Floyd Patterson
American heavyweight boxer; world heavyweight champion 1956–1959 and 1960–1962. The reigning champion at the time of Patterson–Liston I (25 September 1962, Chicago), in which Mailer was a working press observer. Mailer's first sustained boxing essay, "Ten Thousand Words a Minute" (Esquire, February 1963), is a study of Patterson as much as Liston.
Floyd Patterson was world heavyweight champion when Mailer covered the Patterson–Liston I title fight in Chicago on 25 September 1962 for Esquire. Mailer’s pre-fight prediction — that Patterson “will end it with one punch in the sixth” — is recorded in Leonard Shecter‘s New York Post column (“The Literate at the Fight,” 62.14). The fight lasted two minutes and six seconds: Liston knocked Patterson out in the first round. Mailer’s account, “Ten Thousand Words a Minute” (63.3, Esquire, February 1963), takes Patterson as much as Liston for its subject — the introspective, anxious champion against the brute force of his challenger.
Stub; to be expanded as the 1963 boxing coverage is ingested.