610. MUHAMMAD ALI VS FLOYD PATTERSON
HEAVYWEIGHT FIGHT
SEPTEMBER 20, 1972
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.33
DRAMA—6.76
STAR POWER—9.75
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—8.06
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.62
LOCAL IMPACT—7.04
TOTAL: 45.66
“PATTERSON PUMMELED”
In the fifteen months between his historic defeats of Sonny Liston, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, and he polarized a nation both with his religious beliefs and his braggadocio. In the wake of the second, controversial “knockout” of Liston, many Americans were hopeful his next opponent, the seasoned former champ, Floyd Patterson, would rid the boxing world of the loudmouth Muslim.
Patterson was born in North Carolina but his family relo’d to Bed-Stuy when he was an infant. He then went to high school in the Hudson Valley, in New Paltz. Floyd won gold at the 1952 Olympics as a middleweight, and he was generally undersized in the heavyweight class. But he became a two-time champ by using his speed and his wits. He won his first title at just 21, whipping Archie “The Mongoose” Moore at the Goose’s own speedy, shifty game. No previous Olympic champ had ever before won the heavyweight title.
Patterson fought a famous trilogy with Ingemar Johansson, losing his title to the Swede before coming back to knock him out twice. Floyd was a popular, if unusual, champ, talking often about his the fears he felt before entering the ring, and donning disguises to go out in public unimpeded. He was too sensitive for the marauding villainy of Liston, who brutally KO’d Patterson twice.
But those fights were forgotten in the wake of Ali’s rise. Patterson found himself the People’s Champ, saying, “This fight is a crusade to reclaim the title from the Black Muslims. As a Catholic, I am fighting Clay as a patriotic duty. I am going to return the crown to America.”
Ali responded by calling Floyd an “Uncle Tom,” and proceeded to crush him in their 1965 fight in Las Vegas, Ali’s desert debut.
Seven long years later, the two men rematched in the ring at Madison Square Garden. In the interim, much had happened, of course. Ali had been stripped of his title for refusing induction into the Army, while Patterson tried his hand at acting while climbing slowly back into contention in the Ali-less heavyweight division.
In 1971, Ali was back fighting for the belt, but lost to Joe Frazier in the Garden. In the aftermath, he toured the world, piling up victories in the Houston Astrodome as well as Japan, Switzerland, Ireland, and British Columbia. Frazier felt no need to fight him again anytime soon, so Ali took the next highest-paying fight he could find—against Patterson, whose name still rang out on the City streets, despite his best days being a decade before.
The long-delayed rematch saw 17,738 fans pack Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night, September 20, 1972, drawn like moths to the mega-wattage of Ali. It was The Greatest’s seventh fight in NYC, and the first since his memorable, historic loss to Frazier.
Smokin’ Joe himself was brought into the ring and introduced to the crowd before the fight. Ali, theatrically enraged, mock charged the champ in anger. But it would be more than a year before the two would meet again in the ring, right there in the Garden.
Patterson was a scientist in squared circle, and he knew from watching Ali that he was susceptible to lunging left hooks. He didn’t possess one like Frazier—no one did—but the likes of Henry Cooper and Sonny Banks had put Mo on the canvas with the punch. So Floyd tried his version, and found success early on, though not enough to floor Ali, or really even hurt him.
The “Louisville Lip” hammered Patterson with an overhand right in the third, and controlled the round, but then took the fourth entirely off, allowing his opponent to throw punches that Ali ducked and evaded with contemptuous ease. But Patterson was no slouch, and he caught Ali with multiple hooks.
After five rounds, the older but impeccably fit Patterson seemed ahead, with Ali toying with his prey. But then his trickster genius in the corner, Bundini Brown, yelled “Let’s go to war!” and Ali began to work. He took over the fight with his own clubbing hooks, and his superior size and strength began to tell. He concentrated on a target above Patterson’s left eye, peppering away at the wound.
The seventh was rough for Patterson’s many fans and backers. Ali bullied him relentlessly, knocking the ex-champ around. Patterson went down, though ref Arthur Mercante ruled it a slip. But Floyd’s left eye was swollen nearly shut. Somehow, he made it to the end of the round, but after a long examination before the eighth, Mercante ruled that Patterson’s eye was battered enough to end the contest.
Ali, by RTD (Referee Technical Decision). The winner was gracious afterwards. “Patterson is a great, great fighter. I thought he’d be nothing, but he surprised me. I didn’t knock him out. I didn’t get him on a TKO. All I did was close his eye.”
It wasn’t as cruel or one-sided as their fight in ’65, but it was convincing nonetheless.
AFTERMATH:
Patterson never formally retired, but after being annihilated once again by Ali, he never fought again. He hung up the gloves after a Hall of Fame career, finishing 55-8-1. He became a marathoner, running in the NYC version as well as the Stockholm Marathon with his old rival turned good pal, Johannson. He also became a trainer and headed the NY State Boxing Commission for a while.
Alas, like so many other fighters, Patterson fought too long and took too many shots to the head. He developed Alzheimer’s and died from it in 2006, aged 71.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“It’s easy to do anything in victory. It’s in defeat that a man reveals himself.”
—Floyd Patterson
FURTHER READING:
The Loser, by Gay Talese, Esquire
VIDEO:
And here’s a good Floyd documentary:
609. STEFFI GRAF VS MONICA SELES
U.S. OPEN
WOMEN’S FINAL
SEPTEMBER 9, 1995
ARTHUR ASHE STADIUM
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.01
DRAMA—8.11
STAR POWER—8.37
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.81
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.35
LOCAL IMPACT—7.02
TOTAL: 45.67
“BOUNCING BACK”
On April 30, 1993, one of the most bizarre and terrifying moments in tennis history took place. During a match in Hamburg, a crazed Steffi Graf fan named Gunter Parche, maniacally desiring his favorite player become world number one, stabbed the current top player, Yugoslav Monica Seles, with a small boning knife in her back during a changeover.
It was a shocking moment, a security breakdown of epic proportions. Seles wasn’t severely injured, thankfully, but nevertheless went into hiding for nearly two years, dealing with trauma, an eating disorder, and in happier news, becoming an American citizen. She finally returned to the tour in August, 1995, and cruised to the title in the Canadian Open, showing no ill effects from the Parche stabbing.
“Sitting in the chair is the worst part,” she said of her comeback performances, “because I used to feel safe there and now, in the back of my mind, I can’t. Not yet, anyway.”
As Robin Finn wrote in the Times, “It took Monica Seles two years to return to the sport she knew she loved and for a time thought she had lost. And when she came back, she did it with such a vengeance that it seemed it was the rest of the competition and not her who had been idling in involuntary exile.”
That led to the U.S. Open in Flushing Meadow. Seles was seeded second, behind Graf, and it was foreordained that the two would meet in the final. Seles lost just 24 games en route to the boss battle with Graf, who lost her first set of the tourney before sweeping through. Fraulein Forehand must have carried some guilt over the fact that Parche’s stabbing attack, while psychotic, actually worked—Graf ascended to #1 in Seles’ absence, and in ’95 was 38-1, with the French and Wimbledon titles already captured.
But her year wasn’t trouble-free. Her father, Peter Graf, was arrested and jailed in Germany for tax evasion, and Steffi herself was under similar suspicion (she was later cleared). She was also playing through injuries to a sore left foot and a chronically sore bone spur in her back. Small wonder she said, “The ’95 Open was the most difficult ordeal I’ve ever played through.”
The passion play unfolded at the Arthur Ashe Stadium at the U.S. Tennis Center on Saturday afternoon of September 9, 1995. Technically, Seles was two-time defending champ, having won the 1991 and 92 Opens (two of her nine majors) and carried a 20-match win streak in NYC. Oddsmakers made Graf a tiny favorite, but it was as even a final as could be, between two incredible baseliners who rarely approached the net.
The first set lived up to that, requiring a tiebreaker that Seles assumed she’d won with an ace down the middle. But it was called out (no Hawkeye in those days), and Graf would up taking the point and the set after consecutive Seles forehands sailed long.
“It made me mad,” Monica said.
So angry she obliterated Steffi in the second set, bageling her in a shocking 6-0 performance, virtually unheard of at that level, especially against a player of Graf’s caliber. Graf attributed her lapse to a fleeting case of nerves, but mainly it was due to Seles playing out of her mind.
Graf recovered in the tense third set. She got a pivotal break in the fourth game, and provoked Seles into a string of errors, 42 in all. Seles saved one match point but smacked the next into the bottom of the net, and Graf was champion. The crowd had certainly been behind Seles as sentimental fave, but roared now as Graf won her fourth Open title, and 18th major. It was a quadruple Grand Slam for the German, as she had now won all four majors at least four times.
The final was 7-6 (8-6), 0-6, 6-3. Graf received a beer shower from her fellow players when she got back to the locker room.
AFTERMATH:
Seles went on to capture one more major, her tenth, at the 1996 Aussie Open. She lost to Steffi at the U.S. Open again in ’96, and never approached that level again. One has to wonder where her career might have gone without the stabbing—as it is, she is a top-20 player of all time.
She also was bowled over by “Kramer the ball man,” so that’s something…
WHAT THEY SAID:
“I didn’t think I had the tools for it. Monica’s been playing so well since she came back, which impressed everybody, especially me.
—Steffi Graf
FURTHER READING:
Getting A Grip: On My Body, My Mind, My Self by Monica Seles
VIDEO: