“I’m going to fight ‘El Conejo’ in El Jardin.”
On September 20, 1972, in a battle of former heavyweight champions, Muhammad Ali scored a seventh-round corner retirement over Floyd Patterson at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Ali had recorded seven straight wins since then-champion Joe Frazier knocked him down and outpointed him. The new game plan for “The Greatest” was to take out every worthwhile heavyweight in an attempt to force a rematch.
Patterson, 37, then the only two-time heavyweight champion in boxing history, was next on the hit list.
Despite his advanced age, Patterson was in good shape. The single left hooker from New York hadn’t lost a fight in four years and was coming off solid victories over Oscar Bonavena and Pedro Agosto. He, too, was motivated to avenge a humiliating twelfth-round knockout of Ali in November 1965.
He just didn’t have the size (30 pounds off at 188) or the style to cause trouble.
Ali was much more tolerant of Patterson than she had been in the original hate-fueled encounter. She did a lot of posing while Patterson tried, and failed, to deal serious damage in the early rounds.
In Round 6, Ali went through the gears, hitting Patterson with a quick flurry of headshots. The fight changed in an instant. Patterson’s left eye closed almost instantly and Ali went to work in earnest. A ripping one-two combination and a flush right uppercut were memorable strikes.
In the seventh, Ali kept his man at bay with the jab and the eye injury progressively worsened. Referee Arthur Mercante blocked Patterson’s path as he gamely got up from his stool for Round 8 and called it off.
On the undercard, Ken Buchanan stopped Carlos Ortiz (TKO 6) in a battle of lightweight legends.
