Hammered

On this day 46 years ago, Floyd Patterson faced Ingemar Johannson for the third and final time with the heavyweight title on the line. On the Paranassus of heavyweight trilogies, this one sits just a few peaks below Ali/Frazier and above the rest of the field. The Floyd/Ingo bouts were wide open, wild-swinging affairs in which knockdowns were traded like stiff left jabs, a total of 12 in all across the three fights. Floyd was floored seven times in the first bout in 1959, en route to a shocking third-round knockout that lost him the heavyweight title and earned Johansson's right a nickname worthy of his Swedish heritage - "The Hammer of Thor." The second bout was Ring Magazine's Fight of the Year in 1960, mostly due to the all-out ferocity of Floyd's thirst for revenge. He pulverized Ingo in the fifth with a left hook that rendered the Swede unconscious on the canvas with his right foot feverishly twitching. It's certainly one of the top ten knockouts in boxing history.

The third bout was possibly the best of the three in that it was a more even struggle, despite the fact that both fighters came in a little out of shape. They traded knockdowns in the first round, something that hadn't happened in a heavyweight title fight since Dempsey/Firpo. From there it was a free-for-all, a Gatti/Ward-type display of you-hit-me-now-I'll-hit-you that ended with a stoppage in the sixth. If you don't know who won, I won't spoil it for you. I tried to find a video of the whole fight, but unfortunately could only come up with one that begins in the fourth, when both men were a little dusted from the pace of the first nine minutes. Things pick up again in the sixth (if you listen closely in the fourth, you'll hear what I believe to be the voice of Cus D'Amato yelling "left hand Floyd!" like a mantra).