RSR Says Goodbye to Ingemar Johansson
By Geoff “The Professor” Poundes
There’s an old Swedish proverb which goes: “The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm”.
If the people around Ingemar Johansson, who died this week at the age of 76, are searching for an epitaph for the great man, then I can think of no better statement to sum up the former Heavyweight Champion’s life and career.
Johansson was born on September 22nd, 1932, into a country that has always had an uneasy relationship with violence of any kind. Boxing in Sweden rarely flourished before Ingemar came along, and barely survived his stellar career. Johansson was finished with boxing in 1963, and his countrymen decided they were finished with it seven years later, banning the sport altogether. Professional boxing remains banned there all these years later.
Which makes the big Swede’s rise to the very pinnacle of the fistic firmament all the more remarkable. Known predominantly as a strong puncher, and instantly recognizable in his day as something of a poster-boy, Ingemar may have been the first heavyweight champion to get as many rave reviews in the gossip columns as he did in the boxing press. A playboy and glamour-seeker, Johansson took America by storm when he knocked out Floyd Patterson in June 1959 to win the title.
Immediately, Johansson became a hero in his native land, where he had come to be regarded with some suspicion after getting himself disqualified in the final of the Helsinki Olympics – strangely, for not trying! He faced the big American Ed Sanders in that final and decided, he claimed subsequently, to get on his bike and nullify his opponents greater strength. The referee didn’t like his tactics, and threw him out.
As heavyweight champion, he fully redeemed himself, and his title win sparked off a bizarre rivalry with Patterson which saw the two of them hijack the heavyweight championship for the next three years – they fought for the title in 1960, and again in 1961, ruling out any other contenders over that period. The Patterson-Johansson series was an eclectic mix of skill and power – the Swede
handed back the belt to Patterson in the 1960 encounter, and then unsuccessfully challenged the American in 1961.
But the first contest was the most remarkable of the sequence. In the third round at Yankee Stadium, Johansson swung across his fabled right hand (the press, ever-willing to add a moniker to any fighter’s distinctive weapon, called it “Ingo’s Bingo”) and Patterson went down as if felled by an axe. He somehow rose to his feet, and referee Ruby Goldstein, one of America’s most respected, waved the fight on. But Patterson was still in the land of nod, and provided one of boxing’s most enduring images – he turned away from Johansson, wiping his nose with his glove and shrugging his shoulders like an unruly schoolboy, as the Swede jumped in and battered him to the floor again. He would visit the canvas five more times in the round before Goldstein, who will surely have had better nights, belatedly called the whole thing off. Johansson became only the second European in history to wrest the title from the United States. Patterson acknowledged the fact post-fight: “Losing the title was bad enough, but losing to a foreigner was even worse.”
Patterson avenged the loss a year later with a fifth round TKO, and repeated the feat in 1961, this time in the sixth. Patterson hit the floor in both of those fights too, courtesy of Ingo’s Bingo. Over the three contests, the two boxed less than 14 rounds, and shared 13 knockdowns, with Patterson bounced 10 times!
Johansson won’t go in the history books as one of the all-time greats – he stands out in Sweden as one of only two world champions they have ever produced (in case you’re wondering the other is Armand Krajnc, who held the WBO Middleweight belt between 1999 and 2002). He was a big, strong man with a devil of a right hand punch, and who made the best use of his resources at a time when the heavyweight division was a little stagnant and waiting for it’s next big thing (which many thought would be Sonny Liston, but turned out to be Muhammad Ali).
When he’d done with boxing, Ingemar took the $2.5m he had earned from boxing and invested it in various business endeavors, including a construction company, a fishing trawler and a hotel in Florida. He had a successful business career, and enjoyed a colorful life outside of boxing. He maintained contact with Floyd Patterson until the latter’s death in 2006, and the two shared an unfortunate bout with Alzheimer’s disease at the end of their lives.
I remember a few years ago, I was researching an article about heavyweight boxing, and came across some old footage of the television program “What’s My Line?” in which celebrity contestants attempted to divine by way of clues what was a particular guest’s line of work. This particular show was a live celebrity edition, and the contestants were made to wear blind-folds and search for verbal clues as to the identity of the guest. In walked Ingemar Johansson, looking like a film-star and dapper in a dark suit, and it took the panel only a couple of moments to discover him. The women seemed particularly delighted to see him, and one exclaimed: “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in bed? You’re fighting tomorrow night!”
It was the night before the second Patterson fight at the New York Polo Grounds, which he lost, and may not have been best prepared for!
Ingemar Johansson
Division: Heavyweight
Professional Record: 26-2, 17 KO’s
Date Opponent Location Result
1952-12-05 Robert Masson Gothenburg, Sweden W KO 4
1953-02-06 Emile Bentz Gothenburg, Sweden W KO 2
1953-03-06 Lloyd Barnett Gothenburg, Sweden W PTS 8
1953-03-12 Erik Jensen Copenhagen, Denmark W PTS 6
1953-12-03 Raymond Degl'Innocenti Gothenburg, Sweden W KO 2
1954-11-05 Werner Wiegand Gothenburg, Sweden W TKO 5
1955-01-06 Ansell Adams Gothenburg, Sweden W PTS 8
1955-02-13 Kurt Schiegl Stockholm, Sweden W TKO 5
1955-03-04 Aldo Pellegrini Gothenburg, Sweden W DQ 5
1955-04-03 Uber Bacilieri Stockholm, Sweden W UD 8
1955-06-12 Guenter Nurnberg Dortmund, Germany W KO 7
1955-08-28 Hein Ten Hoff Gothenburg, Sweden W KO 1
1956-02-24 Joe Bygraves Gothenburg, Sweden W PTS 8
1956-04-15 Hans Friedrich Stockholm, Sweden W PTS 10
1956-09-30 Franco Cavicchi Bologna, Italy W KO 13
EBU (European) Heavyweight Title
1956-12-28 Peter Bates Gothenburg, Sweden W KO 2
1957-05-19 Henry Cooper Stockholm, Sweden W KO 5
EBU (European) Heavyweight Title
1957-12-13 Archie McBride Gothenburg, Sweden W PTS 10
1958-02-21 Joe Erskine Gothenburg, Sweden W TKO 13
EBU (European) Heavyweight Title
1958-07-13 Heinz Neuhaus Gothenburg, Sweden W TKO 4
1958-09-14 Eddie Machen Goteborg, Sweden W KO 1
1959-06-26 Floyd Patterson Bronx, USA W TKO 3
1960-06-20 Floyd Patterson New York City, USA L KO 5
1961-03-13 Floyd Patterson Miami Beach, USA L KO 6
1962-02-09 Joe Bygraves Gothenburg, Sweden W TKO 7
1962-04-15 Wim Snoek Stockholm, Sweden W KO 5
1962-06-17 Dick Richardson Gothenburg, Sweden W KO 8
EBU (European) Heavyweight Title
1963-04-21 Brian London Stockholm, Sweden W PTS 12
