R.I.P. Ingemar Johansson

[allworld80]

Died last night. R.I.P.

Swedish Legend Ingemar Johansson died five minutes to Midnight January 30 2009 after a two week long struggle in the last phase of Alzheimers illness. The former Heavyweight Champion of The World was at his death 76 years and 4 month old. He was regarded as Scandinavia’s greatest fighter ever and held the undisputed World Heavyweight Championship 1959-1960; he also held The European Heavyweight Crown 1956-1959 and again 1962-1963.

[john2345]

Though I had been a big boxing fan since I was about 8 years old and idolised Turpin, Robinson, Sandy Saddler, and the great fighters of the 50s, Ingo was the first fighter that I really "latched on to". After his win over Machen I really fancied him to beat Patterson.... I remember listening to that fight live on the radio and how excited I was when he started knocking Floyd down!

Naturally I was shocked when he lost the title back to Patterson, and in hindsight - having seen all the great heavyweights on TV or film over the years - you couldn't really rate Ingo as one of the greats. I was aware that he had been in poor health for some time but nonetheless news of his death saddens me....and makes me feel just a little older!

I guess the appropriate phrase is something like "Sleep well, Champ!"

J

[Thunder and Lightning]

My alltime favorite fighter not only because he is from Sweden but he is also very underrated IMO not the greatest of alltime but a solid good fighter just the same.

RIP Champ

[BoxBuzz]

The Greats continue to check out.......it is sobering to those of us who are just beginning to get a sense that we are not immortal. I so much like the ride....I hope I get to stay for a good long time.

So long Ingy! Say hello to Jose and Floyd and and save a seat for me ringside...or at least somewhere out in the cheap seats......Somewhere around 2050 for me would be my guess. Can you hold a space that long?

[hooch]

Rest in Peace Ingemar
You will not be forgotten

[enrique]

I met Ingo in the eighties. He was living in Fort Lauderdale where he owned a motel and several rental properties.

He used to attend the Hank Kaplan-Ramiro Ortiz monthly promotions at War Memorial Auditorium and the promoters always comped him a couple of ringside seats. Ingo was an affable man, with a ready smile and spoke English fairly well.

As a fighter, detractors say he was just an ordinary fighter with a great right hand but the fact is that Ingo was champ when all champs were undisputed, when being the king meant the whole world and not just an alphabet soup of promotional interests.

RIP Bingo.

[bjermaine]

didn't have a lot of fights but one of the few heavyweight champs to defeat every opponent he faced. his only 2 losses were to patterson. rip

[vagabundo55]

R.I.P. champ, this name will always be remembered by true boxing fans.

[HomicideHenry]

most exciting trilogy in heavyweight boxing= Ingo & Floyd

R.I.P.

[Brute]

He put the cleaners through the best heavyweights in Europe, including Henry Cooper.

I remember reading of a great kerfuffle after his last fight with Patterson, when he went back to Sweden without giving Uncle Sam his share of his prize money.

[allworld80]

He put the cleaners through the best heavyweights in Europe, including Henry Cooper.

I remember reading of a great kerfuffle after his last fight with Patterson, when he went back to Sweden without giving Uncle Sam his share of his prize money.

He moved to Switzerland to avoid Sweden's taxes as well. Not a fan of tax I guess.

[enrique]

He managed to have a life after the ring. He did quite a bit of acting. He is in at least one American film -a war story- with Sidney Poitier and Allan Ladd, but he also made a few films -maybe about a dozen- in Sweden. He owned and operated a hotel in Florida and invested in real estate and I don't recall ever hearing of any kind of moral or legal scandal associated with Ingo.

He deserves recognition.

[muray]

The Swedish Max Baer

[raylawpc]

Vila i Frid, Förkämpe.

[Goodnight, Irene]

[harrygreb]

RIP INGO.

[Evander]

All the above.

R.I.P Champ.

Thanks for your gifts.

[raylawpc]

Obit from the Daily Telegraph (U.K.):

Ingemar Johansson, the Swedish heavyweight boxer who died on Friday aged 76, caused a sensation by destroying Floyd Patterson inside three rounds to win the world title in June 1959; the American was floored seven times before Johansson became the first European to capture the sport's richest prize since Italy's Primo Carnera 25 years earlier.

