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The heavyweight champ is a gentle fellow, shy and sensitive. He balks at the savagery of his craft and is embarrassed by the limelight thrust upon him by his abundant skills The Floyd Patterson His Friends Know By W. C. HEINZ - SPORT magazine, November 1960
If the record were to stop right now, it would show that Floyd has won 36 of 38 fights, 25 by knockouts. The public image of the man who fires the punches is not, however, a true representation of the man I know. What I want to try to do now is present Floyd as he is, the way the record book can never show him, but the way his friends know him. I remember, for example, the day I went up to see him at Greenwood Lake, N.Y. Three weeks before, he had knocked out Archie Moore to win the heavyweight championship and he was back in training already at the Long Pond Inn. On the ground floor of the inn there is a bar and dining room. The living quarters and gymnasium are over it. When I checked with the bartender, he said that Patterson was up in his room and I went up and there and we shook hands. "What time is it?" he said. "One o'clock," I said. "I'll be down in the dining room in a half hour," he said. I waited in the dining room for three and a half hours. As I sat there, the place came alive with teen-agers who had been ice-skating on the lake, but who had come in to play the jukebox and dance. Finally, at 4:30, one of Patterson's sparring partners approached me. "Floyd says he'll meet you in the gym in five minutes," the sparring partner said. "He apologizes." "That's fine," I said, a little sore. "Where has he been?" "Up in the room," the sparring partner said. "He came down a couple of times, but when he saw all these kids here he went back. He was embarrassed to come in." He was already the heavyweight champion of the world. Two nights later, we were standing and talking by the pool table beyond the bar. A couple of sparring partners were shooting pool and I was working Patterson around slowly, trying to get him to elaborate on the feelings he had when he saw the dining room jumping with those kids. "You're the heavyweight champion of the world now," I said. "Doesn't that give you the security to walk through a room of teen-agers?" "No," he said. "I still don't like being starred at." I thought of John L. Sullivan. I kept coming back to this. Patterson is not a man you can push, but he will try to answer your questions as few men will if you just rest him between runs. This time we were standing in front of the Long Pond, waiting for one of his sparring partners who had been dispatched to town to buy morning newspapers. "But you're going to be stared at a lot," I said. "I know," he said. "When did you first realize that this was going to be a problem?" I said. "The day after I won the title," he said. "Just before the fight my wife gave birth to our daughter, so right after the fight, these friends and I, we got in the car to drive back from Chicago. The next day, we stopped at one of those roadside restaurants and we went in. "By then the fight was all over the front pages of the newspapers, pictures and all, and I could see the people around the place recognizing me and starting to whisper. I figured we better get out of there quick, so we didn't even finish our meal." Just before the won the title, Patterson bought a ten-room house in Mount Vernon, N.Y., for his mother and the eight youngest of her 11 children. The mayor of the town, an ex-fighter, staged a torchlight parade for Floyd after he beat Moore. "How was the parade?" I asked Patterson. "I was ashamed," Patterson said. "Why?" I said. "Me sitting in an open car and waving to people," Patterson said. "Those are things you only see kings or a president doing." It was the same with the dinner jacket. A heavyweight champion has to spend some time banquet hopping, so Cus D'Amato, who manages Patterson, made him buy a tuxedo. "I don't care to wear it," Patterson said, "and I don't like to go to formals. I don't feel it's my walk of life. That's for people who were born and raised that way. I wasn't." I thought of James J. Corbett. After Patterson knocked out Roy Harris, nine months went by before he fought Brian London. During seven of those months he lived with his wife and their daughter in their St. Albans, N.Y., home. Three or four days a week, though, he would come into New York to loosen up, and one afternoon I met him at the Gramercy Gym, on East 14th Street. "Are you doing road work?" I asked. "Only twice a week," he said. "What time do you run?" "Well, in camp I don't get up until 6:30," he said, "but here in the city I get up at a 4:30 so I get finished before the people start to work and see me." "Doesn't anybody ever see you?" I said. "Usually I run on Saturday and Sunday when everybody doesn't get up so early," he said, "but one day I ran during the week. It was a Thursday and after I finished in the park where I run the fella who was supposed to pick me up was late. About an hour passed before he came, and there I was sitting on the park bench with my heavy clothes on and all sweaty and a towel around my neck. All these people were going to work by