelot Denied
1. Martin Kane, “A Question of Violence,” Sports Illustrated, November 13, 1961.
2. Deane McGowen, “Loser’s Verdict: Floyd Can Punch,” New York Times, December 5, 1961.
3. Presidential appointment book page, January 12, 1962, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
4. Floyd Patterson, letter to Robert F. Kennedy, January 20, 1962, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
5. Drew Pearson, “Reds Say Only Gagarin and Titov Sent into Space,” Billings Gazette, April 7, 1962 (syndicated column).
6. Gay Talese, “Liston’s Plight Shocks Patterson,” New York Times, April 28, 1962.
7. Red Smith, “Behind the Words,” Pacific Stars & Stripes, undated clipping from the Center for American History, University of Texas (syndicated article from the New York Herald Tribune).
8. Thomas A. Bolan, “Patterson in Egypt,” The Ring, July 1962.
9. “Ghana Runnerup in Cairo Boxing Tournament,” Jet, April 12, 1962.
10. Bolan, “Patterson in Egypt.”
11. Robert Cromie, “The Bystander,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 1962.
12. Ibid.
13. Brian O’Doherty, “Telephone Interview with Busy Poet Produces Her Views on Baseball, Floyd Patterson, and Verse Style,” New York Times, November 15, 1962.
14. Gay Talese, “A Fighter with Fear,” New York Times, June 24, 1962.
15. Jim Murray, “Victory for Floyd,” Los Angeles Times, May 20, 1962.
16. Author interview, Michael Gross. Though long out of print and mostly unknown to the generations of readers since 1962, Victory over Myself stands as one of the dozen or so best books written about boxing. It is a flawed book. There are occasional factual mistakes. It is at times a self-serving book as well, particularly in its sanitized portrayal of Floyd and Sandra’s relationship in the early 1960s. Some events are portrayed in ways that are inconsistent with how Floyd described them elsewhere. But its merits far outweigh its shortcomings. Patterson’s emotionally naked self-portrait provides deep insight into the inner workings of an athlete’s mind.
17. Robert Cromie, “The Bystander.”
18. Michael Leahy, “Floyd Patterson: His Own Man,” Sports Illustrated, June 1, 1992.
19. David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero, 294.
20. Sonny Liston: The Mysterious Life & Death of a Champion, directed by Jeff Lieberman (HBO Home Video, 1995).
21. Nick Tosches, The Devil and Sonny Liston, 34.
22. “Liston Now Ready to Sign,” New York Herald Tribune, March 3, 1962.
23. James Baldwin, “The Fight: Patterson vs. Liston,” Nugget, February 1963. Reprinted as an afterword in Gerald Early, Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture, 325.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., 330.
26. Ibid., 332.
27. Ibid., 333.
28. Ibid., 333.
29. Author interview, Edwin “Bud” Shrake.
30. Daniel M. Daniel, “Odds Won’t Win It”; and James J. Braddock as told to Lester Bromberg, “Patterson Will Win!” The Ring, July 1962.
31. Norman Mailer, “Ten Thousand Words a Minute,” Esquire, February 1963; reprinted in his The Presidential Papers, 237.
32. Ibid., 240.
33. Jack R. Griffin, “Floyd ‘Froze’ before Fight—Triner,” Chicago Sun-Times, February 4, 1963.
34. Just two heavyweight championship fights had taken less time to resolve: Tommy Burns knocked out Jem Roche in one minute, twenty-eight seconds in 1908; Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in two minutes, four seconds in 1938.
35. Baldwin, “The Fight: Patterson vs. Liston,” in Early, Tuxedo Junction, 334.
12. Confronting a Certain Weakness
1. Norman Mailer, The Presidential Papers, 263.
2. Mary V. Dearborn, Mailer: A Biography, 186.
3. Harold Conrad, Dear Muffo: 35 Years in the Fast Lane, 150.
4. Milton Gross, “Floyd Makes Lonely Trip Home Incognito,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 29, 1962 (originally appeared as a copyrighted article in the New York Post, September 28, 1962).
5. Leonard Lewin, “Liston’ll Fight Me: Floyd,” New York Daily Mirror, April 11, 1963.
6. David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero, 36.
7. “Floyd Patterson Speaks on Rights,” New York Times, February 26, 1962 (UPI article).
8. WSB-TV newsfilm clip of former heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson speaking to a reporter about the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama, May 9, 1963. The Civil Rights Digital Library, May 24, 2010.
9. Howard Cosell, with Mickey Herskowitz, Cosell, 159.
10. Mable Roberson, telegram to President Kennedy, September 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
11. Howard Kleinberg, “600 Show Up to ‘Floor’ Floyd,” Miami News, March 10, 1963.
12. Pat Putnam, “Laughing Boy Floyd Buries His Despair,” Miami Herald, March 4, 1963.
13. William Nack, “O Unlucky Man,” Sports Illustrated, February 4, 1991.
14. Budd Schulberg, Sparring with Hemingway: And Other Legends of the Fight Game, 130.
15. Norman Mailer, letter to Pete Hamill, July 5, 1964, Norman Mailer Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.
