Johnny Nelson, the former WBO cruiserweight champion of the world from 1999-2006, who still remains the longest reigning cruiserweight champ at 6 years, 5 months & 26 days.
“A loss is as important as a win, as long as you learn from it and don’t let it break you. Ignore the negatives and the naysayers, because they don’t see what you see.”
Al Hostak, "The Savage Slav", two-time world middleweight champion, Hostak was a devastating puncher whose career was hampered by recurring hand injuries. Al Hostak was nicknamed "The Savage Slav" due to his Eastern European heritage (Czech parents) and his incredibly aggressive, high-impact fighting style, which featured tremendous knockout power. He was known as a "hard-nosed" fighter with a reputation for being a destructive, punch-first middleweight who thrived on close-range action. He was ranked among The Ring magazine's 100 greatest punchers of all time (2003) and secured 41 of his 64 professional wins by knockout. Born to Czech immigrant parents in Minneapolis and raised in Seattle, his heritage earned him the "Slav" part of the moniker. He gained fame for a 1938 first-round knockout of Freddie Steele, and a trilogy of fights against fellow boxing Hall of Famer Tony Zale.
Kids teased him because he stuttered; he learned to fight
Mon, 09/09/2019
By: Ken Robinson
The first round bell rang across Civic Stadium at 9:30 p.m. on a warm July 26, 1938 evening.
Not all of the 35,000 people who witnessed the fight in Seattle paid the $5.75 ticket price. National Guard troops with sticks surrounded the fenced field to keep freeloaders out.
The match was between 25-year-old World Middleweight Champion Freddie Steele, who held the title since 1936, and Al Hostak, a 22-year old brawler from Georgetown.
Hostak had been a skinny kid with a stammer. Kids teased him. They didn’t know they were picking on The Savage Slav.
In that tough part of South Seattle, Hostak had to learn to defend himself. At fourteen, a man saw Hostak punching a gunnysack dummy and asked him if he wanted to make a little money fighting.
He earned $1.50 for his first fight in what was then called a ‘smoker’, an amateur bout that was more sparring than an attempt to beat an opponent to the mat.
By the time he was 16, he was fighting in local smokers and caught the eye of Eddie Marino, a trainer. Hostak had not developed a style. Marino gave him some tips and got him his first pro fight in 1932. He fought Jimmy smith and knocked Smith out in the third round on May 20. A month later, he knocked out Harry Wharton and a month after that, he KO’d Al Brown in the first round.
The Seattle Daily Times wrote that Hostak “remains undefeated” after 15 fights.
He was living at home with his parents. He delivered newspapers to earn money, He dropped out of Cleveland high school in his junior year to make money fighting and to begin making his living as a boxer.
Hostak was fighting on the undercard of a talented Tacoma fighter name Freddie Steele. Hostak’s promoter would bring in better fighters, like Young Terry and Eddie “Babe” Risko. Hostak knocked out both of them in Seattle bouts.
He beat two more guys the Spring of 1937. His promoter arranged a match with Freddie Steele. All the big money was on Steele to clobber the Savage Slav.
Phil Hostak, Al Hostak’s son, said “There were mobsters there” to see the fight in the Civic Stadium in Seattle. According to an online citation “Civic Stadium's importance as a boxing venue coincided with the legalization of boxing in Washington on June 8, 1933, and the concurrent rise of Seattle's greatest draw Freddie Steele and local promoter Nate Druxman. Steele would win the World Middleweight title over Eddie (Babe) Risko in the stadium on July 11, 1936.
Then came Tuesday night, July 26, 1938
Champion boxer Jack Dempsey was the referee.
Freddie Steele had the height and weight advantage over Hostak. And he had 100 more bouts in the ring and a vaunted left hook. All the big money was on Steele to clobber the Savage Slav.
Phil Hostak told the story: The fight was the National Boxing Association World Middleweight Title. The crowd saw Steele knocked down four times. He was counted out by referee Dempsey. Some ringside observers accused Steele of coming out against Hostak with his hands down., thus getting KO’d in the first round. But Steele had been hampered by a cracked breastbone, which prevented him from lifting his gloves high to where they belong—according to his chief sparring partner, Davey Ward.
Steele was knocked out at 1:43 in the first round and Hostak took the title.
This win set in motion Hostak’s record of “fighting name guys”, Phil Hostak said.
When he wasn’t fighting, Al Hostak was dating the daughter of Seattle Post-Intelligencer sportswriter Royal Brougham. According to son Phil, Brougham was not kind to Hostak in his reporting.
The center of the boxing world then was in New York. Phil said New York did not recognize the title wins until Jack Dempsey went to his defense.
In November, 1938, Hostak broke his hands in a fight in Seattle “against a hard-headed Jew named Solly Krieger.” He fought Krieger again the following summer and won on a TKO. The referee was James J. Braddock, would heavyweight campion from 1935 to 1937 and later known as the Cinderella Man. About 23,000 people filled Civic Stadium in Seattle for the title fight. Braddock stopped the fight after Krieger had been floored four times. “It was the first time Krieger had actually been knocked out, although previously technically kayoed on cut eyes and such,” according to the Tacoma News-Tribune.
Hostak fought nine more times until 1941, including three bouts with Tony Zale, losing twice and knocking him out in their last bout.
Then Hostak faced a tough young guy from White Center name Harry “Kid” Matthews. Matthews was tall, handsome and muscular. He looked like a fighter. “
A left hook to the chin in the 3rd round caused Matthews’ knee to briefly touch the canvas. In the ninth, Hostak hurt Matthews with a flurry, forcing him to sit on the second rope briefly. Hostak appeared to have lost in the middle rounds to Matthews, who used his left hand, and a good body attack to win the decision,” according to the Seattle P-I.
He fought him twice and lost Decision and Majority Decision both times.
Fourteen more fights followed, from Texas to Chicago. Hostak won most on knockouts, including his final fight in 1949 against Jack Snapp, who he beat in the ninth round.
His record in the ring includes 63 professional wins, 42 knockouts, and 21 decisions for a total of 84 fights.
After retiring, he owned a couple of taverns, then a gas station, and became the bartender at the Epicure Restaurant in White Center. He also became a King County Deputy Sheriff.
Al Hostak was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997.
Al Hostak is actually the inspiration for Southpaw blend coffee made by Fulcrum Coffee out of Seattle. This is one of those fascinating stories that I happened to run across.
Al Hostak
Our Inspiration for the Southpaw Blend
The Southpaw Blend is a medium roasted coffee that incorporates notes of caramel, chocolate, and citrus. This blend was one of the first blends created by the Silver Cup roasters. After many different renditions and alternative mixes of beans, Southpaw is perfected with a combination of beans from Colombia, Central America, South America, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific. At Fulcrum we are all about sharing stories that allow our customers and readers to discover and learn something new, like our roasters did with this blend. Read our Southpaw Blend inspired story below, a tale about a Seattle figure that truly changed the game.
Nothing Worth Having Comes Without a Fight
There are no boxing stories without lessons learned the hard way. You can't celebrate the Northwest tenacity that rebuilt an entire city after a devastating fire or the righteous indignation that sparked the Pike Place Market, without a nod toward the hard, dirty (and sometimes bloody) fight. Nothing worth having comes easy, after all.
The story of Al Hostak is as Seattle as a story as they come, in that way. He came to town a stranger, the young son of Czech immigrants who settled in South Seattle. The 1920s brought economic highs and violent lows to Seattle, which could be a hard place to live. Al Hostak, a little boy with a stutter, seemed like easy pickings for rough kids looking for a victim. He was not. From the start, he proved as impossible to knock down as the city itself. He also found he had quite the knack for knocking down would-be bullies. At 16, he dropped out of school to become a boxer.
Hostak was a natural. He could take a punch, and he could throw them faster and harder than just about everyone who he came up against. Between bouts, he worked as a sparring partner for middleweight champ Freddie Steele, the "Tacoma Assassin". Steele had "one of the finest left hands in the game" and a career almost unmarred by loss. It's easy to imagine the pair becoming friends. The kind of friends who could punch each other in the face and then go out for a pint.
When Hostak, a few short years later, took that middleweight title off of Steele in front of a hometown crowd of over 30,000, it more or less ended the Tacoma Assassin's career in a single round. But the boxing world, like Seattle, is full of highs and lows and sometimes they come at you fast. Hostak lost his title in a brutal defeat the very same year. In that fight, he broke both of his hands early, but he stayed on his feet until the 14th round when he suffered the first knockout of his career. Freddie Steele was one of the first faces in the ring to console him.
Hostak fought for his honor, and for his country. He fought for a living and for the crazy joy of it. He fought when his hands were broken. Because nothing worth having comes without a fight.
Al Hostak punched so hard that he broke his hands in several different fights throughout his career, there were at least three separate bouts where hand injuries occurred:
Against Solly Krieger (November 1938): Hostak broke both hands early in the bout where he lost his title for the first time.
Against Tony Zale (January 1940): He broke two fingers of his left hand in the fifth round of a non-title fight, which he lost by unanimous decision.
Against Tony Zale again (July 1940): In their second meeting, where Hostak lost his middleweight crown officially, he reportedly broke both hands again.
