Tom McNeeley, RIP

October 31, 2011 Tom McNeeley, Challenger to Patterson, Is Dead at 74 By BRUCE WEBER Tom McNeeley, a knockout artist who challenged Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight championship in 1961, losing an action-packed four-round bout that featured at least nine knockdowns — it depends how you count — died on Oct. 25 in Weymouth, Mass. He was 74. The cause was complications of a seizure, his son Tom III said. McNeeley fought professionally from 1958 to 1966, compiling a respectable 37-14 record with 28 knockouts, though he was better known for his losses to Brian London, Oscar Bonavena and Jose Torres in addition to Patterson. Still, he was 24 and undefeated as a professional when he took on Patterson on Dec. 4, 1961, in Toronto, having dispatched 23 previous opponents of decidedly lesser caliber. Patterson was 26 and in his prime, having reclaimed the title he had lost to Ingemar Johansson by knocking out Johansson in two subsequent fights. Powerful, with impossibly quick hands, the champion was a heavy favorite, though McNeeley, at 6 feet 2 inches and about 200 pounds, outweighed him by at least 15 pounds, stood 2 inches taller and had an 8-inch reach advantage. Indeed, the odds were so stacked against McNeeley that he became a figure of some curiosity. After the matchup was announced, The New York Times published a profile of him on its front page, and 50 years ago this month, three weeks before the fight, Sports Illustrated had him on its cover, with the headline “Long Shot From Boston.” The fight was in fact a mismatch, as Patterson pummeled McNeeley, knocking him down eight times by the official count and causing two or three more slips to the canvas before the referee, Jersey Joe Walcott, ruled Patterson the victor by a knockout. “The stories about the fight said I went down 9 or 10 times,” McNeeley recalled in a 1994 interview with The Boston Globe. “The writers were being nice to me. I have the film. It was more like 12 or 13.” But McNeeley was nonetheless a fierce and lively opponent who not only kept rising to his feet but kept throwing dangerous jabs and hooks. In one vigorous fourth-round volley, he sent Patterson down to one knee. “The flaming courage of Tom McNeeley made an exciting drama of his fight with Floyd Patterson in the Maple Leaf Gardens tonight,” the Times columnist Arthur Daley wrote the next day. “But the champion chopped him down with the methodical precision of a butcher going to work on an obstreperous steer.” After the fight, Patterson called McNeeley a fearless competitor, though not an especially threatening one. Nothing McNeeley did in the ring surprised him, Patterson said, “except getting up every time I knocked him down.” Thomas William McNeeley Jr. was born in Cambridge, Mass., on Feb. 21, 1937, and grew up in nearby Arlington. His father was the light heavyweight champion of New England, and young Tom started boxing at an early age. A gifted athlete, he went to Michigan State on a football scholarship, but, perceiving his athletic future was in the ring, he dropped out after his sophomore year when the school dropped its boxing team. After his retirement, he served for a time as Massachusetts state boxing commissioner and had a full-time second career working for the state Department of Correction, first as a director of recreation, creating and supervising athletic programs in prisons, and later as a counselor for prison guards, state troopers and other state employees with stress-induced problems. Open about his own struggle with alcoholism, he specialized in addiction counseling. “The toughest fight I ever had was against John Barleycorn,” he said. McNeeley, whose first marriage ended in divorce, had moved from Newton, Mass., to Hanover, Mass., shortly before he died. In addition to Tom III, a producer for ESPN who lives in Easton, Mass., he is survived by his wife, the former Gloria Sullivan, whom he married in 1983; three other sons, Shawn, of Medfield, Mass.; Peter, a boxer who once lost to Mike Tyson, of Norwood, Mass.; and Bryan, of Cape Canaveral, Fla.; a stepson, David D’Attilio of Quincy, Mass.; two brothers, Brian, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Kevin, of North Reading, Mass; two sisters, Sheila Norton, of Acton, Mass., and Kathleen Kelly, of Lawrence, Mass.; and 10 grandchildren. From the moment the fight against Patterson ended, McNeeley seemed to recognize his place as a footnote in boxing history. In an unusual television interview with Patterson immediately after their fight, McNeeley said about his opponent: “If anyone here ever calls him anything but a real champion — then they have to answer to me! I mean that, Floyd, from the bottom of my heart.” Over the years he remembered Patterson with admiration and their encounter with self-deprecatory humor. “I knew going into the fight that he had very fast hands,” McNeeley said in a 2003 interview with the magazine The Ring. “I was sparring with middleweights to prepare myself for his speed. When the fight finally happened, I never imagined someone could throw punches with such speed. Especially a heavyweight. The punches were coming so fast I thought the referee was sneaking some in, too.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/sports/tom-mcneeley-contender-for-heavyweight-title-dies-at-74.html?hpw