The Champion

Outside, the crowds quite literally were breaking down the Polo Grounds' gates. In the seasick-green dressing room formerly inhabited by New York's baseball Giants, Sweden's Ingemar Johansson, heavyweight champion of the world, dimpled his chin and changed into his fighting gear. The quietest place of all was the shabby, sweat-reeking quarters once foisted off on visiting baseball teams. There, minutes before he was to enter the ring, Challenger Floyd Patterson, 25, last week climbed onto the rubbing table and dozed off.

Patterson could afford to relax. Ever since Johansson knocked him out and took away his title last June, the nation's sportswriters had been turning Patterson id-side out and diagnosing him as a brooder who would never regain the championship. But as Floyd Patterson drowsed in his dressing room, his mind's eye could run over the past months--months spent partly in brooding, but mostly in dedicated training and planning.

The training, grim with ascetic zeal, began last September. One month ago, Patterson got out a movie projector, threaded the film himself, and took his first and last look at the pictures of his humiliation in the first Johansson fight. From then on, often working out late at night to protect his secret, Patterson remade much of his boxing style under the canny eye of Dan Florio, an oldtime bantamweight and one of the best trainers in boxing.

Stable Stance. Florio began with Patterson's stance. In his much--and justly--criticized peekaboo defense, with his feet squared and his gloves held high about his head as though clutching a toothache, Patterson had no foundation for absorbing a punch, much less for launching one. Florio got Patterson to revert to the classic, stable stance, with the left foot in front, the right foot in back. To increase Patterson's ability to take a punch Florio strengthened his neck with special exercises that expanded his collar size from 16 1/2 to 17. A diet of steak, lamb chops and beef stew boosted Patterson's weight by 8 Ibs. to a solid 190. Any sparring partner who knocked Patterson down with a right hand got a bonus of $100; any who staggered him got $50. No one collected.

Patterson's strategy was built around two facts spotted in the first fight: offensively, Johansson needed to get set to throw his paralyzing right hand; defensively, he moved back quickly from an attack. To keep Johansson from getting set, Patterson planned to press him constantly, throwing a stinging left jab from his new stance. Warned Florio: "Leave Johansson alone in the center of the ring, and he'll knock your head off." In close, Patterson hoped to lower Johansson's guard with flurries of body punches, then use left hooks to catch up with the retreating champion and finish him off.

The Changing Look. At the Polo Grounds, the months of training and planning paid off spectacularly. As seen through Patterson's eyes, the look on Johansson's face told the story. At the bell, Johansson's expression was contemptuously confident. Then, as an entirely new Patterson hammered home his left jab, moved aggressively inside with rapid-fire bursts of punches, Johansson took on the quiet half-smile of a man presented with the task of solving an unexpected puzzle.

All the while, Johansson was carrying his right as though, in Patterson's phrase, it was "a diamond." In the second round, catching Patterson's head with the feared right, Johansson peered anxiously to see the effect. Feigning injury, Patterson went into retreat with the hope of luring Johansson into reckless attack. Cautious, Johansson did not follow.

The pace never slackened, and the crowd's voice changed from rumble to roar. By the fifth round, Johansson's face was tight with apprehension. Slowly, his guard came down to protect a reddening body. As planned, Johansson was retreating from an attack when Patterson caught him with a rising left hook that landed flush on the side of the jaw. Johansson rolled flat on his back, then got to his knees while Patterson leaned on the ropes and flashed one of the rare, broad smiles of his career. Wobbling up at the count of nine, Johansson was ready for the kill. With a pro's cold fury, Patterson hounded him about the ring, shooting home numbing lefts to the body and a jolting short right to the head. The final left hook seemed to wrench Johansson's jaw around his ear. For a full four minutes, Johansson lay completely unconscious on his back, stiff and stark except for his spasmodically twitching left leg.

The fight earned Patterson an estimated $765,000 against $635,000 for Johansson. It also won him an eminence he had never held before, and no one knew it better than Floyd Patterson. Said he: "Now I am the champion."

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