16. Undated, handwritten note, Norman Mailer Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.
17. Melvin Durslag, “Floyd No Longer a Neurotic Wreck,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 29, 1963.
18. Undated, handwritten note, Norman Mailer Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.
19. Jimmy Burns, “Floyd Knows One Thing Sure: ‘Never Show Signs of Fear,’” Miami Herald, March 17, 1963.
20. Cosell, Cosell, 162.
21. Remnick, King of the World, 74.
22. Melvin Durslag, “Has Floyd Lost Desire to Fight?” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 1963.
23. “The Patterson Comeback: Where Is It Headed?” Boxing Illustrated, April 1964.
24. “America’s 100 Most Influential Negroes,” Ebony, September 1963.
13. A Title for America
1. Gay Talese, “The Loser,” in The Gay Talese Reader, 66. Originally published in Esquire, March 1964.
2. Ibid.
3. Author interview, Jane Gross.
4. Pete Hamill, “Floyd’s Fight to Save His Pride,” Saturday Evening Post, June 27, 1964, reprinted in Irrational Ravings, 341.
5. The part of Yonkers in which the Pattersons lived was very close to Scarsdale. Their house was serviced by the Scarsdale Post Office, so their mailing address was Scarsdale. Sometimes the Pattersons were referred to as living in Scarsdale, though they actually were in Yonkers.
6. Talese, “The Loser,” in The Gay Talese Reader, 69.
7. Ibid., 77.
8. Robert H. Boyle, “Svengali Returns!” Sports Illustrated, April 12, 1965.
9. Ibid.
10. Hamill, “Floyd’s Fight to Save His Pride,” Irrational Ravings, 339.
11. Arthur Daley, “Road to Nowhere,” Sports of the Times, New York Times, July 2, 1964.
12. Hamill, “Floyd’s Fight to Save His Pride,” Irrational Ravings, 337.
13. Floyd Patterson, with Milton Gross, “I Want to Destroy Clay,” Sports Illustrated, October 19, 1964.
14. Hamill, “Floyd’s Fight to Save His Pride,” Irrational Ravings, 342.
15. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 21.
16. Patterson, with Gross, “I Want to Destroy Clay.” Indeed, Ali did eventually deliver a segregationist speech at a Ku Klux Klan rally.
17. José Torres, with Bert Randolph Sugar, Sting Like a Bee: The Muhammad Ali Story, 143.
18. Some newspapers listed him as the number four contender.
19. Bob Waters, “Man on the Way Back,” Newsday, January 23, 1965.
20. Gay Talese, “Patterson Fumes but Disdains Exchanging Insults with Clay,” New York Times, January 22, 1965.
21. Ibid.
22. Floyd Patterson, with Gay Talese, “In Defense of Cassius Clay,” Esquire, August 1966.
23. Jesse Abramson, “Poet Cassius Digs Floyd,” New York Herald Tribune, November 20, 1965.
24. Gerald Eskenazi, “Cassius the Prophet a Loss as a Bus Driver,” New York Times, January 20, 1965.
25. Floyd Patterson vs. George Chuvalo—Fight of the Year 1965 (video of closed-circuit TV broadcast). Retrieved May 30, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmIE5oDGtak.
26. Ibid.
27. Tex Maule, “Okay—But Don’t Bring on Clay,” Sports Illustrated, February 8, 1965.
28. Though most experts on the scene believed Patterson won, each round was closely fought. United Press International reported it would have called the fight a draw. The Canadian Press’s reporter scored it 6-5-1 in favor of Patterson.
29. Jesse Abramson, “What Can Boxing Do for Encore?” New York Herald Tribune, February 3, 1965.
30. Most reports list the knockdown as occurring at 1:42 of the first round; however, Maine boxing officials said it took place at the 1:00 mark. However, in the confusion that followed, the knockout was not declared until either 2:15 or 2:17 of the first round; again, the precise time was in dispute.
31. Accounts vary about precisely when and where the conversation between Patterson and Liston occurred. I’ve chosen to include Patterson’s own telling of it.
32. Floyd Patterson, interviewed in Sonny Liston: The Mysterious Life & Death of a Champion, directed by Jeff Lieberman (HBO Home Video, 1995).
33. In the popular mind, LA was perceived in the mid-1960s as a city of opportunity, with plenty of jobs and a thriving economy. It was a clean place where people of any color seemed to be able to reinvent themselves. In fact, beneath its gleaming exterior, LA had a long history of bigotry and suppressed rage, as the Watts riots revealed.
