June 1956 - Madison Square Garden, New York

The winner of this bout would face Archie Moore for the World Heavyweight Title left vacant by the retirement of Rocky Marciano in April 1956.

"21 year old Floyd Patterson of Brooklyn won decisively before 11,255 at MSG for his 17th straight victory. But his triumph was tarnished slightly by a strange split decision. Surprising most of the fans and writers at ringside, Referee Harry Kessler favored Tommy 'Hurricane' Jackson of Far Rockaway, NY. Patterson had Tommy in trouble from rapid-fire left hooks and leaping right leads in 8 of the 12 sessions. Although the Hurricane stalked after the smaller Patterson in every round, he was staggered in the 2nd,3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 11th and 12th. Tommy almost hit the deck in the 4th and 12th. But he continued to fight back persistently. His best rounds were the 7th and 9th." -United Press

"That Jackson is a tough man. Now I know I can go 15 rounds if I have to because I wasn't tired after 12, even though I landed more punches than I ever threw in my life." -Floyd Patterson

"This boy's not as tough as Bob Baker or Dan Bucceroni. If he fights Moore in September, Archie'll kill him." -Tommy 'Hurricane' Jackson

 *Floyd Patterson weighed in at 178 lbs to Tommy Jackson's 193½ lbs

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July 1957 - Polo Grounds, New York

Patterson has beaten Archie Moore eight months previous to become the World Heavyweight Champion and makes his 1st defence against Jackson. Floyd weighs in at 184 lbs to Jackson's 192.5 lbs.

Unable to cope with the speed of the champion’s punches, Jackson's nose was bloodied and he was put down by a combination of rights and lefts to the head just as the bell rang to end the opening session. It did not get any better for Jackson in the second round when Patterson spun him around and dropped him to a knee from a right to the jaw. Named ‘The Hurricane’ due his fighting style, Jackson bravely punched away, but it was Patterson who was doing all the scoring. By the sixth it was apparent that the end was drawing near, but Jackson, his left eye almost closed, would not hear of it and although he was dropped by a pair of body blows and left hooks in the ninth and took a terrific left to the jaw immediately prior to the bell he came out fighting in the tenth. With the brave Jackson just walking into punches and refusing to go down it was left to the referee to save him from taking further punishment, the finish being timed at 1.52. Jackson went to the hospital five hours after the fight to be treated for a bruised kidney. He was kept for several days for observation. Patterson visited Jackson in the hospital three days after the bout.

"Jackson kept telling me in the clinches to come out and fight. He called me a bum. That's a funny way to describe a man who's winning the fight." - Floyd Patterson

From Patterson's biography by W.K.Stratton -
Within hours of the bout’s finale, Jackson began urinating blood. His mother took him to a Long Island hospital, where he was admitted with what was reported as kidney contusions, the result of the many body shots he’d taken from Patterson during the fight. The doctor who examined him diagnosed him as “fairly sick, but not dangerously so. He needs rest.” The doctor advised Jackson to remain in the hospital for a few days. The hospital staff admitted only one set of visitors — Floyd and Sandra Patterson, who arrived with Cus D’Amato. Jackson was shocked that the Pattersons came to see him. The mercurial Hurricane shook hands with the champ and wished him luck in his upcoming fights. Patterson left knowing that the tragic man-child Jackson was likely finished as a boxer of any significance.

Patterson

Patterson vs Machen

Shortly after Floyd Patterson had defeated Eddie Machen in 12 rounds of boxing that would never frighten Cassius Clay back into training, Floyd received two visitors in his Stockholm dressing room. One, wearing a neat, gray Ivy League suit, was Ingemar Johannson. "You too nice, Floyd," said Ingemar. The other, wearing a jaunty bow tie, was Nat Fleischer, the publisher of Ring magazine, who announced triumphantly that Floyd Patterson had moved up, that he was now the No. 2 challenger for the heavyweight championship.

