Patterson Heard Cus Teach Class

You wouldn’t give a dog act the part on the bill that history gave Floyd Patterson. Heavyweight champion between the reigns of Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali? A one-way ticket to obscurity. Floyd Who? And what is it you say you did for a living, Mr. Patterson? Oh, a fighter? Did you ever know Muhammad Ali?

The only guys who got a worse break from history were Jess Willard, who held the title between Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey, and Ezzard Charles, who ruled with Jersey Joe Wolcott between Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano. Ezzard needed his American Express card. Larry Holmes didn’t have much to throw his hat in the air about, either, ruling between Ali and Mike Tyson. Larry probably will get more attention in his comeback at age 42 than he did when he held the title.

Floyd Patterson was a strange champion anyway. Introspective, polite, soft-spoken, he had little of the swagger of the pug about him. It was said he lacked the killer instinct. If he cut your eye, he switched the attack.

But he fought and beat the best in his time. He probably never was much more than a pumped-up light-heavyweight--he won the 1952 Olympics as a middleweight. He had to work to neutralize the brute strength of most of the opponents he faced as a professional. Against most of them, he had to leave his feet to get his punch in. It was a stratagem that ended indisaster when he ran into the telephone-pole reach of a Sonny Liston. Patterson spent those fights looking like something hanging off a coat rack.

What makes Floyd Patterson interesting was that he brought an unaccustomed dignity to a cruel profession. Every fight was a study in survival. Every post fight was a study in modesty. When he lost to Liston the first time, Floyd felt he had let the world down (President John F. Kennedy had commissioned him to win). He had lost a fight, not the Cold War. But Floyd Patterson took responsibility seriously.

That is interesting because Floyd Patterson came up the same road as Mike Tyson, a man who, in a sense, was his stablemate.

Like Tyson, he was found institutionalized in a school for wayward boys by the Svengali of Swat, fight manager Cus D’Amato.

D’Amato was a strange character for the fight game, too. He saw more conspiracies than Oliver Stone and always steered his fighters away from what he conceived as a plot against him by the mainstream matchmakers. Cus thought the fight business was run by some reigning Godfather, and maybe it was, but Cus was able to find a way to move his fighter to the title.

But Cus taught his fighters more than how to slip a punch or hook off the jab. He taught them, so to speak, to take their hats off in elevators, eat with a fork, drink milk, be grateful. You never found a Cus D’Amato fighter in a bar. And he taught them to respect women.

D’Amato wanted to remake the person as well as the fighter. With gentle, melancholy Patterson he succeeded. Did he fail with aggressive, bullying Tyson?

Floyd Patterson says no. The failure was not D’Amato’s but Tyson’s.

“I don’t think this (rape trial and conviction) would ever have happened if Cus had lived,” Floyd says. “Cus adopted Tyson, and it was a point of pride with him that his fighters meet standards. You were like his son. He was an old-fashioned man, but you knew he had your best interest at heart, that everything he strived for was for your benefit. And you listened. I always listened to Cus because I knew he wanted only good for me. I have to think Tyson knew that, too. You only learn by listening anyway. When Cus died, Tyson stopped listening.”

Floyd Patterson, 57, is a good advertisement for listening. Still solvent, even affluent (D’Amato never threw anyone’s money away, including his own), Floyd is training Razor Ruddock for his fight with Greg Page on Saturday night at the Mirage in Las Vegas. The match moves up in importance now that it appears Tyson will leave the title scene.

Patterson, onetime boxing commissioner in New York, turned to training when his son Tracy (a featherweight) turned pro. “My son insisted,” Patterson says. “It was not my idea. But I figured if he was going to do it, I wanted him to have the best advice.”

Floyd says the work ethic D’Amato instilled all those years ago still persists. “You know, once you start getting physically fit, you have such a good feeling about it, you never really want to get away from it,” he says. He still does roadwork, works out. He feels Ruddock is, in many ways, a fighter like him, one who has never gotten the respect his skills entitle him to.

“He fought two smashing bouts with Mike Tyson,” Floyd says. “They stopped the first one incomprehensibly. The second, he went the route. Tyson respected him if the public didn’t.”

Patterson says he can sharpen this Razor. “He listens, too. You know, I did a lot of things people missed. When I left my feet with that leaping left hand, I put a lot of speed and all my weight behind that punch. I can teach Razor Ruddock a few things.”

Maybe so. It’s a pity he couldn’t have taught Mike Tyson a few things.