Word: johansson
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Innocents Abroad. In sharp contrast, Johansson had turned his training into what often seemed like a lark in the country. He moved into a $100,000 cottage at the celebrity-wooing Grossinger's in the Catskills. From Sweden he imported his parents, his brothers, his sister, his brother's fiancee and his own fiancee of five years' standing-in-waiting, Birgit Lundgren, a comely and compact brunette of 23. With Birgit on his mighty right arm, Johansson even made occasional forays into the nightclub whirl of Manhattan. In the gym Johansson worked hard on the bags...
...fight experts only grinned and shrugged off Challenger Johansson, 26, as a good, clean-cut Swedish kid, an import of blue-eyed, dimpled innocence who would be diced into smorgasbord by the flashing attack of Heavyweight Champion Floyd Patterson. Nobody was impressed by the fact that Johansson was undefeated in his 21 fights, last year had demolished No. 1 Contender Eddie Machen with the very same right. European heavyweights, however upright their intentions, traditionally have been horizontally inclined against American champions. And Patterson, 24, camping in a grubby New Jersey shack, grimly punishing himself in training with everything...
...Take-Off. At the bell in Yankee Stadium last week, the jug-eared, roundheaded Johansson pawed tentatively with a left jab, kept his right cocked to launch the big punch. He did not seem too heavily muscled, but the tip-off of his power came late in the first round when he threw his very first right hand. Though it was a glancing blow, the 182-lb. Patterson blinked...
With classic simplicity, the end came in the third round. Johansson flicked a textbook left hand, then let loose the punch he had been talking about for months: a straight right hand backed up by all the power in his broad-shouldered, 196-lb. body. With devastating accuracy it found a small opening between Patterson's raised gloves, caught him squarely in the face (see cut). Patterson literally rose six inches into the air before thudding to the canvas on the seat of his white satin pants. He wobbled up at the count of nine, and stared bewildered...
Whooping Swedes swarmed toward Johansson, Birgit sobbed prettily at ringside, and in Sweden happy millions poured into the streets to pour victory toasts of aquavit by the dawn's early light. For Johansson, the victory was especially sweet: it erased forever the disgrace he suffered at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki when he was disqualified in the heavyweight finals for "not trying." More important, Johansson needed no manager to tell him the value of the world's richest boxing title-or how to exploit it. The son of a stonecutter, he was a gifted street brawler...