Both were right, of course. Floyd is a nice man, too nice to be a professional fistfighter, but despite this he is also unquestionably superior—just as he has always been—to the five men over whom he had just leapfrogged from his old ranking down in seventh place: Doug Jones, Zora Folley, Cleveland Williams, Ernest Terrell and Machen. It was a little difficult to understand, however, why Floyd was so cheered by Fleischer's statement. For one thing, still above him stand Clay and Sonny Liston, and exactly why Floyd should ever want to fight either of them—he has plenty of money and his health—is a question that not even Patterson can adequately explain. Beyond that, his sudden rise in Ring's form chart had no more relation to reality than his precipitous drop from the top to his place behind Jones, Folley, etc. immediately after his back-to-back and back-on-the-canvas first-round knockouts at the hands of Liston. He was no worse a fighter after his losses to Liston than he had been before, and he is no better a fighter now after his wins over Machen and Sante Amonti, the inept Italian heavyweight he defeated on points in Sweden last January. He is still fast and strong and game—but he still is easy to hit. He still is acutely aware of helplessness, in himself or in others, including those he hurts in the ring. He still lacks the egocentric concentration of the true athlete, the single-minded aggressiveness of the great fighter, the consuming need to conquer or destroy everything in his way.

In the 11th round of the fight last Sunday he caught Machen against the ropes and hit him with a powerful right hand that sliced open Eddie's face and sent him to his knees. The mandatory eight-count rule, which requires that fighters knocked off their feet must take a count of eight before resuming battle, had been waived for the meeting, and Machen popped back to his feet at once, though dazed and with blood streaming down his face. It was an opportunity—an opponent momentarily helpless—that would have been capitalized on immediately by a Rocky Marciano or a Cassius Clay or a Sonny Liston. But Patterson stood quietly by and waited, looking at Machen with a curious half smile on his face. He did not move in for the kill, and Machen quickly recovered.

This was the maneuver—or rather, the nonmaneuver—that upset Johansson. "You take a step back when you should not," he told Patterson in the dressing room. "You had him hurt maybe five, six times. Why you don't move in? You must take a step forward, Floyd." Patterson looked at him enigmatically and did not reply. Later, however, Patterson said, "I was winning the 11th round when I hurt him, and I looked in his face and I saw hurt and defeat. This is a man who has had a hard life. He has been broke and in a mental institution. Should I knock him down further for my own good? I was winning. I didn't have to hurt him." Then he added, "He fought a good fight. He deserves a shot at Clay more than I do. He's broke and he's been down, and he deserves it."

This kindliness of Floyd's, a reflection of his hunger for friendship, for approval, for recognition, has its counterpart in his fear and resentment of disapproval, his touchiness, his moodiness. Before the fight in Stockholm (from which he earned $100,000, as a crowd of 40,000 damp Swedes paid approximately $300,000 dollars to watch on a rainy northern evening), Floyd annoyed even his enthusiastic Scandinavian admirers by sequestering himself like a moody Garbo in a small resort town 300 miles from Stockholm. He strained the abundant friendship most of the Swedish press has for him by making himself very hard to find for interviews. "I spent three days in Ronneby trying to talk to him," one Swedish reporter said, "and finally I got to see him for 20 minutes. Is this the Patterson we liked so well? I do not think so."

"He misses Cus D'Amato," said a man who is close to Patterson, referring to Floyd's first and longtime manager, from whom he is estranged. "He tries to do everything himself now—run the camp, worry about the money, take legal advice, everything. D'Amato used to do all that and keep him away from everyone so that he could concentrate on fighting. And then you have to remember that he was raised by Cus. When Cus first got him he was just a kid who didn't know anything about anything. All he knows and all his attitudes he got from D'Amato, including his suspicions and prejudices and his quickness to resent. He's got all of D'Amato's craftiness without D'Amato's background and intelligence."

