By Tom Donelson

Floyd Patterson was an enigma; a fighter who did not have the big punch or size needed to be a great heavyweight champion, but who found himself a participant in the growing debate on Civil rights in the early 60's. Armed with the quick hands of a middleweight and cursed with a glass chin, Patterson found himself vulnerable to the better heavyweights of his day, including Ali and Liston.

According to Gerald Early, Floyd Patterson ranked as "one of the most thoughtful fighters ever to enter the boxing ring."  Such traits were rarely seen in a fighter, and some would even see it as a hindrance. Cuss D' Amato observed about his own fighter early in Patterson's career, "Patterson lacked the killer instinct.  He's too tame, too nice to his opponents."  The difference between Patterson, the philosopher, and Liston, the street man, was summarized in an interview conducted by Howard Cosell before their first fight. 

Patterson appeared to be lecturing Liston about the responsibility of the heavyweight crown during the interview.  When Cosell asked Liston about his view of Patterson, Liston prophetically responded, "I just want to run him over with a truck."  He did that in short order, knocking out Patterson in the first round.  Patterson came into the heavyweight division as the division was changing.  Sonny Liston was a big puncher, who weighed over 215 rounds, and Ali combined size with athleticism.  After Patterson, no heavyweight would ever weigh less than 200 pounds till Leon Spinks, who weighed 197 when he upset Ali. He did not even reach 190 pounds when he won the heavyweight title from Archie Moore.  You could easily argue that Patterson was the last Heavyweight to weigh less than 190 pounds!

Early wrote that Patterson viewed Ali, or the man he called Cassius Clay, "as alter ego... Perhaps Ali was the fighter that he, Patterson, always aspired to be."   Patterson stated in a Sports Illustrated article that if he moved and jabbed as opposed to moving straight into Liston's power range, he would have won.   During Chuvalo-Patterson, Patterson imitated Ali as he moved and danced.  This fight set up a bout between Patterson and Ali, which Ali easily won.  Patterson's hand speed was the quicker of the two fighters, but he seemed dwarfed by the Canadian pugilist. This remained the core of Patterson's problem as a heavyweight.  He was facing a new generation of bigger heavyweights and he didn't have the power punch to compensate for his smaller frame.  

Patterson was also caught in the racial storms raging around him.  Patterson was a black Roman Catholic, whereas most African-Americans stayed with their Baptist evangelical roots.  Patterson believed in the melting pot, and for him, his heavyweight belt was his chance to talk about the value of sports, and be the role model for young people and young blacks, in particular.

After beating Archie Moore for the heavyweight championship, Patterson fought a series of non-descript fighters, mostly white.  Sonny Liston revealed to one of his biographers that one of his reasons for disliking Patterson was that;  "He hasn't fought any colored boys since becoming champion. Patterson draws the color line against his own race.  We have a hard enough time as it is in a white man's world." 

Worthy black fighters such as Cleveland Williams, and Zora Folley had to wait until Ali became champion before receiving their shot at the title.  The only black that received a shot at the title was an erratic heavyweight named "Hurricane" Jackson.  Other challengers included the Olympic champion Pete Rademacher in his first professional fight, and Tom McNeeley.  The only worthy white opponent that Patterson fought was Ingemar Johannson.   For this omission, some blacks resented Patterson. 

There was another factor involved. Many of the black fighters were associated with mob-controlled organizations and Cuss D' Amato wanted to weaken those organizations by denying their fighters title shots.  Among those fighters controlled by the mob was Sonny Liston.  (In fairness to Patterson, he was certainly good enough to beat most of these fighters, the only exception being Liston.)

Patterson entered his first fight with Johannson full of confidence, but the bigger Johannson slaughtered Patterson with seven knockdowns in the third round.  Johannson, a typical European fighter who fought straight up, had a powerful right hand that he called "Thor."  "Thor" found Patterson routinely in the third round, thus becoming the last white heavyweight to hold the unified heavyweight title.  Patterson felt that he let America down, telling Peter Heller in an interview, "Losing a championship is bad enough, but losing it to a foreigner was even worse."  For Patterson, these sentiments reflected a need to be recognized as an American at a time when many blacks were denied basic civil rights.  

Patterson redeemed himself, as he became the first heavyweight to regain his championship with a vicious left hook knocking the Swede unconscious.  The hapless Johannson looked dead as he lay on the ground with just his feet moving and the rest of his body limp!   This would be Patterson's finest moment as he demonstrated the needed killer instinct rarely shown before or since.  For Patterson, beating Johannson was not racial but personal.  He felt humiliated at being knocked down seven times in the first fight.  Now he could avenge his loss and redeem himself.  Patterson would win the rubber match and then defeat the hapless Tom McNeeley before meeting Liston.

Patterson was everybody's hero when he allowed Liston to fight for his title.  Liston was a mob-controlled fighter, who acted the part of mob goon when he was not in the boxing ring.  Patterson found himself in a battle of good vs. evil as he stepped into the ring against Liston.  Patterson recalled the pressure, "The President of the United States, Ralph Bunche, all the celebrities, all the big leaders of the country, all the millions of letters I received, they made Liston the bad guy and I was the good guy."

Gerald Early wrote that Patterson was the defender of bourgeois black life in white America at a time when some blacks were challenging the bourgeois life style.   Patterson began to feel the weight of a messianic duty; a burden that he could not mentally or physically handle.  He admitted, "I don't ever want to endure that kind of pressure again. To me, fighting is fighting.  It's a sport."  President Kennedy pleaded with Patterson to "keep the championship."

Liston massacred Patterson, twice.  He did not have the power or the size to fight Liston, and even if he boxed Liston, he would not have won.  According to Gerald Early, these fights impacted Patterson's own standing within the black community, which had started to deteriorate.

While many Black Leaders considered him a hero in fighting the evil Liston, younger black activists attacked Patterson as a pathetic "Uncle Tom" when he condemned Ali in two pieces for Sports Illustrated in the mid 60's.  Early observed that, "Patterson's opposition to Ali was akin to an "outraged middle-class black who finds that his lower-class cousin has gone balmy over some sort of storefront charlatanism."  But Early conceded, "His basic instincts about the inadequacy of the Muslim response to American racism proved to be generally correct."

Patterson refused to acknowledge Ali's Muslim beliefs by continuing to call him by his Christian name, Cassius Clay, and approached his fight with Ali as a crusade.  Ali, in turn, treated this fight as a jihad, and with his superior skill Ali tortured and taunted the smaller Patterson.  Throughout the fight, Ali slapped accurate sharp jabs in Patterson's face.  When it appeared that Patterson was ready to go, Ali would ease up, with the goal of keeping Patterson around for one more round- one more round to torment the black Catholic.   This fight resembled less a boxing match and more a religious crusade- though this debate was one-sided. 

Seven years later, Patterson would get one more chance at Ali, but by this time, Ali's own views had mellowed.  No longer content to torture or humiliate his Christian nemesis, Ali finished Patterson off more quickly in seven rounds.  Patterson was trapped between two black cultures, the slowly emerging middle class that predominates the African-American community today, and the more radical black separatists- who drifted toward Ali.  Later, Joe Frazier would replace Patterson in the eyes of many in the radical black arena as the new "White Champion."  Unlike Patterson, Frazier never sought to be leader of any crusade and was all "raging black."  And, unlike Patterson, Frazier had the power to cause Ali damage.

Floyd Patterson was a transitional fighter in boxing history, a fighter who stood for a middle class black that was- and still is- invisible in America.  His small stature and inability to defeat his two major nemeses diminished his standing in boxing history. (And these two defeats overshadowed what was pretty remarkable career both in the ring and outside.)  He could not defeat the mob-controlled Liston or the brash Ali.  This thinking heavyweight was limited by his natural handicaps to control his destiny and represent his cause in the ring.