Al Hostak won the NBA Middleweight title on July 26, 1938, against Freddie Steele. If you're not familiar with Freddie Steele, he's was a great middleweight that flies under the radar from some reason, he was nicknamed "The Tacoma Assassin", because he was just that. Steele could do it all, a great technician with that was more than capable of flattening you. Freddie Steele was hard to beat, only five men managed to defeat Steele, he finished his career with a record of 125-5 (60 KO).
Wayback Machine: Freddie Steele vs. Al Hostak
By: David Eskenazi
Event ticket for the Freddie Steele vs. Al Hostak middleweight title match on July 26, 1938 / David Eskenazi Collection
Boxing locally and nationally is rarely on the mainstream radar anymore. But in Seattle’s less dilettante days, thanks to colorful — and creative — boxing promoters such as Nate Druxman, Jack Hurley and George Chemeres, there were a good number of nationally-ranked pugilists, including Olympic champs, who brought excitement and big names to town.
Of the many championship fights held in Seattle, including the Aug. 12, 1957, world heavyweight title extravaganza between Pete Rademacher and Floyd Patterson at Sicks’ Stadium, none captivated the fancy of local pugilism enthusiasts more than the National Boxing Association world middleweight title bout July 26, 1938 at Civic Stadium (located at 3rd and Mercer) between a pair of locals, Seattle’s Al Hostak, the “Savage Slav”, and Freddie Steele, the “Tacoma Assassin”.
Don King had nothing on Nate Druxman. The cover design of the official program for the Steele vs. Hostak match was undoubtedly influenced by promoter Druxman, the only plausible explanation for his visage appearing twice as large as the fighters themselves / David Eskenazi Collection
Boxing fans snarfed up more than 30,000 tickets to the fight in a matter of hours. A Seattle “betting commissioner” told The Seattle Times in its July 26, 1938 edition that at least $25,000 had been wagered in downtown cardrooms — and probably a lot more than that, an incredible sum back in the day. The raging interest over the Steele-Hostak matchup meant that Steele, as defending champion, would receive a guaranteed $30,000, while Hostak, as challenger, would collect $8,462.64, or 12 1/2 percent of the purse.
Born in Seattle (1912) but reared in Tacoma (attended Bellarmine High), the 5-foot-10, 159-pound Steele had played baseball, basketball, soccer and table tennis as a youth. Steele won his first amateur bout in 1926 and did not lose until his 47th fight, to Tony Portillo Dec. 30, 1930. He made his professional boxing debut July 7, 1932, won the Pacific Northwest welterweight title in 1933, and became NBA world middleweight champion Feb. 19, 1937, by scoring a unanimous, 15-round decision over Babe Risko at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Born in Minneapolis to Czech immigrants, the 6-foot, 156-pound Hostak, a Minneapolis native, grew up a tough kid in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood and became attracted to boxing when he was forced to defend himself against schoolmates who made fun of his stuttering.
Back of the ticket stub for the Steele vs. Hostak match, with Jack Dempsey’s autograph in pencil / David Eskenazi Collection
Nate Druxman, once an amateur baseball player, a not-so-successful boxer, and a man who sold cigars, jewelry, real estate and toiled in Seattle shipyards, had started promoting local boxing shows at the Seattle Elks Club at Fourth Avenue and Spring Street in August, 1914. A man of considerable ego, Druxman talked former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey in August of 1931 into boxing three exhibition bouts with Denny Lenhart, a Portland pug, that filled Civic Arena. Two years later, on July 11, 1933, Druxman put together the first officially sanctioned world title fight in Seattle, a pairing of Freddie Miller and Abie Israel for the NBA featherweight title. Five years after that, Druxman brought Steele and Hostak together for a Civic Stadium showdown that has since gone down as one of the major spectacles in Seattle sports history.
Steele entered the ring with more than 120 official victories and only four losses in his portfolio, and installed as a slight favorite. He also entered as a fighter compromised by the lingering effects of a broken breastbone he had suffered in a loss to Freddie Apostoli seven months earlier (Jan. 7, 1938, at Madison Square Garden), and injuries he had received in a serious traffic accident (crashed into a stalled vehicle on the Seattle-Tacoma highway near the Fife junction).
Most experts figured that the fight would go the 15-round distance, and they figured wrong. The ballyhoo ended in a blink.
Al Hostak loosens up for his July, 1940 fight with Tony Zale / David Eskenazi Collection
Wrote The Seattle Times in its July 27, 1938 edition that included a dozen photos of the event: “Steele made two bad mistakes, one for lack of a smart battle campaign and the other because he was too groggy to know better. His first mistake was when he came out swinging to meet the Savage Slav. There’s no middleweight in the business qualified to slug it out with Hostak. He hits too hard and too fast.”
Hostak landed the first punch and then floored Steele three more times before delivering the winning blow, a short, perfectly timed left hook to the button that sent Steele toppling pie-eyed to the canvas. Referee Jack Dempsey counted the decisive 10 at 1:43 of the first round.
Steele’s crushing loss, coupled with his previous injuries, essentially ended his boxing career. He did not fight again for three years, losing by TKO to Jimmy Casino at Legion Stadium in Hollywood, CA., May 23, 1941. That turned out to be Steele’s last fight, and he concluded his career with 125 wins (60 knockouts), five losses and 11 draws.
Hostak fought for 11 more years, finishing with 63 wins (42 by knockout), nine losses and 12 draws. He lost the world middleweight title he took from Steele, by majority decision, to Solly Krieger Nov. 1, 1938, at Seattle’s Civic Auditorium, after breaking both of his hands early in the fight and suffering the first knockdown of his career in the 14th round (Steele was among the first in the ring to console Hostak after his loss).
Freddie Steele (left) is pictured with his boater-bearing manager Dave Miller. The photo is inscribed to Ned Edris, probably a business partner of Miller’s/ David Eskenazi Collection
Hostak snatched back his title from Krieger in a rematch June 27, 1939, with a fourth-round TKO at Civic Stadium in front of 23,000 fans. It marked the first time a fighter had recaptured the world middleweight title since Stanley Ketchel did it against Billy Papke in 1908.
Hostak successfully defended his title Dec. 12, 1939, against Erich Seelig with a first-round KO at the Cleveland, OH., Arena. Then things dove south.
Hostak lost by unanimous decision to Tony Zale in a non-title bout in Chicago Jan. 29, 1940, in which Hostak broke his hands. Hostak broke his hands again July 19, 1940, when he officially lost his middleweight crown to Zale at Civic Stadium. When Hostak and Zale met for a third time, May 28, 1941, Hostak knocked Zale down in the first round, but lost the fight in the second after Zale knocked him down eight times.
Hostak’s last fight came eight years later, Jan. 7, 1949, when he scored a ninth-round knockout of Jack Snapp at Civic Auditorium.
Hostak entered the World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2003, Ring Magazine named him to its list of “The 100 Greatest Punchers of All Time.” “One of the greatest punchers I’ve ever seen,” said Dempsey, after the Steele-Hostak fight.
Menu cover from “Freddie Steele’s Restaurant” / David Eskenazi Collection
Steele, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1999, moved to the San Fernando Valley after his boxing days and had a career in the film industry from 1941-48. He served as a double for Errol Flynn in Gentleman Jim and had more significant roles in The Story of G.I. Joe (1944, with Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum), Black Angel (1946, with Dan Duryea and Peter Lorre) and Race Street (1948, with George Raft and William Bendix). After a decade in California, Steele returned to Washington state and, with wife Helen, operated “Freddie Steele’s Restaurant” in Westport, WA. They ran the establishment for two decades before illness forced his retirement. Steele died Aug. 24, 1984, in an Aberdeen nursing home from complications from a stroke. He is buried at Aberdeen’s Fern Hill Cemetery.
Hostak did a little bit of everything following his boxing career. He held jobs as a tavern owner, bartender, King County jail guard and security guard at Longacres Race Track. A White Center resident for many years, Hostak spent much of his leisure time haunting local flea markets, collecting musical tapes. He died Aug. 13, 2006, at Evergreen Hospice in Kirkland, WA., from complications of a stroke that he suffered on Aug. 2, 2006.
The only known fight film of Al Hostak is a brief video on YouTube of their first fight, though the quality of the video isn't good. Hostak and Zale went to war three times between 1940 and 41, Zale won all three fights, but to be fair, Hostak broke his hands in two of those fights. Still, Tony Zale was one of the toughest SOB's to ever lace em' up, his recuperative powers were legendary.
Talk about great boxing photos. Al Hostak holding up one of the most devastating weapons in boxing history. This photo is a masterpiece of photography, the lighting, the faces of the onlookers.
''As an 18-year-old near unknown amateur boxer, I was the centre of a storm of critical abuse probably unsurpassed in boxing history. I was a national disgrace. I was branded a coward.
I was led, disgraced, from the ring where I had been boxing an American in the Olympic final. They had disquaIified me 'for failing to show fight' after a round in which neither of us had attempted a blow.
Police escorted me through the hall, in the tumult of booing, whistling, cat-callers. An old man jumped at me, shaking his clenched fist in my face and shouting: 'You wouIdn't dare to fight me, you coward!'
They withheld my finalist's silver medal; on the victory dais my place was vacant; The Swedish fIag remained unfurled at the presentations.
This is a seIection of the headlines which were to scream at me:
'Shame's Cup Filled to Overflowing... The Fleeing Rat... The Most Hare-Livered Boxing We Have Seen... The Cowardice Record of This Olympiad... The Most Cowardly Boxing I've Seen... I Was Ashamed To Be Swedish...'
It was a nightmare. This was the frenzied aftermath of what must have been the least fought, most talked about amateur fight in the world. No other OIympic finallist has occupied so much space in the papers or so small a place on the finalist's dais!
This is what they said: 'Johansson's professional career hopes are finished. He is kaput. A chapter written off in Swedish boxing.' Another paper, describing how I was 'whistled out and Iaughed out of the ring, slandered and insulted,' went on: 'The first thing one needs in boxing is guts. Cowardice and boxing don't go together. Johansson was a plain coward.'
The chairman of the Swedish Boxing Association weighed in: 'He brought shame to the Swedish name... we Swedes are ashamed of him and we crept out of the hall to avoid the scorn when the jury decided quite rightly not to let him have his silver medaI and not to hoist the Swedish flag at the prize-giving.'
In this solid body of abuse there came one little breach from a paper, which pointed out: 'It isn't one person's fauIt if two keep the peace.' But just to make clear what they thought of me anyway, they added: 'Both boxers should have been disqualified.'
I have never been a coward. I am not ashamed of anything I have done. I fought badly because I was not at my peak and for his part, my opponent [Ed] Sanders did just as badIy in that fight.
What is the truth about that fight that besmirched my name and character... and that Sweden said wouId ruin my career?
I admit that I couldn't have cared less about the Olympics. I was bored with amateur boxing and wanted to turn professionaI. I didn't want to fight in the Olympics. I wanted to do what I wanted to do - fight professionally.
I know it doesn't sound good, but I wanted to follow my own wishes. That goes for everything I do in boxing and Heaven save the boxers who don't think of themselves first. Nobody eIse does.
And then in the final I was matched against Sanders, like myseIf a counter boxer. One of us had to desert our style. I wasn't fit enough or sufficiently experienced to take him with attacks without jeopardising my defence. I planned to avoid attacking in the first two rounds and to save myself for the third so I could snatch a points advantage.
It is a sad memory and I haven't revived it to attack newspapers or stir up old wounds. The papers wrote as they thought and have since been shown that they were wrong. They had their say. I made my repIy later in another form - from the ring.''
Ingemar Johansson's right hand--dubbed "The Hammer of Thor"--was the most fearsome in boxing, and Johansson's three fights with Floyd Patterson rank among the sport's classic rivalries. Yet most fans know little about the Swedish playboy who won the world heavyweight championship with a shocking third round knockout of Patterson and held it for six days short of a year (1959-1960).
During his reign, the raffish "Ingo" hit fashionable nightspots on two continents, romanced Elizabeth Taylor, and refused to kowtow to the mobsters who controlled boxing.
British Vintage Boxing
THE HAMMER OF THOR - INGEMAR JOHANSSON
By Paul Zanon
Sweden’s world heavyweight champion was born in Gothenburg on 22 September 1932. Son to Jens August Johansson and Ebba Matilda Amalia Karlsson, Jens Ingemar Johansson cut his teeth at Redbergslid’s Boxing Club at the age of 14. The following year he left school, started working in the jewellery trade as a stone setter’s assistant, whilst also working as a porter on the harbour unloading goods from moored vessels for Edwin Ahlqvist, who would be pivotal in Johansson’s professional career at a later date.
At just 16 years of age he had already matured into a heavyweight boxer and between 1948-1952, he clocked up 61 victories in 71 amateur contests. Popular for his performance in the square ring, with his dimple chin and film star good looks, Johnasson also became a hit with the ladies. By 1949, at the age of 17 he had already fathered two children, however, he was in no position to raise them and was forced to put the kids up for adoption. The year after, aged 18 he married Barbara Abramson, but divorced shortly after the ink had dried on the marriage certificate. Within a matter of months he fathered his third child. Ingo’s reputation for being a ladies man certainly didn’t waiver and his stable of illegitimate children was up to five (from five different mothers), before his twentieth birthday. Despite meeting his future wife Birgit Lundgren in 1954, they didn’t marry until 1962. In the meantime, Ingo exercised his playboy lifestyle having a long list of affairs with some of the world’s most beautiful women, including Elizabeth Taylor.
Back to the boxing. On 3 March 1952, Johansson knocked out Gert Schyllert in the first round of the heavyweight final of the Swedish National Amateur Boxing Championships. In essence, this was his pass to the Olympics in Helsinki four months later.
It’s common knowledge that Johansson won silver at the 1952 Olympics, however, his route to gaining the medal was a strange one. After beating three Finns in the preliminary rounds (Horymir Netuka, Tomo Krizmanic and Iikka Koski), Johansson lost to American to Ed Sanders in the final after being disqualified for being too passive. Ingo claimed he was boxing to his corner’s instructions, staying on the back foot in order to make Sanders walk into counter shots, but the problem was that Sanders was also a counter puncher and the fight turned into a stinker. The officials didn’t buy Johansson’s story and despite Sanders being warned for the same tactics, he was declared the winner while Ingo was disqualified and had his medal withheld. Johansson had to wait 30 years before he was finally presented with the piece in 1982.
Finishing on such a deflated note made Johansson consider walking away from the sport for good, but thankfully, Edwin Ahlquist, who was better known for his prominence in construction and sports magazine publishing sectors, managed to convince Johansson to turn professional.
A few months after the Olympics, Johansson turned professional on 5 December 1952 at the age 20, taking on Frenchman Robert Masson in Ingo’s beloved hometown of Gothenburg. After four of eight scheduled rounds Johansson knocked out Masson, who was ranked in the top five French heavyweights at the time. Within three months, Johansson had a record of 3-0 and on 12 March 1953 challenged Danish born Erik Jensen for the Scandinavian heavyweight title in Copenhagen.
Despite his best efforts to stop Jensen, which included a knockdown, Johansson had to last the distance, due to breaking his right hand. Thankfully, he won a comfortable points decision over six rounds, which has to be one of the shortest round allocations for a professional national title fight.
Gothenburg’s favourite fighting son only competed twice more between 1953-54 due to military service in the Swedish Navy. When he jumped back in the ring in January 1955, he soon started to rack up victories and by 28 August 1955, Johansson was undefeated in 11 fights, landing him a fight with the former European heavyweight champion Hein Ten Hoff. Despite outweighing Johansson by almost 30lbs and having a three inch height advantage, Ingo knocked him out in precisely one minute of the opening round.
Six months later he beat tough Jamaican Joe Bygraves followed by Hans Friedrich seven weeks later. With an unbeaten record of 14-0, Johansson had earned himself the right to challenge the European Heavyweight champion, Franco Cavicchi. Having only ventured out of Sweden once as a professional, Johansson had to enter the lion’s den and challenge The Emilian Bull on 30 September 1956 at the Stadio Comunale, in Cavicchi’s hometown of Bologna.
The pair were well matched. They shared the same height, with Cavicchi weighing only 5lbs more, but looking like he was made of marble. After 12 hard fought rounds, Johansson knocked out the tough Italian in the thirteenth session and in doing so was crowned the new heavyweight king of Europe.
Johansson’s first defence of his newly acquired strap was against nonother than our very own Henry Cooper, on 19 May 1957, at the Johanneshov Ice Stadium, Stockholm. Despite a valiant attempt to gain his first piece of silverware, ‘Our Enry,’ was stopped in the fifth session bringing his record to 14-5. Who would have thought he would go on to win the Lonsdale belt outright three times over, in addition to the Commonwealth and European titles?
Ingo defended his European strap against Welshman Joe Erskine on 21 February 1958, but his big breakthrough which propelled him into world title contention came on 14 September 1958, when he took on Californian resident, Eddie Machen. At this point, the American was undefeated in 25 contests, boasting 24 wins including two victories against Joey Maxim and one draw against Zora Foley. Machen was odds on favourite to win, but Johansson had other ideas. In front of almost 54,000 fans (the largest spectator crowd in Sweden’s history at that point), Ingo knocked down Machen three times in the first round, knocking him out in two minutes 16 seconds. The Swede had earned himself the right to fight for the ultimate fistic crown.
On 26 June 1959, Johansson challenged the sweetheart of boxing, Floyd Patterson for his world heavyweight title. Ingo reportedly clawed in a very respectable $100,000 compared to $300,000 for the champ. Trained by Cus D’Amato, Patterson had beaten Archie Moore for the title in 1956 and had since defended the crown four times against the likes of Pete Rademacher and Brian London. As a relatively inexperienced fighter, Johansson was seen to be the next scalp on Patterson’s list, but the European fighter, similar to Max Schmeling precisely 21 years prior at the same venue, ventured to the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to cause an upset.
The sell-out event of just under 22,000 spectators attracted some of the biggest names including John Wayne and Bill Holden, who were sat ringside in crisp suits and fedora hats. Wayne was even involved with commentary at one point.
Standing roughly the same height, Johansson at 196lbs outweighed 5-1 favourite Patterson by 14lbs. As the pair entered the third round Ingo was 2-0 behind on two of the judges scorecards. That’s when The Hammer of Thor struck. Shortly into the round Johansson unleashed a left hook followed by a big right which floored Patterson. Despite making the count, he was on unsteady legs and when he got to his feet, Patterson turned away from Johansson looking to his corner. The moment he did, Johansson clubbed him with a left hook, sending the champ to the canvas once again. After a further five knockdowns, the contest was declared over. At precisely two minutes and three seconds of the third round, Sweden had its first world heavyweight world champion and Ingo rightly returned to Sweden to a hero’s welcome.
The rematch was a whole year later on 20 June 1960 at the Polo Grounds, New York. Patterson weighed in 8lbs heavier than the first fight and Johansson a couple of pounds less. Similar to the first encounter, Johansson was pawing with his jab as Patterson bobbed and weaved. Both fighters were looking to land their haymaker, but it was Patterson who achieved the goal first. Halfway through the fifth round Patterson leapt at Johansson with a clubbing left hook, which landed with devastating force on the Swede’s jaw. Ingo was out cold before he hit the canvas and as he lay there, his left foot started twitching uncontrollably. It took the Swede 15 minutes to fully regain his senses. Patterson in the meantime had just made history by being the first man to regain the world heavyweight title.
The rubber match happened on 13 March 1961 at the Convention Centre, Miami Beach. Johansson received a great deal of criticism for not looking in peak condition for the fight, showing more love to the contents of the kitchen than the discipline required in his training camp. He did however spar with an up and coming fighter by the name of Cassius Clay, albeit the 19 year old braggadocio was the one impressing the onlookers by all accounts.
Before the fight started, the ominous figure of Sonny Liston stepped into the ring and was introduced to the crowds as the leading heavyweight contender. With a beaming smile on his face he walked over to Patterson’s corner and wished him the best of luck. Next up was Max Schmeling who receive a mixed reception of applause and boos, followed by Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano. Interestingly, Marciano was ringside when Johansson won the title and believed he could beat Ingo. The Rock went into secret training but quickly realised he would not be able to regain his previous form and hung up the idea of coming out of retirement.
After exchanging jabs for about a minute, Johansson unloaded a lead right hand, also known as ‘Ingo’s Bingo,’ which floored Patterson. The champion was not dazed like the first fight and came back trading punches. However, after about 30 seconds he succumbed to a right left combination which sent him to the canvas again for the eight count. About 15 seconds later Patterson detonated his own straight right and reversed the script, putting Johansson on the seat of his pants. Not a bad opening round for those in attendance.
By round six, both fighters looked tired, with Patterson’s left eye nicely swollen. With about 30 seconds of the round to go, Patterson unloaded two clubbing right hooks to Johansson’s temple which rendered him incapable of beating the 10 count.
Patterson would go on to fight for a further 11 years, engaging with some of boxing’s most credible heavyweights of all time. Johansson on the other hand returned to Sweden for his last four fights, which in all fairness to him, were not walkovers. On 9 February 1962 Johansson stopped Joe Bygraves in seven rounds, followed two months later with a five round demolition of the Dutch heavyweight champion, Wim Snoek. Eight weeks later Ingo challenged European heavyweight champion Dick Richardson stopping the Brit in eight rounds making him a two-time European champion. Johansson’s swan song was against Brian London. Despite suffering a heavy knockdown in the dying seconds of the final round, Ingo was saved by the bell and very comfortably outpointed London over 12 rounds in Gothenburg.
Sonny Liston was now the reigning world heavyweight champion and Johansson was in line for a title shot. Whether it be the right hand from London which acted as the wakeup call or he had fallen out of love with the sport, Johansson, aged 30 years old, hung up the gloves and never looked back. In an 11 year career he only lost twice in 28 fights, gained Olympics plaudits as an amateur and is still to this day Sweden’s only ever heavyweight world boxing champion. Part of that reason is due to Sweden banning professional boxing on 1 January 1970, citing risk to life from incoming blows as their rationale. Pro fighters from Sweden, such as European heavyweight champion Anders Ecklund were consequently forced to fight abroad for their whole career. The ban was semi-lifted in 2006, but the pro game still has wide resistance in Sweden.
Despite punching holes in each other in the ring, Johansson and Patterson became lifelong friends, making regular visits to each other on both sides of the pond. They attended several boxing conventions together, co-signing memorabilia and fulfilling photo opportunities for fans.
Johansson invested his money wisely in a number of businesses and initially kept a finger in boxing circles, promoting shows in Sweden. Ironically, Sonny Liston featured on four of them between 1966-67.
Johansson’s relationship with his wife came to an end in the late 1960’s. He openly admitted to partying and struggling with fathering duties, so the separation came as no surprise. In search of warmer climes, Johansson moved to Florida in the early 1970’s and in 1979 met Swedish journalist, Edna Alsterlind who had been sent over to cover a feature on the champ. Enamoured by Alsterlind, who was 16 years his junior, Johansson married for the third and final time in 1980.
By 1980 Ingo’s waistline was around 300lbs. Incredibly, despite carrying a rather swollen frame, one of his big passions now was running marathons. In 1981, losing approximately 50lbs, Johansson ran the Stockholm and New York marathons, and by the mid 80’s had clocked up 10 races.
Towards the late 1980’s Johansson moved back to Sweden full time, living with wife Alsterlind in Stockholm. Sadly, Johansson started to display symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in the mid 90’s and in the coming few years started to deteriorate. In 2003 he was moved to a care home and passed away on 30 January 2009 at 76 years of age. Ray Patterson, attended the funeral because his brother Floyd had passed away in 2006, to the same virulent disease.
Johansson was named Ring Magazine’s fighter of the year in 1958 and 1959, in addition to Sport Illustrated Sportsman of the Year in 1959 and the Boxing Writers Association of America’s Fighter of the Year, also in 1959. In 2002 Ingo was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame and if you want to grab a glimpse of the champ now, a fitting bronze statue of him is on full display outside the Ullevi stadium, Gothenburg. To this day, he remains one of Sweden’s most influential sportspeople.
Let's take a look at Ingemar Johansson's style and his fights with Eddie Machen and Floyd Patterson.
Bad Left Hook
Savant Sundays: Ingemar Johansson
Swedish heavyweight great Ingemar Johansson is the subject of this week’s look back into boxing history.
Swedish heavyweight Ingemar Johnasson fought from 1953 to 1963, finishing his career with a 26-2 record, and only losing to one man, Floyd Patterson. 19 of his first 21 fights came in Scandinavia, with the others in Germany and Italy. Johansson dominated that regional scene before making his U.S. debut at Yankee Stadium, beating the legendary Patterson inside of just three rounds in 1959.
That victory earned Johansson the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year award, making him just the third international athlete to claim the distinction to that point. But Patterson avenged the loss a year later at the Polo Grounds in New York, and a Miami rubber match in 1961 also went Patterson’s way, both via knockout. Johnasson fought four more times after the Patterson trilogy before hanging up his gloves at age 30.
Dimensions and Style
Johansson is billed at 6’0”, and generally weighed in near the 200 lb mark, a build typical of his heavyweight era. An orthodox fighter, Johansson was great with the jab. He either kept his right hand locked and loaded at his chest, ready to deliver devastating follow-up shots, or shuffled his gloves by his jaw. He was a patient fighter who knew when to fire, and had textbook footwork and plenty of ring savvy. He’d alternate between a conventional and a wider stance.
There isn’t an abundance of Johansson fight footage, but let’s take a look through what is available in full form.
Ingemar Johansson vs Eddie Machen (1958)
Johannson must’ve circumambulated Machen at least 10 times before the stoppage of this fight at 2:16 of round one. His movement wasn’t poetic, but effective and consistent. He was very active with his jab, keeping Machen at bay. Machen tagged him upstairs with a right hook, but Johansson absorbed the contact well and came back fighting.
Johansson was a bit choppy with his steps before setting up a short right with yet another left jab that sent Machen to the canvas. Machen got back up, and they tangled up on a couple occasions, where Machen would pummel Johansson’s head to try and make up ground. A flurry of uppercuts and crosses against a defenseless Machen downed him for a second and third time, giving Johansson the victory.
Ingemar Johnasson vs Floyd Patterson (1959)
Patterson was getting low, bending forward to show Johansson a variety of looks while picking his shots sparingly. Johansson once again took the outside of the ring in this bout, and got busy with his jab, defending well against cross attempts from Patterson.
Most of Johansson’s jabs were not landing as the second round drew on. It seemed more as if he was trying to establish distance from Patterson and keep him from exploding upward the way he was famous for doing. Johansson let off an impressive series of 1-2 combinations, including an uppercut-straight right combo that were his first impactful shots to land in the round.
Johansson’s footwork and body positioning kept forcing Patterson to almost sidestep before lunging. It worked at the end of the second as he caught Johansson flush with a left hook to the face. A right cross followed a left, and Patterson didn’t know what had happened, except that he was on his back. When he rose, he was clearly discombobulated, walking away from Johansson. The Swede proceeded to finish the job with five more knockdowns, including a very dangerous shot to the back of the head, ending the night in under nine minutes.