then, and they were looking at me like I was crazy." "Didn't anyone recognize you?" I said. "No," he said. "I was the champion, so I hid my face." "Shyness is so deeply ingrained in you," I said to him one night at the Long Pond, "that I suppose one of your earliest memories is of being embarrassed in public." "I guess that's right," he said. "I remember when I was just a little kid. I used to have long hair and my father would comb it. Then he'd send me around the corner for cigarettes and I remember one day a lady stopping me and running her fingers through my hair. I was so embarrassed that I wanted to cry, and I ran." He thought about it. It was after dinner and we were still sitting at the table. "I had to be just a tiny kid for a lady to do that," he said, "but I never forgot it." Patterson's mother is a serene, sympathetic, soft-spoken woman of 48. While rearing her family of 11 children in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, she also worked as a domestic and, for a while, in a bottling factory. "I would take Floyd to school," she said, sitting in the living room of her home in Mount Vernon, "and as long as I stayed there he would stay, but when I left he would sneak out. I think the large number of children in the classes frightened Floyd." "Where would he go?" I said. "He'd hide," she said. "I remember once when he was six years old he found a friend in the school. Then he and the friend disappeared and later they found them hiding together in the basement of the school." As he grew older, Patterson hid in movie theaters. If you live in Brooklyn and you're interested, he used to hide in the Regent, the Apollo and the Banko. "That was when I had the money for admission," he said. "Otherwise I would spend the time in Prospect Park, watching the animals in the zoo. I liked to watch the animals." Often at night he would sleep in the park. Some nights he slept in subway stations. "How much was the admission to the movies in those days?" I asked. "Eighteen cents," he said. "How much cash have you got in your pocket right now?" I said. This was some months before he fought Ingemar Johansson the first time. We were sitting on the ring apron in the Gramercy Gym, and Patterson had on a pair of handsomely tailored dark brown slacks and a heavy-knit light tan sweater. "Oh," he said. "I'd say between 80 and a hundred dollars." "Do you carry a checkbook?" "Yes." "When you started to be a fighter, did you ever think that you'd have $80 in walk-around money and a checkbook in your pocket?" "I never even dreamt that a day like that was possible," he said. "Are you bothered by the sight of blood?" I once asked him. "How do you mean?" Floyd said. "Have you ever been scared, as a child or since, when you've been cut?" I asked this question because a fighter must regard lightly the changes his business makes upon his physical person. He must also be relatively unaffected by the hurt he inflicts upon others. "No," he said. "I've seen my blood flow from me when I was younger. One time I got a nail stuck in my foot and I kept it in there for three hours, until my mother came home from work. You see, there was this lady, baby-sitting for us and I was scared to tell her about the nail because she was very mean and she would beat you. So when I got this nail in my foot, I kept it there and stayed in the front room for three hours until my mother came home and then I told her about it." "What about seeing blood on others?" "On somebody else?" he said. "Well, this hasn't happened lately, but in the wintertime, when it's cold and my nose feels cold, I'd sometimes see two people fighting in the street. I actually see a guy with a big first hit the other guy square on the nose or face. You know?" "Yes." "Well, when I'd see that, I'd feel it myself. It really seemed that I could actually feel it, and I would rather be fighting the one guy and taking the punishment than to see the other guy taking it, because I could just imagine how it feels to get hit when you're cold like that." The first time Patterson was down in a professional fight was when Jacques Royer-Crecy dropped him to one knee with a right hand in the first round at the St. Nicholas Arena in New York. Floyd came up before the count, but in the dressing room after, fight writers asked him about it. "He slipped," Cus D'Amato said. "No," Patterson said. "He knocked me down. I know he hit me because I don't remember going down. Otherwise I'd remember." Patterson's first loss as a professional was to Joey Maxim, who just managed to move him around enough at the Eastern Parkway Arena in Brooklyn to grab the decision. Eleven of the 12 boxing writers at ringside thought Patterson had won and they told him so in the dressing room. "Don't you think you beat him?" a fellow said. "The officials could see it better than I could," Patterson said. "I was too busy fighting." Patterson won an Olympic gold medal at Helsinki in 1952. Pete Mello coached the United States boxing team that year, and one afternoon I went down to the C Y O gym on East 17th> Street in New York to see him. "Tell me about Patterson," I said. "I'm in this business about 41 years," Pete said, "and this is the nicest