FLOYD PATTERSON: The Fighting Life of Boxing's Invisible Champion

Stratton [W K]

ISBN 10: 178057620X / ISBN 13: 9781780576206

Published by Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh, 2014

About this Item

First published in the UK and the USA in 2012, this edition published in 2014, xiv, 269pp, illustrated with black & white photographic plates, paperback covers, in very good, uncreased, unfaded condition. Size: 8 x 5 Inches.

Seller Inventory # 014016

Bibliographic Details

• Title: FLOYD PATTERSON: The Fighting Life of Boxing's Invisible Champion
• Publisher: Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 178057620X
• ISBN 13: 9781780576206
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: Second Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket As Published
• Book Type: Biographical - Sport

About this title

Synopsis

In 1956, at age 21, Floyd Patterson became the youngest boxer to win the title of world heavyweight champion and then, later, the first ever to lose and regain it.





Here, acclaimed author W.K. Stratton chronicles the life of 'The Gentle Gladiator' - an athlete overshadowed by Ali's theatrics and Liston's fearsome reputation, and a civil-rights activist overlooked in the who's who of race politics.





From the Gramercy Gym and wild-card manager Cus D'Amato to a final rematch against Ali in 1972, Patterson's career spanned boxing's Golden Age and included an Olympic gold medal.





This powerful tribute to an invisible champion who fought his way to the top of a knockdown world, carrying many of the hopes and fears of the battle for civil rights, draws upon interviews with the fighter's friends and boxing contemporaries to provide the definitive account of his remarkable life and career.

From the Back Cover

"Floyd Patterson revives the life of a boxer who was larger outside the ring than within it, a boxer who had a heart and humanity (and courage) beyond what his fight record revealed. He overcame obstacles and persevered in a manner that his more ferocious opponents did not." — Gay Talese, author of The Silent Season of a Hero

"A knockout biography of the best boxer in 1950s and early-1960s America. From winning an Olympic gold medal to developing the peekaboo stance that influenced Muhammad Ali, Patterson was a monumental influence on the boxing profession during its Cold War–era heyday. Highly recommended!" — Douglas Brinkley, author of Cronkite

"A refreshingly honest and evenhanded deconstruction of the owner of the uneasiest head to wear a crown this side of Henry IV." — George Kimball, author of Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and the Last Great Era of Boxing

"Patterson was one of the more beguiling and hypnotic figures to stride across the stage of twentieth-century boxing. Stratton tells the story of this proud and mannered man with insight and artful compassion." — Wil Haygood, author of Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson

"Stratton provides some fascinating insights into surely our most inscrutable heavyweight champion. Floyd Patterson is comprehensive and sensitive as it seeks to help us understand a man who seemed so temperamentally in contradiction with his profession." — Frank Deford, author of Everybody’s All-American