An intelligent fighter blessed with sound boxing skills, Johansson also possessed a thunderous punch in his right hand which the press dubbed "Ingo's Bingo", although the colourful Swede preferred to call it "Thor's Hammer". This was the punch that earned him the Scandinavian and European crowns before his remarkable win over Patterson.

As an amateur, Johansson had been disqualified at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics for "not trying", so his ruthless performance against Patterson shocked the American press who, in the build-up to the fight, had mocked the smiling Swede's relaxed approach to training and labelled him a playboy.

Yet Johansson's reign proved brief. Patterson gained his revenge by stopping him in five rounds in the return bout 12 months later and the Swede also lost their third and final encounter in March 1961. Although this trilogy of fights ended Johansson's days as a world title contender, he emerged from them £1.5m the richer.

Ingemar Johansson was born in Gothenburg on October 16 1932, the son of a stonecutter. He took up boxing at 13 and built up his strength by working in the city docks as a labourer. Although a successful amateur, his career was blighted by his disqualification in the final of the 1952 Olympics for holding and running against the American Ed Sanders. Ironically Patterson, his future nemesis, won a gold at those Helsinki Games.

At the time there was no indication that a fighter labelled a national disgrace would eight years later be transformed into a national hero. One Stockholm reporter wrote: "A professional career is now finished for him. Ingemar Johansson is kaput, a chapter completely written off in Swedish boxing."

Johansson nevertheless turned professional in December 1952 and quickly came under the wing of the newspaper owner Eddie Ahlquist, who imported a series of heavyweights to Sweden as stepping stones for his protégé, duly ensuring maximum publicity for Johansson's spectacular wins.

Having impressed in his first 14 fights, Johansson won the European title with a 13th-round knockout of Italy's Franco Cavichi on September 30 1956. He successfully defended the belt against the British fighters Henry Cooper and Joe Erskine before Ahlquist secured a fight with the classy American Eddie Machen, which was to pave the way for Johansson's unexpected shot at the world title.

The Swedish fighter's demolition of Machen inside a round was branded a fluke by most American observers, who viewed his forthcoming showdown with Patterson at New York's Yankee Stadium on June 26 1959 as little more than a routine defence for the champion. While derided for his seemingly casual approach, Johansson trained hard, although his decision to include his girlfriend, Birgit Lundgren, in his entourage drew particularly strong criticism.

Following two uneventful rounds, Johansson suddenly landed a big right, sending Patterson down for the first of seven trips to the canvas. "He was reachable with my left and he wasn't fast or cunning enough," Johansson said afterwards. "He pushed away my left and the right followed automatically. It landed smack on his face – if it had landed on his jaw, the match would have ended at that moment."

Rising to his feet, the shaken champion inexplicably turned his back on the challenger and began to walk back towards a neutral corner, only to be promptly flattened again.

Years later Patterson admitted his senses had been so scrambled that he thought he had actually knocked Johansson down. The slaughter was finally halted before the end of round three. America's grip on the world heavyweight title had been ended by a European whom most fight fans had never even heard of. "Losing the world title was bad enough," Patterson later reflected. "Losing it to a foreigner was even worse."

Analysing the fearsome right-hand punch which won him the title and cemented his reputation, Johansson said: "It's a gift from the gods, it is mystic and moves faster than the eye can see. I do not tell it when to go. Suddenly, boom! It lands like toonder." For a time it appeared as if the legendary Rocky Marciano would be lured out of retirement to try to regain the title for America, but Patterson's manager, Cus D'Amato, had a return clause in the original contract and 12 months later the rematch was on.

Johansson enjoyed a celebrity lifestyle while plans were made for the return, which eventually took place at the Polo Grounds in New York on June 20 1960. The champion had again trained hard and was widely expected to win against a man who was reputedly so mortified by the previous year's crushing defeat that he refused to leave his house for a month.

But before an official crowd of 31,000, swelled to around 40,000 by those who managed to enter free of charge, Patterson pulled off one of boxing's great comebacks with a sensational fifth-round triumph. Having just floored Johansson with a fast left, Patterson knocked him cold with another vicious hook which left the champion sprawled prostrate, his left leg twitching horribly. It was 10 minutes before he could leave the ring.

By the time of the decider, in Miami on March 13 1961, Johansson had prepared even more diligently and appeared to be on the brink of regaining his crown after dropping Patterson twice in the opening round. He could not finish the champion off, however, and was himself downed briefly before the round ended.

