The Youngest Ever

Even before the bout started, the young pretender to the heavyweight title assumed the prerogatives of a champion. Floyd Patterson, 21, made Archie Moore, the fading patriarch (39, going on 43) of the prize ring, cool his heels for a quarter-hour before weighing in. Outployed for perhaps the first time in his garrulous career, Moore sulked silently through the ceremony.

All week long, Moore had talked like a goateed tiger. He was fighting for pay, he reminded everyone in earshot, when this untutored upstart Patterson was still in short pants. Moore was "not without pity" for the kid, but they had sent a boy on a man's errand.

Smoldering Cigars. Floyd Patterson, a cool ("He's like ice in a glass," said a trainer), lithe and rope-muscled Negro, was potentially the youngest champion (as Moore was undoubtedly the oldest). Only a few years before, Patterson had been an underprivileged Brooklyn kid, a tough and aimless truant who ran with the back-street gangs and snarled himself into a school for wayward boys. He came out of a lower East Side gymnasium to win the 1952 Olympic middleweight championship at 17, went on through a passel of rugged amateur scraps and only one defeat in 31 professional fights.

Patterson worked toward boxing's highest throne with class and precision. When he was not working with the gloves on, he was studying movies of Archie's past fights, and, with canny Manager Cus D'Amato. planning his battle, round by round. Still, the smart money rode with the veteran. It was Moore. Moore, Moore, as squat, cold-eyed men talked around their smoldering cigars about the old man's wile, experience and mulelike punch. Only a last-minute showing of "Eastern" money drove the odds down where they deserved to be: Moore, 7-5.

Toronto to Tasmania. For a few moments in the first round, men who had bet on Moore could still tell themselves that their money was safe. Archie's shuffling, flat-footed style seemed to be keeping him out of trouble. He even landed a couple of crisp rights. Maybe he was pacing himself. But Patterson kept crowding in. His fast hands, held high and dashing as a hummingbird, punished the old Moore flesh, and all of a sudden the countless battles Archie had fought, from Toronto to Tasmania, seemed to catch up with him. The starch leaked out of him. Carelessly, he dropped his guard. A lopping left hook whistled out of nowhere, to separate him from his intellect. He climbed off the canvas at the count of nine; then a sharp right cross dropped him for good. It was only 2 min. 27 sec. of the fifth round.

Archie Moore was led away, the light-heavyweight title still tenuously in his hands. The factor that helped to lick him --age--offered the new heavyweight champion of the world a fancy future: his best bouts and biggest purses (this one: $114,000) were still ahead. "Patterson has the potentialities of a great fighter," said Archie when he found his tongue. For the first time ever, the gaudy pitchman was guilty of astonishing understatement. What the sport needed next was some men good enough to take on the young and growing champ. The man most fitted for the assignment: Retired Champion Rocky Marciano.

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