Former heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson, whose startling and dramatic memory lapses in a recent court hearing became a significant news story in New York, resigned Wednesday as chairman of the state’s athletic commission.
Patterson, in a letter of resignation accepted by New York Gov. George Pataki, cited “personal reasons” for leaving the $76,421-a-year post to which he was appointed in 1995.
For months there have been rumors that Patterson, who held the heavyweight crown from 1956 to 1959 and again from 1960 to 1962, has suffered significant memory loss. It’s one symptom of “dementia pugilistica,” the clinical term for punch drunk. This is a condition that has afflicted an alarming number of ex-fighters over the years, including 1970s welterweight champion Wilfredo Benitez and former heavyweight contender Jerry Quarry, a contemporary of Muhammad Ali’s and Joe Frazier’s.
Patterson’s capabilities were called into question in 1996 in a controversy over testing boxers for the AIDS virus, which several states were doing because of the possibility of a blood transfer occurring during a bout. New York was among the last states to implement testing, and Patterson explained the delay by saying he had “just heard of AIDS a few weeks ago.”
Associates said characterizations of his forgetfulness were exaggerated. But one, asking not to be identified, conceded that Patterson’s memory lapses got worse in recent months.
Patterson’s decision to resign came amid news accounts of a videotaped deposition he gave last month in a suit brought against the commission by an “ultimate fighting” organization that had been barred from staging a show in New York. Details published in Wednesday’s New York Post revealed that Patterson, 63, could not remember such particulars as his secretary’s name, other commissioners’ names, or whom and where he fought to win his first title.
Loss of memory is not confined to ex-boxers, of course, and their cerebral injuries are sometimes difficult to differentiate from age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, said Dr. Michael Schneck, co-director of the neurological critical-care program at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center.
But computerized brain scans in the other instances don’t show the structural change seen in boxers injured by repeated blows to the head, Schneck said. He referred to a standard neurological textbook that listed symptoms of the boxer’s “dementia” as forgetfulness, slowness in thinking, slurred speech and slow, stiff or shuffling movement. The text says such problems often develop “years after boxers retire.”
That makes the onset of “punch drunk” syndrome difficult at times to distinguish from aging problems not associated with boxing. Nonetheless, the severity of disabilities in such boxers as Quarry, Benitez and Ali at least suggests, and often affirms, dementia.
Gwenn Lee, the athletic commission’s press officer, said Patterson plans to continue working with New York area youths at a gymnasium he has built near his home in suburban Ulster County.
“Boxing has been very good to me,” the former champ said in a statement released Wednesday. He said boxing gave him the “opportunity to lift myself from the mean streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant” to a comfortable lifestyle with his wife, Janet, and two daughters.
The statement concluded: “After long and careful consideration, my family and I have decided that for personal reasons, I will resign as chairman of the commission. I hereby do so.”
An Olympic gold medalist in 1956, Patterson won the heavyweight championship from Archie Moore after Rocky Marciano retired undefeated in 1956. He lost it on a stunning knockout by Ingemar Johansson in 1959, but became the first heavyweight to regain the title when he knocked out Johansson in a rematch a year later.
Known as a gentle man outside the ring, Patterson surrendered the title to fearsome Sonny Liston on a one-round knockout in 1962, and was knocked out again in one round in their rematch a year later. He remained active until 1972, but was beaten badly in two losses to Ali and another to Oscar Bonavena. His career record was was 55-8-1.
In accepting Patterson’s resignation, Pataki praised him as a “class act” and “the embodiment of sportsmanship and fair play” and called him a “positive role model for countless New Yorkers.”
Larry Hazzard Sr., chairman of the neighboring New Jersey State Athletic Commission, echoed that sentiment. Calling Patterson “one of my childhood idols,” Hazzard said he was suspended from school the day after his hero lost the heavyweight title to Johansson: “I was so upset I got into a fight with somebody who kidded me about it. When I told Floyd about it, he joked, `I guess when I won the title back, they let you back in school.’ “
Hazzard said he hadn’t seen Patterson in a few months, but found him “very sharp and quick-witted” when they toured a hospital together last year.
On Saturday night, Patterson gathered with several other ex-champions in Atlantic City to help promote Fight Game magazine with its editor, Bert Sugar.
“He was very quiet, but that was typical of Floyd, always a reticent person,” Sugar said.
“One of Floyd’s better lines is, `Everybody remembers me getting knocked down more than any other heavyweight champion. But nobody remembers me getting up more than any other heavyweight champion.’ “
