Events & Discoveries

Welcome to the Ingo Era

In Swedish newspapers the next day they called it Ingemar's hogerslag, and they said, correctly, that it krossade Floyd Patterson. The Swedes were simply saying what the rest of an aroused, observant world of sports was saying: Ingemar's right-hand punch smashed Floyd. Indeed, the Swedes might have put it in even stronger terms. Ingemar's hogerslag on Friday night carried a detonating blast of such forcefulness that the weather horizons of boxing itself have been recast.

For a generation the heavyweight championship of the world has been an American monopoly and, brooding over a situation that appeared irreversible forever, many a Western European had half made up his mind that America was welcome to it. In Ingemar Johansson's own Sweden, although Sportsman King Gustav Adolph, 76, rose betimes to hear the outcome, the Swedish state radio barred ringside accounts from Yankee Stadium on the official grounds that pugilism appeals only to "un-gentlemanly instincts." But the Swedish radio was the laughing stock of Sweden last week. In the Ingo Era the grand old sport of boxing has taken on a fresh new international gleam.

For a generation, boxing championships have changed hands in this country in an atmosphere of diminished public attentiveness and of increased public weariness with the succession of monopoly-seeking promoters, undercover managers and victimized "tigers." The new heavyweight champion of the world is no promoter's pawn, he is his own manager and considerable of his own trainer, and anybody who aims to victimize him should plan to get up early.

"I know what I am doing," Ingo kept saying, and it is now clear to everybody that he did. The possibility that this engaging young Swede knew what he was doing first became apparent last September when he knocked out Eddie Machen of California with his hogerslag in Goteborg. All the lessons of a generation argued that it was a fluke or even a fix. Readers of this magazine will remember with pleasure, however, that Si's Martin Kane took off overseas for a close look at Ingo and reported (see clips at right): Ingo is the Man for 1959. Kane continued: "The chances are that Johansson owns the most devastating right-hand punch of any heavyweight currently practicing."

It is human and forgivable to recall now that a great many experts, watching Johansson in training, concluded that Ingo's right hand was a Scandinavian fairy tale, that his training was all wrong, and that he was simply another of the "bums" imported by cautious Cus D'Amato as leather fodder for Floyd. Jack Dempsey watched Johansson work out and could summon only an uncommunicative mumble afterward: Dempsey picked Patterson. And the day after the fight, with a burst of humor mixed with honest anguish, Dempsey remarked: "I really liked Johansson but my ghostwriter would not let me say so." And then there was Rocky Marciano, writing for a newspaper syndicate, who scolded Johansson for bringing his mother, his father, his brother, his sister and a sprinkling of fianc�es to the training camp. "A fighter needs to be alone," Rocky said. The day after the fight Rocky raised himself from the canvas in a gallant gesture: "Now tell me, who had the best training methods? Ingemar with his Birgit or me with my Charley Goldman and Al Weill? And both without shaves."

Our own Martin Kane concluded in the June 22nd issue that: " Patterson can, to be sure, be hit with a right hand, but anyone who does it must face the consequences. The chances are that he can and will survive Ingo's best and, in the end, knock Ingo out." Our man brings the story up to date this week. There is to be a rematch, and admirers of Floyd Patterson's brilliant style and majestic heart can look forward to the test of a thesis, certainly true until now, that anyone who can hit Patterson with a right hand must face the consequences. But for now....

Let us just say that Ingo's Swedish massage was the best thing that has happened to boxing's body politic since the court dismembered the International Boxing Club. It is the kind of therapy that will restore it to health even while grand juries now meeting in New York and Los Angeles are exposing still more diseased areas.

We congratulate Bill Rosensohn, the thoughtlessly derided "boy promoter," for his remarkable staying powers which sustained him throughout a long promotional nightmare in which he withstood treatment far rougher than that handed out to Patterson in the ring.

We congratulate Ingemar Johansson, the new champ, who had the high good humor and firm sense of purpose to ignore his playfully irresponsible downgrading by the wisenheimers of the U.S. press.