kid I ever handled." "Give me an example," I said. "We're over in Helsinki," Pete said, "and we have to line up for chow. I noticed that Patterson used to gather himself three or four steaks, so I watched to find out what he's doing." "What was he doing?" I said. "Some of those Finns didn't have too much to eat," Pete said, "so Patterson was making up packages of food for them." Most fighters will carry a mental image of the next opponent while they run on the road or punch the bag or shadow-box. Before Patterson fought Archie Moore for the title, he boxed the fight many times in his mind. "I fought Moore when I was awake," he said, "and when I was asleep. One night I dreamt I'd already fought him, and I'd already won. When I woke up, for three or four seconds I thought I was the champ. I lay there with my eyes open, and then the realization came to me that the fight was still a week off. But I'd already had that good feeling of being champ." "What were your feelings," I said, "when you actually knocked out Archie?" "I felt good," Patterson said, "and then I felt sorry for Archie Moore. I knew how I'd have felt if he had knocked me out. I put myself in his place, and I looked at him and I could see how badly he felt." When Patterson was a kid, his idol was Joe Louis. Floyd kept scrapbooks filled with clippings and pictures of Joe. After Patterson won the title, the two finally met at a dinner. "What was it like?" I asked Patterson. "Well," Patterson said, "I said to myself, 'Is this really Joe Louis? Am I finally meeting the man who is my idol?' I almost couldn't believe it." "But you were the heavyweight champion of the world," I said. "You had his old title." "It seemed to me," Patterson said, "like Joe Louis was still the champion, and I wasn't." Patterson hid out from five schools before they sent him to Wiltwyck, a school for emotionally disturbed boys at Esopus, N.Y. There classes were smaller and he received individual attention. There he wore boxing gloves for the first time. One afternoon I went to see Ernst Papanek, the Wiltwyck director, and Walter Johnson, the resident director. "When Floyd came to us," Johnson said, "He was only about 11 years old, and I can best describe him as very impressionable and a great sufferer. He was suspicious of help and he didn't want to be with others, so our problem was to get him involved in some group activity. "We tried several things and then I thought of boxing. I put him in a tournament and he won his first three bouts. For the first time he had found success in the group, and we had found the tool whereby he could relate to others." "But he's unlike any other fighter I've ever known," I said. "That's right," Papanek said. "I did not expect him to be a boxer. He is so very gentle. I do not mean he is weak, but he is soft. Do you remember what happened in Chicago?" "Yes," I said. In January 1953, Patterson fought Chester Mieszala in Chicago. The week before the fight, the two were training in the Midtown Gym, but Patterson refused to watch Mieszala. "I'd be taking unfair advantage," he told Cus D'Amato. "I learn a lot watching another fighter, and he wouldn't have a chance." During the fight, Patterson knocked Mieszala's mouthpiece out, and Mieszala stopped and bent over to recover it. He was having trouble picking it up with his glove, so Patterson stooped down to help him. When the mouthpiece was back in place, they touched gloves. Patterson finally finished Mieszala in the fifth round. "That's what I mean," Papanek said. "I believe Floyd does not want to hurt people." Patterson once had Tommy Harrison out on his feet in the first round. He dropped his hands and waited for the referee to stop it. In another fight, Floyd opened a cut over Roy Harris' left eye, then began punching to the body. "Were you sorry for Harris?" I said. "It wasn't necessary for me to ruin him," Patterson said. "I was way ahead on points anyway." One afternoon in the Gramercy Gym, Jacob Lofman, a photographer, was taking pictures of Patterson and listening to us talk. "May I ask you something, Floyd?" Lofman said. "Sure," Patterson said. "Does it make any diference to you if it's a white man you're fighting?" "No," Patterson said. "Absolutely no." "But do you ever felt that you're representing your race when you're fighting?" I said. "Only that time with Roy Harris," Patterson said. "I heard some things that were said about the fight. I knew the South was all backing him up, and most of the colored people, you know, they didn't want to see me get beat. When I got up in the ring, though, none of that even entered my mind. He was just another man like everybody else had been, so I didn't notice his color or how much was involved." "Thank you, Floyd," Lofman said. After Johansson knocked him out in the third round of their first fight, Patterson went into seclusion for a month. When he came out of it, he set up a training camp in an abandoned roadhouse in Newtown, Conn. I guess I visited him there at least a dozen times in the next nine months. "Do you resent Johansson?" I said to him, the first time I saw him after the fight. "No," he said. "I was inclined to at first, but when I realized that all he