The course of the fight had changed and Patterson, using his jab and high guard to great effect, gradually took control before flooring the cut and increasingly weary-looking Johansson in round six. One of the sport's greatest rivalries was over.

But Johansson was not finished yet and, after defeating Joe Bygraves of Jamaica, he regained the European title by knocking out the Welshman Dick Richardson in eight rounds at Gothenburg. His final fight was a points victory but a moral defeat against Britain's Brian London in Stockholm on April 21 1963, when he finished badly hurt and slumped helplessly against the ropes in the closing seconds. This close shave finally persuaded him to retire.

Johansson, who invested his fight earnings shrewdly, subsequently proved a successful businessman. Even before he won the world title he had a 90 per cent interest in a fishing trawler and owned a construction company as well as a suite of plush offices in Stockholm.

At one time Johansson bought half of a small island off Gothenburg and by the 1970s owned a hotel in Florida as well as property and yachts in Spain. He stayed fit, maintained a close friendship with Patterson, and even ran a full marathon with his erstwhile foe.

In the mid-1980s he moved back to Sweden and lived on the island of Dalaro, near Stockholm. He remained much in demand and a familiar face on Scandinavian television, working as a boxing analyst until the late 1990s. Like Patterson, who died in May 2006, Johansson's final years were blighted by Alzheimer's Disease and he ended his days in a nursing home.

Ingemar Johansson, who was married and divorced three times, was latterly reunited with his second wife, Birgit. She survives him with their son and daughter, and two children of his first marriage.

[raylawpc]

Another obit, this from the New York Times:

Ingemar Johansson of Sweden, who knocked out Floyd Patterson in 1959 to win the world heavyweight boxing title, only to lose two more brutal title fights to him in the next two years, died late Friday night in Kungsbacka, Sweden, according to friends and family. He was 76.

He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for several years and his heart simply stopped, said Olof Johansson, editor of the Swedish boxing magazine Boxning and a friend who said he had been in contact with his family. Johansson’s condition had worsened in the last two months, he said.

In 2003, Johansson’s third wife, Edna, told the Swedish daily Aftonbladet that her husband had been battling Alzheimer’s disease for several years.

“He was physically a very strong man, so he could fend off the illness for a long time,” Mr. Johansson, the editor, said in a telephone interview from Sweden on Saturday.

In his prime, Johansson, the boxer, was 6 feet ½ inch and 195 pounds, with thick arms, shoulders and chest, and a heavy right-hand punch. Away from the ring, he was outgoing and charming, handsome and dimpled, never passing up a good time.

As Gay Talese wrote in 1961 in The New York Times Magazine: “Johansson likes publicity and the high life and possibly knows as much about the female form as any man since Vesalius. When he knocked Patterson out two years ago, it was a setback for austerity, a victory for the Copacabana.”

On June 26, 1959, the first time Johansson fought Patterson, Johansson was the unbeaten European champion and Patterson had lost only one professional fight, to Joey Maxim. Patterson trained in the Catskills. Johansson trained at the Grossinger’s resort, also in the Catskills, with golf in the morning, boxing in the afternoon and an evening drive to New York for dinner and dancing. He looked clumsy in training, and Patterson was favored to win their fight at Yankee Stadium by 4 to 1 or more.

The underdog won. Johansson knocked down Patterson seven times in the third round before the referee stopped the fight. Years later, Patterson said, “He hit me so hard, I didn’t know where I was.”

“The whole nation went bananas over the result,” said the editor, Mr. Johansson, who was 12 at the time of the fight.

When Johansson, the new champion, returned home with his world heavyweight title to Goteborg, Sweden, he flew in on a helicopter, landing in the city’s main soccer stadium. About 20,000 people cheered him. In Johansson’s next fight against Patterson, on June 20, 1960, at the Polo Grounds, Patterson became the first heavyweight champion to regain his title. In the fifth round, he landed a left hook that knocked Johansson off his feet. Hitting his head on the canvas with a thud, he was unconscious for eight minutes and needed 10 minutes more before he could leave the ring.

Their final fight was March 13, 1961, in Miami Beach’s Convention Hall. Patterson won by a sixth-round knockout, and A. J. Liebling, writing in The New Yorker, said the outcome seemed preordained.

“He was, I had heard, on an eating jag: creamed chicken, strawberry shortcake, cherry cheesecake,” Mr. Liebling wrote of Johansson. “It sounded compulsive to me, the prisoner stuffing before the execution.”

The two losses to Patterson were the only blemishes in Johansson’s professional career. After four more fights, he retired in 1963 with a 28-2 record.

Johansson was born Sept. 22, 1932, in Goteborg. His first fight came on the street at age 8 against a 9-year-old. (Johansson won). At 13, he joined a boxing club. At 15, he quit school and became a street laborer and later a dock worker. At 16, he had his first amateur fight and soon started 15 months of service in the Swedish navy.

At 19, as the Swedish heavyweight amateur champion and winner of 80 of his 88 bouts, he endured an embarrassing moment. In the 1952 Olympic final against an American, Ed Sanders, the referee disqualified Johansson after two of the three scheduled rounds for a lack of effort.

A Swedish newspaper headlined its article “Ingemar, for Shame.” The New York Herald Tribune called him frightened and said, “The officials were so disgusted with the Swede’s actions — the cause of a piercing din of whistles and boos — that they declared there would be no second place and Johansson would not get a silver medal.”

Years later, Johansson said he had been limited to a 10-day training camp, he had been trained by novices and he had been told by his team leader to let Sanders be the aggressor. As Johansson said in the broken English he learned by watching American movies: “I was not full grown up for boxing. I have no condition.” Twenty-nine years after the fight, the International Olympic Committee gave him his silver medal.

The Olympic final was Johansson’s last amateur fight. He soon turned pro and became a national hero in Sweden as he won fight after fight with his dynamic right-hand punch. He called that punch “something mystic,” and in 1959 he explained it in The New York Post Magazine in these mystical terms: “There is something strange about my right hand, something very hard to explain. The arm works by itself. It is faster than the eye, and I cannot even see. Without my telling it to, the right goes, and when it hits there is this good feeling all down my arm and down through my body.”

He retired from boxing in 1963. He became prosperous in Goteborg in construction, landscaping and commercial fishing, and from 1959 to 1974 he lived in Switzerland to escape Sweden’s high taxes. Then he moved to Pompano Beach, Fla., where he owned a motel.

In retirement, his weight ballooned to 267 pounds. In 1980, he started running to get his weight down, and in 1981, at about 245 pounds, he ran in the Stockholm and New York City marathons. He needed more than four and a half hours to finish each race, but no one seemed to care. In Stockholm, his countrymen were so excited that two motorcycle policemen had to clear a path for him in the last six miles.

“In boxing,” he said, “when you get tired, you can’t walk. But I think I’d rather go 15 rounds.”

He was married and divorced three times. In the later stages of his illness, he was reunited with his second wife, Birgit, who was at his side when he died, Mr. Johansson, the journalist, said. Johansson is also survived by a son, Thomas, and a daughter, Jean, from his first marriage; a son Patrick, and daughter Maria, from his second marriage; one brother, Rolf; and a sister, Eva.

Johansson did not have great hopes for the future of his sport. In 1983, he said: “The time will come when more fighters will be able to kill a man with a single punch. Man is getting stronger, he’s faster, trains better and hits harder. Another 30 years or so and boxing will be gone.”

[computerrank]

#32 in Boxrec's Heavyweight All Time Ratings - he had a great run in 1958 and 1959 defeating Erskine, Neuhaus, Machen and finally Patterson - achieving a remarkable career high of 5745 points:

Code: Select all

date      |division            |boxer               |opponent            |rs|dec|r0box|r1box|r0opp|r1opp
----------|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------|--|---|-----|-----|-----|-----
1952-12-05|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Masson              |W |KO |    0|   36|    5|    4
1953-02-06|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Bentz               |W |KO |   23|  111|  137|   78
1953-03-06|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Barnett             |W |PTS|  111|  213|  287|  197
1953-03-12|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Jensen              |W |PTS|  213|  275|  254|  216
1953-12-03|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Degl'Innocenti      |W |KO |  275|  275|   66|   66
1954-11-05|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Wiegand             |W |TKO|  191|  392|  539|  347
1955-01-06|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Adams               |W |PTS|  392|  429|  329|  301
1955-02-13|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Schiegl             |W |TKO|  429|  700|  832|  595
1955-03-04|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Pellegrini          |W |DQ |  700|  700|  157|  157
1955-04-03|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Bacilieri           |W |UD |  700|  726|  394|  380
1955-06-12|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Nurnberg            |W |KO |  726|  895|  504|  409
1955-08-28|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Ten Hoff            |W |KO |  895| 1097|  915|  747
1956-02-24|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Bygraves            |W |PTS| 1097| 1228| 1084|  968
1956-04-15|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Friedrich           |W |PTS| 1228| 1303|  752|  708
1956-09-30|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Cavicchi            |W |KO | 1303| 1880| 1710| 1217
1956-12-28|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Bates               |W |KO | 1880| 2188| 1494| 1283
1957-05-19|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Cooper              |W |KO | 2188| 2188|  710|  710
1957-12-13|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |McBride             |W |PTS| 2188| 2235| 1073| 1051
1958-02-21|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Erskine             |W |TKO| 2235| 2798| 2534| 2024
1958-07-13|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Neuhaus             |W |TKO| 2798| 3087| 1714| 1553
1958-09-14|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Machen              |W |KO | 3087| 3814| 3286| 2659
1959-06-26|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Patterson           |W |TKO| 3814| 5745| 6736| 4512
1960-06-20|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Patterson           |L |KO | 5745| 4115| 4512| 6350
1961-03-13|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Patterson           |L |KO | 4115| 3385| 6350| 7719
1962-02-09|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Bygraves            |W |TKO| 3385| 3385|  960|  960
1962-04-15|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Snoek               |W |KO | 3385| 3385|  855|  855
1962-06-17|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |Richardson          |W |KO | 3385| 3703| 1989| 1818
1963-04-21|Heavyweight         |Johansson           |London              |W |PTS| 3466| 3560| 1710| 1665

[raylawpc]

Another Ingo tribute, this time from The Sweet Science.com:

http://www.thesweetscience.com/boxing-a ... johansson/

RIP, Ingemar Johansson
By Bernard Fernandez


Death – actual death – finally brought a measure of peace to former heavyweight champion Ingemar Johansson, whose once-athletic body had continued to function for these past 10 years even as his mind slipped ever deeper into the dark cave of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

When even Ingo’s body gave up the fight, at 10 minutes to midnight on Friday night in a nursing home in Kungsbacka, on the west coat of his native Sweden, the national mood in the Scandinavian country understandably wavered between grief at his physical passing and relief that he was finally free of the bar-less prison of a mind that had long since ceased to function beyond occasional moments of semi-clarity.

Ingemar Johansson, who was too ill to attend his induction ceremony at the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., in 2002, was 76 when death, that most invincible of opponents, claimed what remained of him. His daughter, Maria Gregner, told the Swedish news agency TT that he recently had returned to the nursing home after being hospitalized with pneumonia.

Olof Johansson (no relation), whom American matchmaker and friend Don Elbaum describes as “the Larry Merchant of Swedish television,” recalled a recent visit with Ingo in which it was painfully evident that the end was nearing.

“Olof said he was with Ingemar three or four months ago when he got up from his chair, took one step, and froze,” Elbaum said. “Ingemar’s doctor said it was like his brain did not remember how to tell his body to move the other foot. It was tragic.”

More than likely, Johansson didn’t realize where he was trying to walk to in any case. Years earlier he increasingly failed to recognize friends and family members, until that familiar twinkle in his eyes went blank and he likely even forgot who he was and what he had accomplished in and out of the ring.

Assessing the career of Ingemar Johansson, prizefighter, is no easy thing. How he is regarded is largely contingent on which side of the Atlantic Ocean one resides. Here in America, where he achieved his single greatest success, the third-round stoppage of heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson on June 26, 1959, Ingo is generally regarded as one of boxing’s lesser titlists, someone whose induction into the IBHOF is the result more of a charmed summer night in Yankee Stadium than of the sustained excellence required for history’s acceptance. But in Sweden, where he rehabilitated his reputation from its low point nine years earlier in Helsinki, Finland, Ingo was the most popular prizefighter ever, a national hero and symbol of Swedish pride.

In 2000, the Swedish Sports Academy named Ingo that country’s third-greatest athlete of the 20th century, behind only tennis legend Bjorn Borg and renowned skier Ingemar Stenmark. That high placement is particularly amazing, given that Sweden banned professional boxing from 1970 to 2006 on the grounds it was too dangerous an activity.

Johansson seemed an unlikely candidate for such adulation during the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. Boxing in the heavyweight gold medal bout against a huge American opponent, Ed Sanders, Johansson refused to engage until, in the second round of the scheduled three-rounder, he was disqualified by French referee Roger Vaisberg for not giving his best effort.

Initially awarded the silver medal, Johansson – who later claimed his strategy was to play keepaway and to tire out Sanders in preparation for a furious, third-round assault – had it stripped from him before he left Helsinki, a turn of events that made him an object of scorn back home. For purposes of comparison, consider the seemingly irreparable damage done to Roberto Duran’s reputation in his native Panama after he turned his back and quit in his “No Mas” second fight with Sugar Ray Leonard. But Duran won back most if not all of his fans with incandescent performances against Davey Moore and Iran Barkley, among others, and Ingo similarly found his own path to redemption.

For a while, though, a comeback from disgrace seemed a longshot, at best. In Stockholm, the chairman of the Swedish Boxing Association contemptuously chided Johansson for “bringing shame to the Swedish name.”

It was under that initial cloud of suspicion and resentment that Johansson, impossibly handsome and just as charming, began his pro career on Dec. 5, 1952, with a fourth-round knockout of France’s Robert Masson in Ingo’s hometown of Gothenburg.

Johansson’s manager, Eddie Ahlquist, figured his guy had the looks, personality and punch, particularly his big overhand right, to rehabilitate his image, at least with his countrymen. All of Ingo’s first 20 pro bouts were in Europe, 17 of which were in Sweden, as Ahlquist employed a strategy later adopted by such European fighters as Dariusz Michalczewski, Joe Calzaghe and Ricky Hatton: fight and win at home until it became financially expedient to take your act across the pond to the United States.

Although he annexed the European heavyweight title in 1956 on a 13th-round knockout of Franco Cavicchi in Bologna, Italy, Johansson emerged as a legitimate threat to world champion Floyd Patterson when he whacked out a formidable U.S. contender, Eddie Machen, in one round on Sept. 14, 1958, in Gothenburg. So popular was Ingo by that time that his bout with Machen drew a crowd of 53,614 in Ullevi Stadium, which is still a record turnout for the venue. In second place is a concert by the Rolling Stones.

The fast takeout of Machen, who had long been ducked by Patterson, so impressed Nat Fleischer, editor of The Ring, that he elevated the Swede to the magazine’s No. 1 heavyweight ranking.

It at last was time for Ingemar Johansson, alleged Olympic coward, to come to the United States and challenge Patterson, who had won the middleweight gold at those same 1952 Helsinki Games in which Ingo came up small.

Although a 4-1 underdog, in no small part because of the lingering taint of his Olympic failure, Johansson hardly acted the part of an I’m-just-glad-to-be-here outsider. He set up camp at Grossinger’s resort, in the Catskill Mountains, and quickly revealed himself to be the very essence of a bon vivant. Sure, the 26-year-old Ingo told reporters, he liked to partake of strong beverages now and then, even in training. And women? The holy gospel of pugilism back then stated in no uncertain terms that sex weakens legs, and almost all fighters obediently left their wives or significant others at home when they trekked off to camp to prepare themselves for an upcoming fight. Johansson, though, arrived at Grossinger’s with his stunning, brunette girlfriend, Birgit, in tow, and it wasn’t long before rumors were rampant that at night he was going to the body in a far different way than he did with his sparring partners earlier in the day.

Although one publication dubbed Johansson as “boxing’s Cary Grant,” he was more of a predecessor to such swingin’ 1960s athletes as Joe Namath and Walt Frazier. His behavior left traditionalists like Hall of Fame trainer Ray Arcel aghast, but delighted others who figured that even heavyweight champion wannabes deserved to have some fun on their way into battle.

But none of that would have counted for anything had not Johansson done what he did on fight night in Yankee Stadium. After two rounds in which he landed nothing of consequence, Johansson clipped Patterson with a left hook and a right hand so allegedly devastating it had two nicknames, the “Hammer of Thor” and “Ingo’s Bingo.” Patterson went down, rose on wobbly legs at the count of nine, and turned to return to his corner, fuzzily thinking it was he who had had floored Johansson and that the round was over.