Ingemar Johannson vs Floyd Patterson III (1961)
For the first time in heavyweight history, the mandatory eight count was instituted in this fight. This was crucial due to the amount of knockdowns. Johansson wasted no time utilizing his jab with the sole intent of leading it up with powerful rights – something he did not do as frequently in their first bout.
Johansson knocked Patterson down inside of two minutes with a spot-on straight right that followed after his jab. Throughout the fight, Johansson was in a very wide stance with great posture. A right cross and left uppercut sent Patterson spiraling again.
Patterson returned the favor with a phantom right hand on his back legs that put Johansson on his butt, in what was as action-packed a first round as can be. As the fight wore on and Patterson’s punch count increased, Johansson was not particularly adroit at matching his barrages or making him pay for mistakes.
Patterson lunged at Johansson with a snappy jab and two right hooks to the temple that sent Johansson to the canvas and the eight count got the victory over him.
Appraisal
Johansson’s jab was incredible, and not too many fighters can be a jab artist and consistently throw with as much verve as he could. He had a command of all of the fundamental.
Here’s where Johansson lacked: He was not a great counter-puncher. When a fighter brought the pain full fledge, it slowed him down. Also, Johansson – while capable of throwing a wider variety of punches – loved that jab so much that, like Antonio Cervantes, it was his main weapon for scoring points.
Heavyweights who throw every punch in the book like Patterson would likely give him problems in theoretical matchups. His head movement was very sound but not otherworldly. Nevertheless, Johansson did many things right, enough for his career to see him enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2002. His power was there, so was his footwork, and it’s apparent that his fundamentals were cultivated early in his boxing career.
Ingo is honestly one of my favorite fighters, he wasn't an all-time great but man, he could lower the boom on you with that right hand, appropriately deemed "The Hammer of Thor." It's fascinating, Ingo would often take his time with his opponent, lure him into a false sense of security, and then drop the hammer. His style was basically centered around landing that right hand and he was really good at hiding it and bringing it over quickly when the time was right. This is my all-time favorite image of Johansson, he was a deceptively dangerous fighter and this photo really captures it.
In May 1957, Ingemar Johansson knocked out Henry Cooper with a right hook to the chin in round five to defend his European heavyweight title. This was a good win for Johansson, Cooper was a blood-and-guts warrior who had a brutal left hook aptly named "Enry's 'Ammer."
Ingemar Johansson vs Joe Erskine on February 21st, 1958.
Credit: Associated Press
EBU (European) Heavyweight Title "Ingemar Johansson, Sweden's undefeated European heavyweight champion, Friday night ruined Joe Erskine's hopes for a world title fight by scoring a 13th round TKO over the bleeding Welshman. Erskine's seconds tossed in the towel at the end of the 13th round of the scheduled 15 round title contest after the Swede had piled up a huge lead. Johansson had Erskine in dire straits in the 11th, 12th and 13th rounds. He relentlessly pressed his shorter rival to the ropes and pounded him with both hands."
Ingemar Johansson's knockout of Eddie Machen on September 14th, 1958, is one of the most frightening knockouts ever witnessed in a boxing ring. Eddie Machen was a good technical fighter and notoriously difficult, a handful for anyone, I enjoy watching Eddie Machen and he's lucky to have survived this fight. Johansson dominated from the start knocking Machen down three times and then out in the very first round. The refereeing in this fight was awful, the fight should have been stopped after the second knockdown but Machen was allowed to continue. Obviously still hurt from the second knockdown, Machen was backed into the corner and Johansson opened up on him like a machine gun, I don't know how many unanswered shots to the head he hit Machen with but it was a lot and Machen slid to the canvas and hit the ropes on the way down. It was a particularly disturbing knockout that reminds me of the Gerry Cooney knockout of Ken Norton. The photo on the very bottom is Machen afterwards.
On June 26, 1959, at Yankee Stadium in New York, world heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson defended his title against Ingemar Johansson. Johansson staggered Patterson and knocked him down seven times in the third round before the fight was stopped. Ingemar Johansson had reached the top of the mountain in boxing, he was now world heavyweight champion.
Ingemar Johansson holding the New York Daily News the morning after winning the world heavyweight title, the headline reads, "INGO'S RIGHT! His Swedish punch floors Floyd 7 times to win heavyweight crown."
Ingemar Johansson pictured in the early 1950s before he turned pro, I can't get over how broad his shoulders are, he was like a tree trunk from the waist up, not hard to see how he generated his brutal punching power.
Ingemar Johansson had a brutal series of fights, I'll talk about the other two fights which Patterson won when I profile Patterson later in the thread, don't want to rehash the same stuff if I can help it. Of the 31 men who have laid claim to the heavyweight championship of the world during the gloved era, Patterson and Johansson are generally regarded as two of the least able. But the unique chemistry of their combined flaws and strengths produced one of the most exciting rivalries in the history of boxing's glamour division.
Their protracted war was waged over a period of two years, in three pitched battles for the heavyweight title that consumed a total of only 14 rounds. All three fights ended in a knockout, with Johansson winning the first and Patterson the victor in the second and the third. Between them they made 12 trips to the canvas. And each fight was better than the one preceding it.
This is a program from the fight that Ingemar Johansson became world heavyweight champion, it's one of my favorites, I love the image of the old-timers Tom Cribb and Tom Molineaux on the front, two bad a$$ bare knucklers from the 1800s. Tom Molineaux was born into slavery in Virginia in 1784, he fought his way to freedom.
After becoming world heavyweight champion, Ingemar Johansson got all kinds of endorsement deals, he plugged everything from cars, razor blades, hair tonic, becoming the heavyweight champ will catapult you into superstardom.
Ingemar Johansson also appeared in some roles in the movies and television, he played a marine in the Korean War film "All the Young Men" in 1960 and also started in the 1960 Swedish spy film "48 Hours To Live."
After Ingemar Johansson lost the world heavyweight title to Floyd Patterson, he fought a few more times and called it a day. On February 9th, 1962, Ingo took on the Jamaican Joe Bygraves again and stopped him in seven rounds.
Credit: Associated Press
"Ingemar Johansson toyed with Joe Bygraves of Jamaica before a sellout crowd of 6,200 at the Maesshallen Stadium Friday night. Irish referee Andy Smythe stopped the fight at 2:08 of the 7th round. At that point Bygraves, who had taken a four count in the 2nd round from a short right from Johansson, was almost out on his feet. His left eyebrow gushed blood from a barrage of punches taken in the 6th round. Midway through the 7th round Bygraves dropped his hands in a neutral corner and referee Andy smythe had no alternative but to stop the fight."
Post fight comments
"I didn't want to rush in and throw caution to the wind after that 2nd round knockdown. I wanted to make sure of winning. So I held off, pushed out those long lefts and softened up Bygraves. My right? It was there if I would have needed it, but I didn't." - Ingemar Johansson
"If Ingo wins back the European title, then he will strike for Sonny Liston - and a Johansson-Liston fight in the open air in Goteborg would pull in a crowd of 60,000." -Edwin Ahlquist, Johansson's adviser
On April 15th, 1962, Johansson fought Dutch heavyweight Wim Snoek, Snoek put up a good effort but Johansson got him with "The Hammer of Thor."
Wim Snoek, the brave Dutch heavyweight who also ran a popular bar in Amsterdam, shocked the Stockholm crowd by knocking down former World heavyweight champion Ingemar Johansson with a left hook in the first round. Johansson was groggy as he rose, that's not in dispute, but many felt the count was a very long one. Snoek rushed in with more hooks, but Johansson was now dancing away reducing the effect of Snoek's punches. Johansson had a small cut on his forehead as he sat down for the rest after the first round.
When Johansson got out to round 2, he looked completely recovered. With ease he blocked Snoek's predictable blows. Then in the 5th the famed right hand from Ingo dropped Snoek, and the Dutchman failed to beat the count.
The always talkative Snoek as usual brought his case to the press: The count over Johansson was a long one, he maintained. " Had I been permitted to box on, I'm sure I could have finished him off, " he told reporters. ( Boxing News, April 20, 1962 ).
In regards to the 1st round knockdown, the UPI wrote:
"Johansson gained a few seconds respite when Swedish referee Bert Loewendahl went to great pains to wipe Ingo's gloves before letting the bout resume."
Snoek was actually down twice in the 5th round, having been dropped for the count of '9' earlier in the 5th before Johansson put him away for the full count at 1:15 of the round.
Post-fight comments
"In the first round, Loewendahl was slow in counting and even steadied Johansson while he was still dizzy from my blow. And got another 8 or 9 seconds from the referee, who certainly took time wiping his gloves." -Wim Snoek
"Of course the referee had to wipe Ingo's gloves. Otherwise, there is always a risk of blindness, and we can't risk anything considering what has happened in boxing recently." -Edwin Ahlquist, Johansson's manager
On June 17th, 1962, Ingemar Johansson stopped England's Dick Richardson in eight rounds to become a two-time European heavyweight champion. Once again, "The Hammer of Thor" struck down.