34. Muhammad Ali, with Richard Durham, The Greatest: My Own Story, 219.
35. LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Home, 156.
36. Malcolm X, with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 313.
37. Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice, 91.
38. Floyd Patterson, with Jack Mahon, “Cassius Clay Must Be Beaten,” Sports Illustrated, October 11, 1965.
39. Patterson, with Talese, “In Defense of Cassius Clay.”
40. Author interview, Joe Louis Barrow. At the time, Patterson was hardly alone in declining to use the name “Muhammad Ali.” Ali was unpredictable, and many boxing writers of the 1960s believed his infatuation with the Black Muslims might be no more than a youthful lark. His adopted name might not last—so they continued to refer to him as Clay. It was the editorial policy of magazines such as Sports Illustrated to call him Clay. On order of the publisher, the New York Times did so as well, saying Clay had not gone through the court mechanics to legally change his name to Muhammad Ali. It was a specious stance for the paper to take. I asked Joe Louis Barrow Jr., son of the great champion Joe Louis, born Joseph Louis Barrow, if his father had ever legally changed his name. He said he didn’t know that he had. Yet the Times had no problem referring to the champ as Joe Louis. Likewise it had no problem referring to Walker Smith Jr. as Sugar Ray Robinson or Archibald Lee Wright as Archie Moore.
41. “Clay Says He Will Punish Patterson for His Remarks,” New York Times, November 2, 1965.
42. Ronald K. Fried, Corner Men: The Great Boxing Trainers, 291.
43. Ibid., 306.
44. Howard Cosell interview with Muhammad Ali, Wide World of Sports, January 29, 1966.
45. Ibid.
46. David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero, 282.
47. Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, was also perplexed by why Ali had not knocked out Patterson. Dundee shouted from ringside during the final rounds, imploring Ali to put Patterson away. The crowd, too, was angered by Ali’s refusal to go for the kill.
48. Robert Lipsyte, “Clay Knocks Out Patterson in the 12th and Keeps Heavyweight Championship,” New York Times, November 23, 1965.
49. “Sickening Spectacle in the Ring,” Life, December 3, 1965.
50. In the days immediately following the fight, some sports columnists roundly criticized Floyd for not canceling because of his back injury.
51. Author interview, Gay Talese.
52. Floyd Patterson with Gay Talese, “In Defense of Cassius Clay.”
53. Ibid.
14. A Boxing Man
1. Gay Talese, The Gay Talese Reader: Portraits and Encounters, 70.
2. Author interview, Gay Talese.
3. Sandra found success working in real estate in her new hometown, becoming well known in Springfield business and social circles; she was the first African American to serve on the city’s Board of Realtors.
4. Bobbie Barbee, “Seeking 3rd Heavyweight Crown,” Jet, September 12, 1968.
5. “Floyd Patterson Obtains Divorce,” Tucson Daily Citizen, August 23, 1966 (Associated Press article).
6. Barbee, “Seeking 3rd Hea
vyweight Crown.”
7. “Marriage ‘No Secret,’ Says Floyd Patterson,” Bridgeport (CT) Post, July 11, 1968 (United Press International article).
8. Barbee, “Seeking 3rd Heavyweight Crown.”
9. Ali was still known as Cassius Clay at the time.
10. Robert Lipsyte, “Clay Weighs ‘Summit Meeting’ with Patterson,” New York Times, September 24, 1966.
11. The World Boxing Association (WBA) and the New York State Athletic Commission first withdrew their recognition of Ali as champion in 1964 because he opted to fight Liston in a rematch rather than abide by the rules those organizations had in place to determine the next challenger. After Ali defeated Ernie Terrell in early 1967, he was briefly recognized as universal champion. Then, after his refusal to be inducted into the Army later that year, Ali’s title was stripped by the WBA, the New York State Athletic Commission, and the World Boxing Council (WBC); several other less significant sanctioning bodies followed suit.
12. Ray Belford, “Patterson May Shun Title Tourney,” Pacific Stars & Stripes, July 5, 1967.
13. Mark Kram, “The Brawler at the Threshold,” Sports Illustrated, June 16, 1969.
14. California boxing rules allowed officials to give extra weight to knockdowns when scoring a fight. Patterson was knocked down twice; Quarry, just once. Though Patterson clearly outboxed Quarry through most of the fight, Quarry partisans pointed to the knockdowns as justification for the draw.
15. “US Could Learn Racial Lesson in Vietnam,” Pacific Stars & Stripes, July 5, 1967 (United Press International article).
16. Mark Kram, “The Brawler at the Threshold.”
17. Rebecca Burns, “Funeral: An Oral History,” Atlanta Magazine, April 2008.
18. “Transcripts of Prayer, Tribute and Eulogy Delivered at Services for Dr. King,” New York Times, April 10, 1968.
19. Harold Conrad, Dear Muffo: 35 Years in the Fast Lane, 178.