After the Fall: The Comeback of Floyd Patterson (Part III: Quarry & Ali)
Posted: 04 Sep 2018, 19:14
He was thirty-one years old now, at the center of the tumultuous heavyweight division since the Eisenhower era, a man whom New York Times columnist Arthur Daley had once heartlessly called “a born loser,” but whose entire identity seemed wholly bound in the rituals of prizefighting: The monastic camps, the isolated runs up and down dirt trails under fading stars, the discipline of training, the long walk to the ring. “When I think about retiring, my feet get very hot,” Patterson said. “I get chills. No more gym, no more roadwork… I say to myself, ‘You know, Floyd, you’re not going to live forever.’ Why always one more time? Why? I enjoy training more than anything else. Walking in the country. Wipe that out of my life? I could build a gym in my home, but it’s not the same. I don’t train to keep my body in shape, I train to have my body beaten. I’ve got to retire sooner or later, but I prefer later.”
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