Credit: Associated Press
Ingemar Johansson of Sweden crashed two terrific rights onto the jaw of Welshman Dick Richardson and won the EBU heavyweight championship in the 8th round before 55,000 hysterical fans here Sunday night. With blood streaming from a cut in the corner of his left eye, Johansson sent Richardson slumping helplessly to the canvas for a count of eight. The big Welshman rose groggily to his feet and Johansson stormed in with another pulverizing right which dropped Richardson like a stone. The Welshman rolled over onto his back, out cold. The time was 2:16 of the 8th round in the scheduled 15 rounder."
The final fight of Ingemar Johansson's career was against Brian London, a dull, often clumsy 12-round heavyweight bout on April 21, 1963, in Stockholm, where Johansson won a points decision despite being knocked down in the final seconds by London, marking Johansson's final professional fight. The fight was characterized by clinching and slow action, with Johansson relying on his jab, while London, a former British champion, finally unleashed his offense too late. Ingemar Johansson would retire after this fight, I think he'd had enough and he knew his best days were behind him.
Credit: Associated Press
The 12 round bout, billed as another step in Ingemar Johansson's march to a return shot at the heavyweight title, ended with Johansson staggering to his feet, his eyes glassy and his arms hanging at his side. Johansson, 200, apparently had the better of the dull fight until the final minute. He concentrated on his left jab to pile up points, and never landed his famous right hand. Brian London, 206, carried the fight but he could not land a solid punch until the final seconds when he stunned Johansson with a left and crashed him to the canvas with the right. The count had reached four and Johansson had just lurched to his feet when the bell rang. Referee Andrew Smythe of Ireland, the sole judge, awarded the fight to Johansson."
Ingemar Johansson retired from boxing in 1963 after the tough win against Brian London, allowing him to pursue business ventures and a comfortable life. Johansson saw the writing on the wall and knew it was time to call it quits, he retired with a record of 26-2 (17 KO) and had been world heavyweight champion, in fact, Sweden's first ever world champion. He is currently inducted in the International Boxing Hall of Fame, not too shabby.
Final comments on Ingemar Johansson. I'm fascinated by him, I've always been fascinated by hard punchers. But it's his deception that really gets me, he was deceptively clever, he jabbed you into boredom until he saw the opening and let that right hand go, he knew he had thunder in that hand.
A few of my favorite Ingemar Johansson cards. This is the 1962 Kalendarium-Bild Film Stars, sick image of Johansson punching through a brick wall his right hand which was aptly named "The Hammer of Thor" and "Ingo's Bingo."
Comments
Johnny Nelson, the former WBO cruiserweight champion of the world from 1999-2006, who still remains the longest reigning cruiserweight champ at 6 years, 5 months & 26 days.
“A loss is as important as a win, as long as you learn from it and don’t let it break you. Ignore the negatives and the naysayers, because they don’t see what you see.”
Al Hostak, "The Savage Slav", two-time world middleweight champion, Hostak was a devastating puncher whose career was hampered by recurring hand injuries. Al Hostak was nicknamed "The Savage Slav" due to his Eastern European heritage (Czech parents) and his incredibly aggressive, high-impact fighting style, which featured tremendous knockout power. He was known as a "hard-nosed" fighter with a reputation for being a destructive, punch-first middleweight who thrived on close-range action. He was ranked among The Ring magazine's 100 greatest punchers of all time (2003) and secured 41 of his 64 professional wins by knockout. Born to Czech immigrant parents in Minneapolis and raised in Seattle, his heritage earned him the "Slav" part of the moniker. He gained fame for a 1938 first-round knockout of Freddie Steele, and a trilogy of fights against fellow boxing Hall of Famer Tony Zale.
Kids teased him because he stuttered; he learned to fight
Mon, 09/09/2019
By: Ken Robinson
The first round bell rang across Civic Stadium at 9:30 p.m. on a warm July 26, 1938 evening.
Not all of the 35,000 people who witnessed the fight in Seattle paid the $5.75 ticket price. National Guard troops with sticks surrounded the fenced field to keep freeloaders out.
The match was between 25-year-old World Middleweight Champion Freddie Steele, who held the title since 1936, and Al Hostak, a 22-year old brawler from Georgetown.
Hostak had been a skinny kid with a stammer. Kids teased him. They didn’t know they were picking on The Savage Slav.
In that tough part of South Seattle, Hostak had to learn to defend himself. At fourteen, a man saw Hostak punching a gunnysack dummy and asked him if he wanted to make a little money fighting.
He earned $1.50 for his first fight in what was then called a ‘smoker’, an amateur bout that was more sparring than an attempt to beat an opponent to the mat.
By the time he was 16, he was fighting in local smokers and caught the eye of Eddie Marino, a trainer. Hostak had not developed a style. Marino gave him some tips and got him his first pro fight in 1932. He fought Jimmy smith and knocked Smith out in the third round on May 20. A month later, he knocked out Harry Wharton and a month after that, he KO’d Al Brown in the first round.
The Seattle Daily Times wrote that Hostak “remains undefeated” after 15 fights.
He was living at home with his parents. He delivered newspapers to earn money, He dropped out of Cleveland high school in his junior year to make money fighting and to begin making his living as a boxer.
Hostak was fighting on the undercard of a talented Tacoma fighter name Freddie Steele. Hostak’s promoter would bring in better fighters, like Young Terry and Eddie “Babe” Risko. Hostak knocked out both of them in Seattle bouts.
He beat two more guys the Spring of 1937. His promoter arranged a match with Freddie Steele. All the big money was on Steele to clobber the Savage Slav.
Phil Hostak, Al Hostak’s son, said “There were mobsters there” to see the fight in the Civic Stadium in Seattle. According to an online citation “Civic Stadium's importance as a boxing venue coincided with the legalization of boxing in Washington on June 8, 1933, and the concurrent rise of Seattle's greatest draw Freddie Steele and local promoter Nate Druxman. Steele would win the World Middleweight title over Eddie (Babe) Risko in the stadium on July 11, 1936.
Then came Tuesday night, July 26, 1938
Champion boxer Jack Dempsey was the referee.
Freddie Steele had the height and weight advantage over Hostak. And he had 100 more bouts in the ring and a vaunted left hook. All the big money was on Steele to clobber the Savage Slav.
Phil Hostak told the story: The fight was the National Boxing Association World Middleweight Title. The crowd saw Steele knocked down four times. He was counted out by referee Dempsey. Some ringside observers accused Steele of coming out against Hostak with his hands down., thus getting KO’d in the first round. But Steele had been hampered by a cracked breastbone, which prevented him from lifting his gloves high to where they belong—according to his chief sparring partner, Davey Ward.
Steele was knocked out at 1:43 in the first round and Hostak took the title.
This win set in motion Hostak’s record of “fighting name guys”, Phil Hostak said.
When he wasn’t fighting, Al Hostak was dating the daughter of Seattle Post-Intelligencer sportswriter Royal Brougham. According to son Phil, Brougham was not kind to Hostak in his reporting.
The center of the boxing world then was in New York. Phil said New York did not recognize the title wins until Jack Dempsey went to his defense.
In November, 1938, Hostak broke his hands in a fight in Seattle “against a hard-headed Jew named Solly Krieger.” He fought Krieger again the following summer and won on a TKO. The referee was James J. Braddock, would heavyweight campion from 1935 to 1937 and later known as the Cinderella Man. About 23,000 people filled Civic Stadium in Seattle for the title fight. Braddock stopped the fight after Krieger had been floored four times. “It was the first time Krieger had actually been knocked out, although previously technically kayoed on cut eyes and such,” according to the Tacoma News-Tribune.
Hostak fought nine more times until 1941, including three bouts with Tony Zale, losing twice and knocking him out in their last bout.
Then Hostak faced a tough young guy from White Center name Harry “Kid” Matthews. Matthews was tall, handsome and muscular. He looked like a fighter. “
A left hook to the chin in the 3rd round caused Matthews’ knee to briefly touch the canvas. In the ninth, Hostak hurt Matthews with a flurry, forcing him to sit on the second rope briefly. Hostak appeared to have lost in the middle rounds to Matthews, who used his left hand, and a good body attack to win the decision,” according to the Seattle P-I.
He fought him twice and lost Decision and Majority Decision both times.
Fourteen more fights followed, from Texas to Chicago. Hostak won most on knockouts, including his final fight in 1949 against Jack Snapp, who he beat in the ninth round.
His record in the ring includes 63 professional wins, 42 knockouts, and 21 decisions for a total of 84 fights.
After retiring, he owned a couple of taverns, then a gas station, and became the bartender at the Epicure Restaurant in White Center. He also became a King County Deputy Sheriff.
Al Hostak was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997.
Al Hostak is actually the inspiration for Southpaw blend coffee made by Fulcrum Coffee out of Seattle. This is one of those fascinating stories that I happened to run across.
Al Hostak
Our Inspiration for the Southpaw Blend
The Southpaw Blend is a medium roasted coffee that incorporates notes of caramel, chocolate, and citrus. This blend was one of the first blends created by the Silver Cup roasters. After many different renditions and alternative mixes of beans, Southpaw is perfected with a combination of beans from Colombia, Central America, South America, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific. At Fulcrum we are all about sharing stories that allow our customers and readers to discover and learn something new, like our roasters did with this blend. Read our Southpaw Blend inspired story below, a tale about a Seattle figure that truly changed the game.