did to me was what I tried to do to him, and there was no reason to resent him." "At any time when you were down that fight," I said, "did you recognize anyone at ringside?" "Yes," he said. "I recognized John Wayne. I think it must have been the third knockdown, because there I was on the floor, looking right at John Wayne and John Wayne was looking right at me." "Did you know him?" "I've never met him," Patterson said, "but he's my favorite movie actor. He's always the good guy or the sheriff cleaning up the town, and I think I've seen him in every picture he's made. At first I couldn't figure out how I could be seeing him there at ringside." "He was plugging a move during the broadcast of the fight," I said. "I know that now," Patterson said, "but all I knew then was that I'd seen John Wayne in person, and when I got up I was still thinking of that and I was embarrassed that John Wayne had seen me down." One day we were sitting in the kitchen of the Newtown club. Dan Florio, who trains Patterson, was boiling a couple of eggs and Patterson was glancing at a newspaper. "Have you seen Johansson on television?" I said. "Not with Dinah Shore," Patterson said, "but I saw him in that play." "The Killers," I said. "That's right," he said. "That would have been the first time you saw him since the fight," I said. "Did it bother you?" "Well, I heard he was going to be on," Patterson said. "At first I didn't know whether I'd watch him or not. Then I decided to watch, and the first time they showed him, he was lying face down on a bed." "That's right," I said. "Then I lowered my eyes," Patterson said, "and I said to myself: 'Now this is Johansson. You have to look at him. You have got to accept him.' Then I slowly raised my eyes and I looked at him and I could accept him. I thought he was good in the play." "Well," I said, "he played the part of a Swedish heavyweight." "I still think he was good," Patterson said. The day of the second Patterson-Johansson fight they weighed in at noon at the Commodore Hotel. The big room was crowded with sportswriters and photographers and members of the fight mob, and I ran into Johnny Attell. Johnny was a matchmaker for many years around New York, and while we were talking, Billy Conn walked over. "Who do you like tonight, Bill?" Johnny said to him. "Me?" Conn said. "I like the Swede for his punch." "I don't know," Johnny said, shrugging. "Patterson's got the equipment to take him if he fights him right." "You hear what somebody had Patterson say?" Conn said. "What?" Johnny said. "Floyd said that when he gets a guy out he lays off the eye and hits him in the belly," Conn said. "You know somebody told him to say that, because he'd pour salt in a cut if he could." "No he wouldn't," Johnny said. "Are you kidding?" Conn said. "No," Johnny said. "This guy Patterson is really that way." "Then he's got no business being a fighter," Conn said. Left hooks and the only anger he has ever carried into a ring won the second Johansson fight for Patterson. The anger was born of resentment, not of Johansson but of the many who Floyd said deserted him and of the many sportswriters who maligned his ability. Twenty minutes after the knockout, the anger was still there. In the crowded, noisy, humid Polo Grounds dressing room, Howard Cosell, the sportscaster, held his microphone in front of Patterson. "How do you feel, surrounded by sportswriters," Cosell said, "Most of whom picked you to lose?" "I'm looking right in their faces," Patterson said. I thought of something he once told me. "When I was small," he 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 ready 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." "When I left the Polo Grounds," Patterson told me some days later, "the promoters had a car and a chauffeur for me. I was sitting in the back seat alone, and when we drove through Harlem and I saw all the people celebrating in the streets, I felt good." "You should have," I said. "There's been nothing like it since Louis knocked out Billy Conn." "Then I thought about Johansson," Patterson said. "I thought how he would have to drive through there, too, and then he would have to go through what I went through after the first fight. I thought that he would be even more ashamed than I was, because he'd knocked me out the first time. Then I felt sorry for him." "Do you think," I said, "that you can call up the same kind of anger and viciousness the next time you fight Johansson?" "Why should I?" Patterson said. "In all my other fights, I was never vicious, and I won out in almost all of them." "But you had to be vicious against this guy," I said. "You had to turn a boxing contest into a kind of street fight to destroy this guy's classic style. When you did that, he came apart. This was your greatest fight, because for the first time you expressed emotion. A fight, a piece of writing, a painting or a passage of music is nothing without emotion." "I just hope," Patterson said, "that I'll never be as vicious again." That's what I mean when I say he wasn't cut out to be a fighter, but don't get me wrong. He is a good fighter. It's just that he's a better man.
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