Summary of David Remnick's King of the World

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Heavyweight Champion of the world, Floyd Patterson, packed a loser’s suitcase. He was champion, the youngest man ever to win the title, but he was also doubt-addled. He knew he had to beware: Liston’s left jab was as powerful as another man’s cross.
#2 Floyd was backed by the media and public, who thought he would beat Liston. However, he was extremely nervous and afraid of losing. He was a champion in the sense that Chester A. Arthur had been president.
#3 Floyd was prepared to lose the fight with Liston. He had lost before, first to Joey Maxim in 1954, and then to Ingemar Johansson in 1959. He had no great advantage he could call his own. He had never deserved any recognition or belonging in the first place.
#4 Floyd Patterson was afraid of getting hurt, but he was terrified of losing. He was one step closer to the slum he came from.

Sujets

• Sport
• Autour du sport
• Histoire du sport
• Sports
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822544604
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on David Remnick's King of the World
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Heavyweight Champion of the world, Floyd Patterson, packed a loser’s suitcase. He was champion, the youngest man ever to win the title, but he was also doubt-addled. He knew he had to beware: Liston’s left jab was as powerful as another man’s cross.

#2

Floyd was backed by the media and public, who thought he would beat Liston. However, he was extremely nervous and afraid of losing. He was a champion in the sense that Chester A. Arthur had been president.

#3

Floyd was prepared to lose the fight with Liston. He had lost before, first to Joey Maxim in 1954, and then to Ingemar Johansson in 1959. He had no great advantage he could call his own. He had never deserved any recognition or belonging in the first place.

#4

Floyd Patterson was afraid of getting hurt, but he was terrified of losing. He was one step closer to the slum he came from.

#5

Floyd Patterson was the first professional athlete to reveal his fears so openly. He was also the first to receive the modern treatment of Freudian sportswriting.

#6

Floyd had a difficult time in school, but he eventually went to Wiltwyck School for Boys, a farm for troubled youngsters in upstate New York, where he was sent when he was ten. He was never a good student, but at least now he could function in the world.

#7

D’Amato’s philosophy was that a fighter must understand himself or else he would lose. He said that fear was natural, and that it was normal for a fighter to have fear. Without fear, we would not survive.

#8

Floyd Patterson was a quick fighter with a good left hook. He could sneak inside his opponent’s jab and, with a combination, take him out. He was a middleweight champion in 1952, and in 1961 he came back to avenge his humiliating seven-knockdown loss to Johansson.

#9

On December 4, 1961, President John F. Kennedy watched a televised boxing doubleheader in different cities: Patterson’s fourth-round knockout of Tom McNeely in Toronto and Liston’s first-round destruction of the fighter he called Albert Quick Fall Westphal in Philadelphia.

#10

The civil rights movement was gathering momentum in the South, and leaders were worried that they would lose a worthy champion in Patterson, who was a graduate of the Missouri penal system, and get Sonny Liston, a convicted felon.

#11

Patterson’s camp was a series of Catholic Worker-style cabins in the town of Elgin called Marycrest Farm. It was a monastic retreat, with religious mosaics and crucifixes decorating the walls.

#12

The press kept the contrast of Good versus Evil alive between Liston and Patterson. Milton Gross of the Post, Jimmy Cannon of the Post, and Red Smith of the Herald Tribune were some of the columnists who did not like Liston.

#13

Baldwin, with Gay Talese of the Times as his guide, visited both camps and was bewildered by the fight-week scene: the reporters gossiping away the morning and then crashing their stories on deadline, the late dinners on expense account, and the inane press conferences.

#14

Many reporters had a difficult time interviewing Liston, as he was often intimidating. The terms gorilla and jungle cat were common enough, but the texture of the racism became far more elaborate.

#15

The fight between Floyd and Liston was a morality play, with the two opponents representing two different styles of rhetoric. Baldwin was able to articulate some of the themes he would develop in his most thorough statement on race, The Fire Next Time.

#16

Mailer, who was covering the fight for Esquire, wrote that Floyd was a liberal’s liberal. He spoke with the same cow’s cud as other liberals. The demand for courage may have been exorbitant, but the majority of people had to live in shame. They wanted the logic of the white man’s world.

#17

Until the fight between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston, boxing was America’s favorite sport. But because it is so stripped-down, one-on-one, the metaphors of struggle, of racial struggle, came easily.

#18

The symbolic differences between the two fighters were clear, and the resulting pressures on Patterson were making his life difficult. He was afraid of losing to Liston, and he wasn’t able to think of the fight at all.

#19

The ring announcer introduced a parade of past champions, and one by one they climbed through the ropes: Louis, Marciano, Jim Braddock, Johansson, Ezzard Charles, Barney Ross, Dick Tiger. Archie Moore, who was still fighting for a living in his forties, entered the ring wearing a tuxedo and a long cape lined in white silk.

#20

The mob was behind Liston, not just out of loyalty but also because he was a freak of nature who did not bow down to the president, as well as a man who talked about his fears and anxieties like a woman.

#21

The fight was scheduled for fifteen rounds. Floyd was blindsided from the start, and Patterson’s strategy was incomprehensible. He went toe to toe with a slugger, an opponent with a thirteen-inch reach advantage.

#22

Liston knocked Patterson down with a left hook in the first minute of the fight. Patterson tried to clinch with his left hand, but Liston shoved him away and hit him with two left hooks. The punches were not especially fast, but that did not matter at all against Patterson.

#23

After the fight, Floyd Patterson said that he had gotten caught with a good punch. He asked people to give the new champion a chance, and said he wanted to fight Liston again.

#24

The best thing about Sonny Liston was his wife, Geraldine. He was not the most loyal husband in the world, but he was a good person, and he would try to be a worthy champ.

#25

After the fight, Floyd Patterson went to New York’s Idlewild Airport and bought a ticket to Madrid.