Nothing Worth Having Comes Without a Fight
There are no boxing stories without lessons learned the hard way. You can't celebrate the Northwest tenacity that rebuilt an entire city after a devastating fire or the righteous indignation that sparked the Pike Place Market, without a nod toward the hard, dirty (and sometimes bloody) fight. Nothing worth having comes easy, after all.
The story of Al Hostak is as Seattle as a story as they come, in that way. He came to town a stranger, the young son of Czech immigrants who settled in South Seattle. The 1920s brought economic highs and violent lows to Seattle, which could be a hard place to live. Al Hostak, a little boy with a stutter, seemed like easy pickings for rough kids looking for a victim. He was not. From the start, he proved as impossible to knock down as the city itself. He also found he had quite the knack for knocking down would-be bullies. At 16, he dropped out of school to become a boxer.
Hostak was a natural. He could take a punch, and he could throw them faster and harder than just about everyone who he came up against. Between bouts, he worked as a sparring partner for middleweight champ Freddie Steele, the "Tacoma Assassin". Steele had "one of the finest left hands in the game" and a career almost unmarred by loss. It's easy to imagine the pair becoming friends. The kind of friends who could punch each other in the face and then go out for a pint.
When Hostak, a few short years later, took that middleweight title off of Steele in front of a hometown crowd of over 30,000, it more or less ended the Tacoma Assassin's career in a single round. But the boxing world, like Seattle, is full of highs and lows and sometimes they come at you fast. Hostak lost his title in a brutal defeat the very same year. In that fight, he broke both of his hands early, but he stayed on his feet until the 14th round when he suffered the first knockout of his career. Freddie Steele was one of the first faces in the ring to console him.
Hostak fought for his honor, and for his country. He fought for a living and for the crazy joy of it. He fought when his hands were broken. Because nothing worth having comes without a fight.
Al Hostak punched so hard that he broke his hands in several different fights throughout his career, there were at least three separate bouts where hand injuries occurred:
Against Solly Krieger (November 1938): Hostak broke both hands early in the bout where he lost his title for the first time.
Against Tony Zale (January 1940): He broke two fingers of his left hand in the fifth round of a non-title fight, which he lost by unanimous decision.
Against Tony Zale again (July 1940): In their second meeting, where Hostak lost his middleweight crown officially, he reportedly broke both hands again.
Al Hostak won the NBA Middleweight title on July 26, 1938, against Freddie Steele. If you're not familiar with Freddie Steele, he's was a great middleweight that flies under the radar from some reason, he was nicknamed "The Tacoma Assassin", because he was just that. Steele could do it all, a great technician with that was more than capable of flattening you. Freddie Steele was hard to beat, only five men managed to defeat Steele, he finished his career with a record of 125-5 (60 KO).
Wayback Machine: Freddie Steele vs. Al Hostak
By: David Eskenazi
Event ticket for the Freddie Steele vs. Al Hostak middleweight title match on July 26, 1938 / David Eskenazi Collection
Boxing locally and nationally is rarely on the mainstream radar anymore. But in Seattle’s less dilettante days, thanks to colorful — and creative — boxing promoters such as Nate Druxman, Jack Hurley and George Chemeres, there were a good number of nationally-ranked pugilists, including Olympic champs, who brought excitement and big names to town.
Of the many championship fights held in Seattle, including the Aug. 12, 1957, world heavyweight title extravaganza between Pete Rademacher and Floyd Patterson at Sicks’ Stadium, none captivated the fancy of local pugilism enthusiasts more than the National Boxing Association world middleweight title bout July 26, 1938 at Civic Stadium (located at 3rd and Mercer) between a pair of locals, Seattle’s Al Hostak, the “Savage Slav”, and Freddie Steele, the “Tacoma Assassin”.
Don King had nothing on Nate Druxman. The cover design of the official program for the Steele vs. Hostak match was undoubtedly influenced by promoter Druxman, the only plausible explanation for his visage appearing twice as large as the fighters themselves / David Eskenazi Collection
Boxing fans snarfed up more than 30,000 tickets to the fight in a matter of hours. A Seattle “betting commissioner” told The Seattle Times in its July 26, 1938 edition that at least $25,000 had been wagered in downtown cardrooms — and probably a lot more than that, an incredible sum back in the day. The raging interest over the Steele-Hostak matchup meant that Steele, as defending champion, would receive a guaranteed $30,000, while Hostak, as challenger, would collect $8,462.64, or 12 1/2 percent of the purse.
Born in Seattle (1912) but reared in Tacoma (attended Bellarmine High), the 5-foot-10, 159-pound Steele had played baseball, basketball, soccer and table tennis as a youth. Steele won his first amateur bout in 1926 and did not lose until his 47th fight, to Tony Portillo Dec. 30, 1930. He made his professional boxing debut July 7, 1932, won the Pacific Northwest welterweight title in 1933, and became NBA world middleweight champion Feb. 19, 1937, by scoring a unanimous, 15-round decision over Babe Risko at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Born in Minneapolis to Czech immigrants, the 6-foot, 156-pound Hostak, a Minneapolis native, grew up a tough kid in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood and became attracted to boxing when he was forced to defend himself against schoolmates who made fun of his stuttering.
Back of the ticket stub for the Steele vs. Hostak match, with Jack Dempsey’s autograph in pencil / David Eskenazi Collection
Nate Druxman, once an amateur baseball player, a not-so-successful boxer, and a man who sold cigars, jewelry, real estate and toiled in Seattle shipyards, had started promoting local boxing shows at the Seattle Elks Club at Fourth Avenue and Spring Street in August, 1914. A man of considerable ego, Druxman talked former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey in August of 1931 into boxing three exhibition bouts with Denny Lenhart, a Portland pug, that filled Civic Arena. Two years later, on July 11, 1933, Druxman put together the first officially sanctioned world title fight in Seattle, a pairing of Freddie Miller and Abie Israel for the NBA featherweight title. Five years after that, Druxman brought Steele and Hostak together for a Civic Stadium showdown that has since gone down as one of the major spectacles in Seattle sports history.
Steele entered the ring with more than 120 official victories and only four losses in his portfolio, and installed as a slight favorite. He also entered as a fighter compromised by the lingering effects of a broken breastbone he had suffered in a loss to Freddie Apostoli seven months earlier (Jan. 7, 1938, at Madison Square Garden), and injuries he had received in a serious traffic accident (crashed into a stalled vehicle on the Seattle-Tacoma highway near the Fife junction).
Most experts figured that the fight would go the 15-round distance, and they figured wrong. The ballyhoo ended in a blink.
Al Hostak loosens up for his July, 1940 fight with Tony Zale / David Eskenazi Collection
Wrote The Seattle Times in its July 27, 1938 edition that included a dozen photos of the event: “Steele made two bad mistakes, one for lack of a smart battle campaign and the other because he was too groggy to know better. His first mistake was when he came out swinging to meet the Savage Slav. There’s no middleweight in the business qualified to slug it out with Hostak. He hits too hard and too fast.”
Hostak landed the first punch and then floored Steele three more times before delivering the winning blow, a short, perfectly timed left hook to the button that sent Steele toppling pie-eyed to the canvas. Referee Jack Dempsey counted the decisive 10 at 1:43 of the first round.
Steele’s crushing loss, coupled with his previous injuries, essentially ended his boxing career. He did not fight again for three years, losing by TKO to Jimmy Casino at Legion Stadium in Hollywood, CA., May 23, 1941. That turned out to be Steele’s last fight, and he concluded his career with 125 wins (60 knockouts), five losses and 11 draws.
Hostak fought for 11 more years, finishing with 63 wins (42 by knockout), nine losses and 12 draws. He lost the world middleweight title he took from Steele, by majority decision, to Solly Krieger Nov. 1, 1938, at Seattle’s Civic Auditorium, after breaking both of his hands early in the fight and suffering the first knockdown of his career in the 14th round (Steele was among the first in the ring to console Hostak after his loss).
Freddie Steele (left) is pictured with his boater-bearing manager Dave Miller. The photo is inscribed to Ned Edris, probably a business partner of Miller’s/ David Eskenazi Collection
Hostak snatched back his title from Krieger in a rematch June 27, 1939, with a fourth-round TKO at Civic Stadium in front of 23,000 fans. It marked the first time a fighter had recaptured the world middleweight title since Stanley Ketchel did it against Billy Papke in 1908.
Hostak successfully defended his title Dec. 12, 1939, against Erich Seelig with a first-round KO at the Cleveland, OH., Arena. Then things dove south.
Hostak lost by unanimous decision to Tony Zale in a non-title bout in Chicago Jan. 29, 1940, in which Hostak broke his hands. Hostak broke his hands again July 19, 1940, when he officially lost his middleweight crown to Zale at Civic Stadium. When Hostak and Zale met for a third time, May 28, 1941, Hostak knocked Zale down in the first round, but lost the fight in the second after Zale knocked him down eight times.
