Rademacher’s Dream Nearly Came True

Pete Rademacher, who knows something about the subject, is one of the members of a panel which will select winners of the Olympic Spirit Award.

In 1956, Rademacher, a 27-year-old Army lieutenant stationed at Fort Benning, Ga., won the heavyweight berth on the U.S. Olympic Boxing Team. But it was doubtful he would go to the Games at Melbourne, Australia, because of a severely bruised bicep. The injury was so severe that he couldn’t straighten his right arm.

“I spent 12 days at Letterman Army Hospital (in San Francisco),” Rademacher said, “and I dreamed if I can win the gold medal, I can challenge the winner of the Patterson-Moore fight and become the only guy in history to start at the top and work my way down.”

Floyd Patterson, the 1952 Olympic middleweight champion, and Archie Moore, the professional light heavyweight champion, were to fight Nov. 30, 1956, for the heavyweight title made vacant by the retirement of Rocky Marciano in 1955.

Rademacher was kept on the Olympic team and he won the gold medal by knocking out Lev Moukhine of the Soviet Union in the first round.

On Aug. 22, 1957, Rademacher, who resigned his Army commission, made his pro debut--as a challenger to Patterson for the world heavyweight title. Patterson had knocked out Moore in the fifth round.

After returning from Australia, Rademacher pursued his dream.

“You can’t do this,” Rademacher recalled the great Joe Louis telling him about his plan to challenge for boxing’s most important title in his first pro fight.

“It’s just not done,” Marciano said.

‘If you think that way, you’ve been in the business too long,” George Gemeres, Rademacher’s boxing teacher, said.

“Please, Peter,” his mother said.

Rademacher wouldn’t be discouraged.

He attended an Army boxing tournament at Fort Campbell, Ky., where one of the judges was Joe Gannon, who as a pro light heavyweight lost an eight-round decision to Patterson on Oct. 22, 1954.

Rademacher, who found two financial backers, asked Gannon to contact Cus D’Amato, Patterson’s manager, with the idea of having two Olympic champions fight for the world heavyweight title.

The fight was put together, with Patterson guaranteed $250,000. Another $100,000 was put in escrow to ensure a rematch should Rademacher achieve the unachievable.

To promote the fight, Rademacher and his backers formed a small manufacturing company called Unlimited Enterprises. The idea was that the fight would publicize the company. Rademacher’s purse was his salary as a vice president of the company.

“I said we’ll put the fight in Seattle, Wash., because that’s the only commission in the United States that will approve it, and it’s my home state,” recalled Rademacher, who hails from Yakima.

“I was a 10-1 favorite not to show up.”

He showed up that night, and in the second round he knocked down Patterson. But Patterson knocked him down seven times and won on a sixth-round knockout.

“My sole concept was, I would knock out Floyd Patterson, milk it for all it’s worth, then retire undefeated,” Rademacher said.

However, Rademacher continued to fight until 1962 and posted a 17-1-6 record. He beat contender George Chuvalo and Bobo Olson, the former middleweight champion who ballooned to a heavyweight.

“I loved the business,” said Rademacher, who lives at Medina, Ohio, and is president of Kiefer McNeil, a firm involved in swimming-pool chemical packaging and the manufacture of swim-racing products.

A criterion for the Olympic Spirit Award, to be presented in September by the U.S. Olympic Committee to certain participants in winter and summer Games over the last 20 years, is: “Exhibited a never-give-up attitude.” Pete Rademacher would be perfect as a presenter of the award.

Remembering his shot at a dream 30 years ago, Rademacher, chuckling, said, “Getting up was the biggest mistake Floyd ever made. Just think what the rematch would have made.”