Did Patterson really duck Liston?

[billeau2]

There were many dissenting voices from inside and outside of the sport that didn't want that first fight to happen. Patterson found himself embroiled in the civil rights era tussle over black representation. The NAACP President Percy Sutton asked Floyd not to take the fight and made it clear publicly that he felt Patterson "represents us better than Liston ever could or would." They felt that Liston as champion would be detrimental to the cause of Black progress.

Which is as good an excuse as any to revisit Leroi Jones' take on the issue:
"Sonny Liston was the big black negro in every white man's hallway, waiting to do him in, deal him under, for all the hurts white men have been able to inflict on his world . . . He was the underdeveloped have-not (politically naive) backward country, the subject people, finally here to collect his pound of flesh.

. . . Patterson was to represent the fruit of the missionary ethic; he had found God, reversed his underprivileged (uncontrolled) violence, and turned it to work for the ********ic ******* imperialist state. The tardy black Horatio Alger offering the glad hand of integration to welcome twenty million into the lunatic asylum of white America.

In this context, Liston the unreformed, Liston the vulgar, Liston the violent, comes on as a straight-up Heavy. . . "They" painted Liston Black. They painted Patterson White. And that was the simple conflict. Which way would the black man go?"

Red Smith questioned the morality of giving a man with a stacked record for violent crime the opportunity to become a champion. Others in the sporting press questioned what kind of sport was it to deny a man an opportunity he had clearly earned.

Perhaps the biggest voice of dissent was D'Amato's. Rarely one to let his fighters be overmatched, he'd been accused of feeding Patterson less than stellar opponents. The pretext for not granting Liston a title shot was that he was mob controlled. He went as far as telling Liston that he'd never get his shot as long as he was managed by "Pep" Barone, who was a known associate of Blinky Palermo, who of course, was the 'business' partner of boxing's then de facto overlord Frankie Carbo.

When Liston jettisoned Barone in favour of George Katz to placate D'Amato, the trainer reneged on his promise. Liston still wasn't getting a shot. Patterson however, didn't agree. On grounds of sportsmanship he felt that Liston should be given the shot he deserved and that he wouldn't be any kind of champion if he denied him it stating, "ll fight anyone regardless of name or affiliations. I'm tired of arguments."Unfortunately for D'Amato Patterson had become increasingly distrustful of his trainer/manager and forced a split around the time of the second Johansson fight.

Was it D'Amato's insistence that his charge shouldn't fight Liston that caused the split? It's possible that added to it but the grievance seems to have been caused by Cus' 'mishandling' of Floyd's fight contracts and the scandal that broke when it became known that D'Amato, despite his self styled 'moral crusade' to purge boxing of Jim Norris' International Boxing Club and the mob, had himself struck a deal with "Fat Tony" Salerno (future front boss of the Genovese crime family) to provide the upfront money for the first Johansson fight.

Interestingly, D'Amato had also received private loans from the IBC's Jim Norris the year Patterson won the title for sums of $15,000 and $5,000. So it seems that Liston's mob connections were a less than credible excuse on Cus' part. Fortunately for Sonny, Patterson was a man that believed in fair play.

Good source material RR. I have a bone to pick with your source (not you!).
Liston was unfairly characterized and this characterization is no exception...Its a typical thing mind you....Ali was that wise ass, smart mouthed n188er who wouldn't shut up and Frazier, with his patriotism, was to become the means to that end why? because white america and the herd if sportswriters couldn't accept Ali's principled stand and suddenly Joe was the good black man, ali the bad....Jack Johnson likewise, to the point where one of the most intelligent, socialist leaning, compassionate writers (Jack London) could hardly contain the blood lust he felt referring to Jack as "that laughing Ethiopian that needs a member of the white race to
thrash him."

Liston was a great villian in this regard...the big black man who would mug, kill and destroy the good law abiding white people if left unchecked. Patterson meanwhile was characterised as one of them good ones. like Louis, Frazier, etc....These characterisations are horrendous and belie the complexity underlying all human nature and the circumstances for the choices one makes...Lets take Liston in this regard, a man james Baldwin characterized as being in fact vulnerable! Liston was a character....a man who the cops actually felt compassion for when he was sent out of town. Liston was nurtured by a white catholic priest, taken under to form his boxing talents....Liston in fact had no general unlove such that he could be characterized as rascist and brutish. Liston in fact was ashamed of his impression and was violent more by necessity than anything else.

It was so easy to miss these things and set up a contrast between Floyd and Liston, I mean Floyd was a decent guy, and a guy who had more tools than Liston had to deal with the masses.

[Scott9945]

Of course Patterson ducked Liston. But it was nothing personal as he also ducked Machen, Folley, and Williams.

[- Ram Raid -]

Good source material RR. I have a bone to pick with your source (not you!).
Liston was unfairly characterized and this characterization is no exception...Its a typical thing mind you....Ali was that wise ass, smart mouthed n188er who wouldn't shut up and Frazier, with his patriotism, was to become the means to that end why? because white america and the herd if sportswriters couldn't accept Ali's principled stand and suddenly Joe was the good black man, ali the bad....Jack Johnson likewise, to the point where one of the most intelligent, socialist leaning, compassionate writers (Jack London) could hardly contain the blood lust he felt referring to Jack as "that laughing Ethiopian that needs a member of the white race to
thrash him."

Liston was a great villian in this regard...the big black man who would mug, kill and destroy the good law abiding white people if left unchecked. Patterson meanwhile was characterised as one of them good ones. like Louis, Frazier, etc....These characterisations are horrendous and belie the complexity underlying all human nature and the circumstances for the choices one makes...Lets take Liston in this regard, a man james Baldwin characterized as being in fact vulnerable! Liston was a character....a man who the cops actually felt compassion for when he was sent out of town. Liston was nurtured by a white catholic priest, taken under to form his boxing talents....Liston in fact had no general unlove such that he could be characterized as rascist and brutish. Liston in fact was ashamed of his impression and was violent more by necessity than anything else.

It was so easy to miss these things and set up a contrast between Floyd and Liston, I mean Floyd was a decent guy, and a guy who had more tools than Liston had to deal with the masses.

Agreed. Liston wasn't quite the brute that he was portrayed to be and certainly wasn't insensitive to the plight of black America. He found the NAACP's stance to be particularly hurtful and they seemed to have overlooked the fact that in signing for the first Ali fight (then Clay of course) Liston had stipulated in his contract that there was to be no segregation at any of the venues broadcasting the bout, that all would have to admit blacks and they weren't to be confined to the back seats. Consequently Waco, Texas; New Orleans; Louisiana and Montgomery, Alabama all forfeited the right to show the fight.

Patterson himself felt a certain affinity towards Liston and defended him publicly on a number of occasions. Their backgrounds weren't too dissimilar and he felt that but for the grace of God he could easily have found himself in Sonny's position. Being relatively inarticulate in public the man just had no means of controlling his own narrative. He was a convenient typecast.

That's really the gist of what Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka) was getting at. His comment was more about the way that ******* white America and sections of middle class black America were using Liston and Patterson for that matter as a political adjuncts. I've used snippets of the piece though so it rips it from its context and leaves it open to misinterpretation.

I've got it in Gerald Early's collection on Ali but I've just looked for it on-line for you and it actually first appeared in The Nation.

Here's the link to an old fashioned photo copy:

[Thread Stealer]

For a couple years he did.