In one of the more unusual sights ever seen in boxing, Johansson ran up alongside the dazed Patterson and delivered an uncontested shot to the side of the head that sent the champion to the canvas for the second of an amazing seven times. There still were 57 seconds remaining in the third round when referee Ruby Goldstein finally stepped in and wrapped his arms around the game but defenseless Patterson.

When the fight ended, at approximately 3:15 a.m. Swedish time, people poured into the streets throughout Ingo’s homeland to celebrate the coronation of boxing’s new king of the heavyweights, and the first European to wear the crown since Italy’s Primo Carnera a quarter-century earlier.

It was a different time for sure, 1959 was. Seven knockdowns in one round? Wouldn’t happen today, but Goldstein, who is perhaps best known for his failure to jump in earlier in the March 24, 1962, bout in which Emile Griffith bludgeoned Benny “Kid” Paret into a coma and eventual death, had a reputation for letting fighters continue if they demonstrated even the slightest capability of returning fire. Johansson was named “Male Athlete of the Year” by The Associated Press, and when was the last time that happened for a boxer?

Ingo, not surprisingly, soaked up the adulation and sudden fame as if he were a sponge. He appeared in a 1960 movie, “All the Young Men,” as a Marine, cast alongside stars Alan Ladd and Sidney Poitier. He chatted up Dinah Shore on her daytime variety show, and wherever he went, in the U.S. or in Sweden, he had a beautiful woman on his arm and paparazzi snapping pictures.

That sort of lifestyle probably did not serve Johansson well in his rematch with Patterson, on June 20, 1960, at the Polo Grounds in New York. His championship reign ended in the fifth round when Floyd landed two left hooks, the first of which left Ingo woozy, the second of which – a leaping shot delivered with all the power Patterson could muster – left the Swede stretched out on the canvas, blood trickling from his mouth and his right leg quivering. Concerned that he had seriously injured Johansson, Patterson knelt beside him, gently cradling his head until medical help arrived. Five minutes passed before Ingo sat up, and another 10 ticked off before he left the ring, still a bit discombobulated.

The rubber match in the trilogy, on March 13, 1961, in Miami Beach’s Convention Hall, was perhaps the most competitive in the series. Johansson – who had sparred with an 18-year-old Cassius Clay as part of his training regimen – dropped Patterson twice in the first round, but Patterson survived the storm and went on to knock out Ingo in the sixth round.

For all intents and purposes, that was the end of Johansson as a big-time fighter. He did return to Sweden, fighting and winning four more times, but in his final bout, against Brian London on April 21, 1963, he was in serious trouble and in danger of being stopped when the final bell rang. Even though Johansson got the decision, he understood that it was time to step away, even though he was only 31. His final record: 26-2, with 17 wins inside the distance.

Retirement, though, was good to Ingo. He had a keen business sense and he invested wisely. For years, he summered in Pompano Beach, Fla., where he operated a motel and a fleet of fishing boats. He and Patterson, once rivals, became good friends and even ran together in a couple of marathons.

But then Johansson’s memory began to fade, and with it his recollections of the good life he had crafted for himself. Anyone who has had a friend or relative endure the slow descent into hell that Alzheimer’s can be surely understands how difficult it was for Ingo’s many supporters to realize their hero was leaving them in bits and pieces.

But gone does not necessarily mean forgotten. A contemporary of Johansson’s, Swedish boxing promoter Benny Rosem, plans to put on a pro fight card on June 26 in Gothenburg, the 50th anniversary of Ingo’s rout of Patterson. There is talk of erecting a bronze statue of Sweden’s greatest fighter, a fitting tribute to a man who, in 1982, finally received the Olympic silver medal he probably hadn’t deserved to have taken from him in the first place.

Elbaum, who has traveled to Sweden several times with heavyweight Joey “Minnesota Ice” Abell, said the passage of time has not diminished the legend of Ingemar Johansson, but rather enhanced it.

“He is and always will be an icon,” Elbaum said.

[Goodnight, Irene]

Thanks for sharing those, Ray.

[raylawpc]

Varsågod, GI.

[ringsider]

Ironically I believe Floyd Patterson was taken away by Alzheimers too.

I had the only grandpa I knew slowly disappear because of it too.

It is a sad long good bye......

[elmersalsa]

Rest in peace champ.