Word: johansson
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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...
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...
...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...
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...
...Johansson-Patterson Prefight Program (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Fight Fan James Cagney interviews the two heavyweights on the eve of their return bout; films of Johansson's earlier victory over Patterson are technically analyzed by Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney...