Labyrinthine Plans Laid In Indianapolis

LONDON'S FINEST HOUR

With a guarantee of $75,000 for fighting Patterson and even a chance, though a slim one, at winning the title, London decided to snoot the board and even, perhaps, do all his future fighting in the United States. A rugged brawler with few skills and almost total inability to avoid a jab, he is nevertheless brutally strong and tough and just about ideal material to give Patterson a needed fight before he takes on the much more formidable Johansson in June.

At least once before the boxing board made a similar decision in the case of a British fighter invited to meet an American heavyweight champion. That was when it forbade Tommy Farr to fight Joe Louis. Farr lasted a full 15 rounds and gave Louis one of his roughest nights.

Rhodes's apocryphal announcement that the London fight would be in Las Vegas was made at the Madison Square Garden Club at a meeting called by and presided over by Rear Admiral John J. Bergen, USNR, new Garden head since his Graham-Paige Corporation bought the arena from James D. Norris. This, and some hopeful remarks by the admiral, led to a temporary belief that the Garden had reached an amiable understanding with D'Amato, who has, in fact, been dickering with the admiral. It was presumed that the Garden would participate in the promotion of Patterson's projected title defenses as televised by NBC, with which the Garden has a contract to supply contestants. It turned out that this was mostly presumption. Rhodes refuses to confirm that the Garden would participate in any of his promotions, though he does not rule it out.

One reason for the selection of Indianapolis as a site for the Patterson-London fight was that D'Amato had previously been approached with an offer to have Patterson fight there on the eve of the Memorial Day 500-mile speed classic and had been impressed by promises of promotional cooperation. As negotiations proceeded with Indianapolitans, D'Amato seemed happy, but Rhodes glumly contemplated a storm of ridicule and abuse which, he anticipated, would follow as night the day his announcement of the switch in plans. But to D'Amato, to whom such a storm would be mild springlike weather compared to what he endured during his war with the IBC, the outlook was serene.