In one of his rare colloquies with a member of the press, Patterson said, "I have to prove something. If I could preview a fight and see that I would be destroyed I would still fight. If I had to fight every day for seven days I would do it to prove myself." He focused all of his attention on the task at hand: beating Machen, proving himself. Although his brother Ray, who served as a sparring partner in his camp, could have had a fight on the card with Floyd and Machen, Patterson turned thumbs down on the grounds that he had to give his entire concentration to his own bout and did not want to have to worry about his brother at the same time.

(Sports Illustrated - July 1964)

One day at Stillman’s Gym, Charley Goldman, who trained Rocky Marciano (shortly to become world heavyweight champion), approached a young, then-middleweight, yet to turn pro, Floyd Patterson and asked if he could go a few rounds with a new fighter Goldman was working with, Tommy Harrison. Patterson wasn’t so sure he was ready for that. Harrison was one of Marciano’s regular sparring partners, and he was taller and heavier than Patterson. And he was fast, nearly as fast as Floyd himself.

Patterson told Goldman to ask Cus D’Amato, who was cautiously bringing Floyd along, not rushing him to spar fighters substantially better than he. D’Amato, to Patterson’s surprise, gave the OK. Early in the first round, Harrison unloaded twelve unanswered jabs, most landing in spite of Patterson’s bobbing and weaving. Those blows hurt Floyd, even though Harrison wore padded sparring gloves. In all his amateur career, even fighting for the championships of the AAU and the Olympics, Floyd never encountered punches as hard as these. It was a brutal introduction to just what Floyd could expect as a pro. The eyes of the Stillman’s cognoscenti locked onto Patterson as he took those heavy shots — Would the kid collapse? Patterson knew he had to do something. He timed Harrison’s next big jab. When it arrived, Patterson threw a stiff right cross above it, tagging Harrison in the face. The experienced pro staggered. After that, Floyd pursued Harrison, firing combinations that Harrison struggled to ward off. The men in the folding chairs nodded their approval, happy with how Floyd had overcome adversity, transforming it into an advantage.

A buzz began to spread around New York about D’Amato’s up-and-comer, a kid who someday soon just might be good enough to put in the ring with the likes of Sugar Ray Robinson.

There were plenty of questions about his manager, however, the most eccentric man in the New York fight community. He was a weirdo, someone who read too many books, someone who believed in flying saucers and welcomed visitors from another planet, someone who never smoked or drank — the latter all but unheard of in the world of professional boxing.

And there was more. For reasons no one could quite understand, D’Amato refused to play ball with the men who ran professional boxing. It seemed as if he bore a vendetta against something, but just what that something was left boxing insiders scratching their heads. It also seemed as if he were preparing for a war of some kind. He lived in his gym, sleeping in a small room to the left of the boxing ring, a baseball bat within easy reach, a gun or two hidden away, his fierce dog curled up on the floor next to him. He never rode subways, fearing enemies could push him onto the tracks as he waited for a train. But he was plotting to become the most powerful force in professional boxing.

(by W.K. Stratton)

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*A couple of years later in 1954, 15 fights into his professional career, and now weighing 169lbs, Patterson TKO'd Tommy Harrison in 89 seconds of the first round of their fight in Brooklyn. The fight report is testament to Patterson's nature as a boxer -
"Patterson staggered Harrison against the ropes, floored him with a clean flurry for "four" and the mandatory eight-count, and floored him a second time with a left-right combination to the head that sent Harrison down flat on his back. Harrison barely made the count of ten. But he lurched helplessly around the ring with his arms down. Referee Conn appeared contented to let the bout continue but Patterson refused to attack and implored him to step in."

1966...former world champion Sonny Liston, was now living and boxing in Sweden, and was preparing for a fight when a new sparring partner was brought in...none other than the lesser-known, lesser-talented younger brother of Floyd Patterson....Ray Patterson......Ray never did that much as a boxer at world level....but that day, behind closed doors, the younger brother of the man who was beaten twice in one round in world heavyweight title fights by Liston, did this...