Not so heavy Heavyweights !!

A conversation with a friend involved in boxing brought back some memories from my teenage years about my earliest memories of boxing.  The conversation online started about Cassius Clay and my all time favourite Sonny Liston !

To this day I still maintain that Sonny was paid to take a dive in 1962 in Miami Beach against the then "Cassius Clay" by messrs Blinky Palermo and Frankie Carbo both of whom had Mafia gambling links. Clay being 7-1 against in  odds and very much the underdog! The rematch in Maine had a similar outcome despite massive odds in favour of Liston.

Both boxers weighed round about 15 stone with Liston being about half a stone heavier than Clay, but nothing like the weights of the modern era. As an example, Tyson Fury weighed in at 20 stone for his bout against Deontay Wilder this year.

By 1959, Blinky Palermo and his partner, known Mafioso Frankie Carbo owned a majority interest in the contract of heavyweight boxer Sonny Liston who went on to win the Heavyweight title in 1962. At the time Palermo and Carbo acquired their interest in Liston, the notorious Carbo was imprisoned on Rikers Island between Queens and the Bronx in New York, having been convicted of the undercover management of prize-fighters and unlicensed matchmaking. Liston fought 12 fights under the control of Carbo and Palermo.

Cassius Clay as he was then known, had won the Light-heavyweight Olympic title in Rome in 1960.

The title though of Heavyweight champion is and always has been, the supreme Professional boxing title.

This led me onto thinking about other heavyweight boxers of the time, Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, Ingemar Johannsen, Brian London, Henry Cooper, Joe Baksi and even Freddy Mills who had boxed at heavyweight. 

In truth they were all marginally heavier than Light-heavyweight.

Floyd Patterson's amateur boxing career started in 1950. He was training with Cus D’Amato in Manhattan, New York at Gramercy Gym. He was a two-time New York Golden Glove winner in 1951 and 1952. He qualified for the 1952 Olympics and won the gold medal in the middleweight division.

After his success at the Olympics, Patterson went professional. He moved up to the light heavyweight division and won all but one fight throughout four years. In 1956, he fought for the heavyweight championship and was the youngest winner in history at the age of 21. He held on to that title until 1959 when he was defeated by Ingemar Johansson, but was able to regain the title in 1960.

I remember the second fight from jumpy black and white T.V. but not the first as we didn't have a television then. 

Floyd Patterson always seemed too nice to be a fighter. A boxer he certainly was, with his peek a boo style !  His defeats to Sonny Liston both in the first round really finished him, and while he did get some bouts later in life, they (the Liston bouts) had almost destroyed him!