Tweet
The sad tale of Patterson I
The president asked the champion whom he would be fighting next. Cassius Clay, the brash Olympic champion, was tearing his way to the top of the division, but no one was demanding that fight yet. Clay was not yet twenty. Patterson knew what the president meant.
'Liston,' he said. 'I'm gonna fight Liston.'
Instead of merely wishing Patterson well, Kennedy said, 'Well, you've got to beat him.'
Liston, for his part, was convinvinced the white house meeting was the reason Patterson finally agreed to the match. 'Frankly, I don't think Patterson would of fought me if he hadn't promised the president,' he said. 'I believe Patterson found himself in a position where he couldnt go back on his word. After all, you don't tell the president of the united states that you are going to do something then fail to do it.'
On the morning of he fight, the heavyweight champion of he world packed a loser's siutcase. Floyd Patterson, for all his handspeed, for all the hours he put in th gym, was the most doubt addled titleholder in the history of the division. There were always losers, professional opponents, set-em ups, unknowns who suffered as he did, men who took no pleasure in winning except as the periodic escape from loss and humiliation. But he was champion, the youngest man to ever win the title.
In the weeks of training , Patterson lay on his bed at night, out in a cabin in the Illinois countryside, half asleep, listening to his recording of 'Music for Lovers Only,' and, if he was lucky, he saw himself winning.
The sad tale of Patterson I
But the odds were against Patterson. Cus D'Amato, his mentor since he began boxing at fourteen, had spent years avoiding this fight, preferring instead to set Patterson up with softer opponents. D'Amato, used his authority and standing amoung the columnists to deliver righteous pronounments about Liston's connections to the Mafia, and, like someone from the department of social welfare, he spoke of the need for rehabilitation, for Sonny to prove himself civilised and stay that way if he wanted a chance at the title. But Patterson knew perfectly well that D'Amato thought he had little chance against Liston. And in this, D'Amato was not alone. Some of Patterson's predecessors as champion, Rocky Marciano and Joe Louis among them, arrived in Chicago for the fight, and no sooner had they stepped off the plane than they began telling reporters that the challenger was too strong, too mean, to lose to Patterson.
Almost everyone, of course, was backing Floyd, rooting for him, but this support was purely sentimental: the writers liked Patterson because he was always so cooperative, he was so open and polite; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was behind Patterson because he was a civil rights man, an intergretaionist, a reform minded gentleman, while Liston, the ex-con, projected what one newspapaer after another called 'a poor example for the youth of America.'Jackie Robinson's prediction that Patteron would 'demolish' Liston had more to do with political hopes than boxing smarts.
Patterson was determined, as always to be fair, to accommodate, to do the right thing.Liston had been ranked the top contender for a long time. He had been to jail for armed robbery, true enough, but he had served his time, he deserved his a chance. Patterosn was doing his bit for the cause of social mobility.
'Liston paid for his crimes,' he said. 'Should he be able to win the championship, these qualities will rise to the surface. I think you'd see a compltely new and changed Liston.' At least for the time being, Liston did not wish to betray any appreciation. 'I'd like to run him over with a truck,' he said.
And so, with losing on his mind, Floyd made arrangements. He carefully stuffed his bag and a attache case with clothes, food and a disguise - a custom made beard and mustache. If he won, of course, he'd meet the press and head back to the hotel for a victory party. If not, he would leave Comiskey Park in his false whiskers and drive through the night to his training camp in upstate New York.
Only a minute had passed. But now the big punches started to land, first a right uppercut that made Patterson's face seem, in flash-frame, as contorted as putty dropped to the sidewalk from a fifth-floor window. He would never recover from that. The right was not the punch that put him down, but, as it happened, it was the one that ended all hopes of a contest. To clear his head, to rest, Patterson tried desperately to clinch, Liston shoved him back and hit him with a two left hooks. His legs stiffened straight and he bent at the waist, but it was a posture that held only for a instant and then he legs gave out.
Latr that day Patterson showered, dressed, and pasted on his beard. He waited awhile until he thought the stadium had emptied out and then found his friend Mickey Alan, the singer who had performed the national anthem that night. He and Alan got in a borrowed car that had been parked in an agreed upon spot by Patterson's chauffeur, and they headed for the expressway
- due east
Comment