Happy

Floyd was greater than Ali!!! I listened to fight with my dad and brother in the car outside Howard Johnsons restaurant. He was decency personified, and the peoples Champion!!! God bless you Floyd!!!

P

I heard that also that Johansen didn't train hard and did a lotta socializing with his girlfriend at banquets enjoying the desserts

But he didn’t.

Agree.....

Bunk! Patterson didn't take the fight serious because he had a string of soft opponents. He also made the same mistake Louis made: dropping his left. He would not have made that mistake again.Watch the fight again. He is still on his feet after seven knockdowns.

Cosell is the color commentator, not the blow-by-blow announcer

Watching that match I have always felt that if Floyd Patterson had been able to survive the third round he would have been able to collect his senses and then later have gone on the win the match. Did you notice how quickly he got back up after going down for that seventh time? Johansson it seems didn't have enough strength in him to be able to put him down on the canvas long enough for the ten count.

Point well taken, but it's easy to say after the bout. Things happen very quickly in the ring,, and everyone back then wanted to give a champion an extra chance to defend his title. Archie Moore's incredible comeback vs. Yvonne Durelle happened less than a year before,a bout that could have easily been stopped in the first or fifth round. Ruby Goldstein was a top referee (and boxer in his day) but caught a lot of grief in his career for either stopping bouts too soon or too late. His ultimate nightmare was Griffith-Paret III.

I thought the same thing. Wasn't Goldstein the ref in the Griffith v Paret fight? why does he have such a good reputation?

His name was JOHANSSON!

You said it. I never saw him as having a glass jaw though, he was just not equipped to fight at heavyweight. The great light heavyweight Bob Foster got knocked out by heavyweights when he tried them too, but he was a destroyer and an undisputed champion at 175.

Props to him for keeping the belt for as long as he did. Granted, that entailed a lot of ducking. Practically blackballed Sonny Liston for 5 years before giving him a shot

@@connshawnery6489 Guy wins the title 2x maybe three if you count the robbery against Ellis and you say "He was not equipped"?

You would never have made a business manager. Go back and look at what Light Heavyweights got paid. Patterson made millions as a heavyweight. He would have got paid half that as a LH. THe LH limit was 175 and he spent his heavyweight career from 180-200. He weighed more than Marciano. Should Rocky have been a HH too?

@@josephshields2922 I’m speaking physically only, but that’s not the only metric that makes fighters effective in their weight class. Patterson was a great champion. The first heavyweight to regain the title (Ali was the second), which is a historical feat. I was speaking to the fact that heavyweights were becoming exceedingly larger physically and in strength at that time, which becomes an inherent disadvantage regardless of skill level. That’s why weight classes matter.

I saw a fight where a middleweight got knocked out. he was flat on his back out cold, but his hands were still instinctively throwing punches at the air as he lay flat on his back.

He twisted his knee in the fall

Yeah Johansen was like an early days Deontay Wilder

Frederick Rapp I think Patterson was younger than Johansson too

Better Ingo than Floyd...

@@MyVeryHappyDay I take your point.

A J Liebling called Johansson an "apple-headed boy" LOL

@@janswart2705 Cosell was the most obnoxious annoying fight announcer ever, going off on trivial tangents about something happened 5, 10, 15 years earlier somewhere in Chicago or Las Vegas that's got nothing relevant to do with the fight at hand, "you remember Houston TX Thursday November 10th 1954, when Klauss Darbie kod Sammy Samboni in the 9th round." God Howard is annoying.

And yet Johansson got this title shot by knocking out the then top ranked Eddie Machen in a single round the year previous. The following year Machen would go the distance with Sonny Liston and was the last man to do so before Muhammed Ali defeated Liston for the title. Boxing can be a cruel and unpredictable sport.

I think Liston would have beaten nearly everyone senseless. Ali in the first fight was just too agile/fast. I don't take their second fight seriously. Liston is a tad underrated in the greatest heavyweights of all time, even though he lost the two fights to Ali he kept fighting, had only 1 more loss in all his 16 fights after the two Ali fights. I think a line would have been put through his name for further challenges after the second Ali fight.

I hate how later on the refs started prematurely stop fights: When Sonny Liston got up from Ali's anchor/phantom punch after the ref finally got Ali to go to his neutral corner after ali was standing over Liston, when Liston got up he continued fighting, the ref knowing he had lost the count should've let them continue to fight, that was Sonny's first time being knocked to the canvas and Sonny looked confused while Ali was standing over him, he was waiting for Ali to go to a neutral corner.

That first shot he took from Johansson would have taken the wind out of anyone's sails, and getting hit by Liston was no joke either. He lost inside the distance once to Johansson, twice to Liston and to Ali on the basis of taking a couple of beatings, but no one else ever managed to stop him.

That is a myth that gets repeated over and over by folks not familiar with Floyd's career. Only ONE man ever put him down for the count and that was Sonny Liston. 1 man in 65 fights? Gass Jaw-I think not.

Ha ha, I read a Ring Magazine comment from after the fight and it said "One thing for sure Patterson is no Joe Louis, He will not do what Joe did to Schmelling". Like to meet that guy.