The Next Champ

In the year-end rankings of The Ring, unofficial bible of boxing, Floyd Patterson is not even a heavyweight. Last week SPORTS ILLUSTRATED set the record straight: "It is now as clear as anything can be in the future books of boxing that [the] lithe young Brooklyn Negro-who celebrated his 21st birthday last month by challenging Rocky Marciano-will be the next heavyweight champion of the world."

Patterson's story, says Sportswriter Paul O'Neil, "illustrates the fact that professional boxing, for all its seamy background . . . and its pitiful human flotsam, can be a power for good in shaping the character of young males."

Pitfalls on the Path. Patterson's path from Manhattan's slums to his high skill as a professional boxer was filled with pitfalls. As a boy Floyd was "a lonely, disturbed and defiant being-the third in a family of eleven children, whom his parents, for all their toil, could barely feed." He was a truant. He ran with store-breaking gangs. Eventually his mother had him committed to an institution for problem children. He was 14, a tall, skinny welterweight, when he first found Cus D'Amato's Gramercy Gymnasium & Health Club on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He climbed "the long, dim stairway up from 14th Street, passed the two garbage cans on the landing, walked through a scabrous hall and entered the dingy and barnlike gymnasium ... To Floyd Patterson, as to many another slum boy, the prize ring seemed the only avenue of escape to a better world."

After two years and two score amateur fights, Patterson found himself at Helsinki, Finland, wearing the blue blazer of the U.S. Olympic team. Floyd won the null championship with impressive ease. "He was fully as sensational when he mounted a dais to receive the victory award-he put one hand on his stomach, the other against his back, and gave the crowd a deep, dancing-school bow."

Upstairs & Down. When he came home Patterson promptly turned pro, with D'Amato as his manager. He was sent to Trainer Dan Florio at Stillman's Gym for advanced instruction. Today, at 21, Patterson is known as a "fellow who will leave you for dead. He is a good-looking six-footer with lean hips, long arms and broad shoulders powered by slabs of smooth muscle ... he fights with the violent gracefulness of a large cat hunting its dinner. He is a rarity-a good boxer with a knockout in either fist . . . He is hard to hit, but he has been clobbered, upstairs and down, without losing his poise or aggressiveness. He has never been knocked out . . .

"To Floyd Patterson, at the moment, the future seems faintly hazy but delightful. He hopes to buy his father and mother a house in the suburbs and to get his younger brothers and sisters out of the slums; he also hopes to make a million dollars and buy a farm." Between him and his dreams stands Heavyweight Champion Rocky Marciano.

"He looks sloppy in the ring. But he is a good fighter," says Patterson. "They say Marciano is the fighter who can't be hurt. But if you want to beat him you have to fight him and make him back up. I think of Rocky Marciano a lot ... Maybe ... Rocky Marciano thinks of me."

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