Hostak’s last fight came eight years later, Jan. 7, 1949, when he scored a ninth-round knockout of Jack Snapp at Civic Auditorium.
Hostak entered the World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2003, Ring Magazine named him to its list of “The 100 Greatest Punchers of All Time.” “One of the greatest punchers I’ve ever seen,” said Dempsey, after the Steele-Hostak fight.
Menu cover from “Freddie Steele’s Restaurant” / David Eskenazi Collection
Steele, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1999, moved to the San Fernando Valley after his boxing days and had a career in the film industry from 1941-48. He served as a double for Errol Flynn in Gentleman Jim and had more significant roles in The Story of G.I. Joe (1944, with Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum), Black Angel (1946, with Dan Duryea and Peter Lorre) and Race Street (1948, with George Raft and William Bendix). After a decade in California, Steele returned to Washington state and, with wife Helen, operated “Freddie Steele’s Restaurant” in Westport, WA. They ran the establishment for two decades before illness forced his retirement. Steele died Aug. 24, 1984, in an Aberdeen nursing home from complications from a stroke. He is buried at Aberdeen’s Fern Hill Cemetery.
Hostak did a little bit of everything following his boxing career. He held jobs as a tavern owner, bartender, King County jail guard and security guard at Longacres Race Track. A White Center resident for many years, Hostak spent much of his leisure time haunting local flea markets, collecting musical tapes. He died Aug. 13, 2006, at Evergreen Hospice in Kirkland, WA., from complications of a stroke that he suffered on Aug. 2, 2006.
Photos from the Hostak-Steele fight.
Al Hostak floors Tony Zale in their first fight.
The only known fight film of Al Hostak is a brief video on YouTube of their first fight, though the quality of the video isn't good. Hostak and Zale went to war three times between 1940 and 41, Zale won all three fights, but to be fair, Hostak broke his hands in two of those fights. Still, Tony Zale was one of the toughest SOB's to ever lace em' up, his recuperative powers were legendary.
Al Hostak's brutal punching power on display, not sure who his opponent is in this photo.
1948 Leaf Boxing Al Hostak. This is my favorite Al Hostak card.
Talk about great boxing photos. Al Hostak holding up one of the most devastating weapons in boxing history. This photo is a masterpiece of photography, the lighting, the faces of the onlookers.
Al Hostak takes a break from training to pose for the camera.
Al Hostak featured on an exhibit card.
Al Hostak posing in the corner.
Al Hostak in his later years.
Al Hostak on the cover of The Ring magazine after winning the NBA middleweight title.
Al Hostak, aka "The Savage Slav", one of the coolest nicknames in boxing history.
Music break.
''As an 18-year-old near unknown amateur boxer, I was the centre of a storm of critical abuse probably unsurpassed in boxing history. I was a national disgrace. I was branded a coward.
I was led, disgraced, from the ring where I had been boxing an American in the Olympic final. They had disquaIified me 'for failing to show fight' after a round in which neither of us had attempted a blow.
Police escorted me through the hall, in the tumult of booing, whistling, cat-callers. An old man jumped at me, shaking his clenched fist in my face and shouting: 'You wouIdn't dare to fight me, you coward!'
They withheld my finalist's silver medal; on the victory dais my place was vacant; The Swedish fIag remained unfurled at the presentations.
This is a seIection of the headlines which were to scream at me:
'Shame's Cup Filled to Overflowing... The Fleeing Rat... The Most Hare-Livered Boxing We Have Seen... The Cowardice Record of This Olympiad... The Most Cowardly Boxing I've Seen... I Was Ashamed To Be Swedish...'
It was a nightmare. This was the frenzied aftermath of what must have been the least fought, most talked about amateur fight in the world. No other OIympic finallist has occupied so much space in the papers or so small a place on the finalist's dais!
This is what they said: 'Johansson's professional career hopes are finished. He is kaput. A chapter written off in Swedish boxing.' Another paper, describing how I was 'whistled out and Iaughed out of the ring, slandered and insulted,' went on: 'The first thing one needs in boxing is guts. Cowardice and boxing don't go together. Johansson was a plain coward.'
The chairman of the Swedish Boxing Association weighed in: 'He brought shame to the Swedish name... we Swedes are ashamed of him and we crept out of the hall to avoid the scorn when the jury decided quite rightly not to let him have his silver medaI and not to hoist the Swedish flag at the prize-giving.'
In this solid body of abuse there came one little breach from a paper, which pointed out: 'It isn't one person's fauIt if two keep the peace.' But just to make clear what they thought of me anyway, they added: 'Both boxers should have been disqualified.'
I have never been a coward. I am not ashamed of anything I have done. I fought badly because I was not at my peak and for his part, my opponent [Ed] Sanders did just as badIy in that fight.
What is the truth about that fight that besmirched my name and character... and that Sweden said wouId ruin my career?
I admit that I couldn't have cared less about the Olympics. I was bored with amateur boxing and wanted to turn professionaI. I didn't want to fight in the Olympics. I wanted to do what I wanted to do - fight professionally.
I know it doesn't sound good, but I wanted to follow my own wishes. That goes for everything I do in boxing and Heaven save the boxers who don't think of themselves first. Nobody eIse does.
And then in the final I was matched against Sanders, like myseIf a counter boxer. One of us had to desert our style. I wasn't fit enough or sufficiently experienced to take him with attacks without jeopardising my defence. I planned to avoid attacking in the first two rounds and to save myself for the third so I could snatch a points advantage.
It is a sad memory and I haven't revived it to attack newspapers or stir up old wounds. The papers wrote as they thought and have since been shown that they were wrong. They had their say. I made my repIy later in another form - from the ring.''
Ingemar Johansson's right hand--dubbed "The Hammer of Thor"--was the most fearsome in boxing, and Johansson's three fights with Floyd Patterson rank among the sport's classic rivalries. Yet most fans know little about the Swedish playboy who won the world heavyweight championship with a shocking third round knockout of Patterson and held it for six days short of a year (1959-1960).
During his reign, the raffish "Ingo" hit fashionable nightspots on two continents, romanced Elizabeth Taylor, and refused to kowtow to the mobsters who controlled boxing.
British Vintage Boxing
THE HAMMER OF THOR - INGEMAR JOHANSSON
By Paul Zanon
Sweden’s world heavyweight champion was born in Gothenburg on 22 September 1932. Son to Jens August Johansson and Ebba Matilda Amalia Karlsson, Jens Ingemar Johansson cut his teeth at Redbergslid’s Boxing Club at the age of 14. The following year he left school, started working in the jewellery trade as a stone setter’s assistant, whilst also working as a porter on the harbour unloading goods from moored vessels for Edwin Ahlqvist, who would be pivotal in Johansson’s professional career at a later date.
At just 16 years of age he had already matured into a heavyweight boxer and between 1948-1952, he clocked up 61 victories in 71 amateur contests. Popular for his performance in the square ring, with his dimple chin and film star good looks, Johnasson also became a hit with the ladies. By 1949, at the age of 17 he had already fathered two children, however, he was in no position to raise them and was forced to put the kids up for adoption. The year after, aged 18 he married Barbara Abramson, but divorced shortly after the ink had dried on the marriage certificate. Within a matter of months he fathered his third child. Ingo’s reputation for being a ladies man certainly didn’t waiver and his stable of illegitimate children was up to five (from five different mothers), before his twentieth birthday. Despite meeting his future wife Birgit Lundgren in 1954, they didn’t marry until 1962. In the meantime, Ingo exercised his playboy lifestyle having a long list of affairs with some of the world’s most beautiful women, including Elizabeth Taylor.
Back to the boxing. On 3 March 1952, Johansson knocked out Gert Schyllert in the first round of the heavyweight final of the Swedish National Amateur Boxing Championships. In essence, this was his pass to the Olympics in Helsinki four months later.
It’s common knowledge that Johansson won silver at the 1952 Olympics, however, his route to gaining the medal was a strange one. After beating three Finns in the preliminary rounds (Horymir Netuka, Tomo Krizmanic and Iikka Koski), Johansson lost to American to Ed Sanders in the final after being disqualified for being too passive. Ingo claimed he was boxing to his corner’s instructions, staying on the back foot in order to make Sanders walk into counter shots, but the problem was that Sanders was also a counter puncher and the fight turned into a stinker. The officials didn’t buy Johansson’s story and despite Sanders being warned for the same tactics, he was declared the winner while Ingo was disqualified and had his medal withheld. Johansson had to wait 30 years before he was finally presented with the piece in 1982.
Finishing on such a deflated note made Johansson consider walking away from the sport for good, but thankfully, Edwin Ahlquist, who was better known for his prominence in construction and sports magazine publishing sectors, managed to convince Johansson to turn professional.
A few months after the Olympics, Johansson turned professional on 5 December 1952 at the age 20, taking on Frenchman Robert Masson in Ingo’s beloved hometown of Gothenburg. After four of eight scheduled rounds Johansson knocked out Masson, who was ranked in the top five French heavyweights at the time. Within three months, Johansson had a record of 3-0 and on 12 March 1953 challenged Danish born Erik Jensen for the Scandinavian heavyweight title in Copenhagen.
Despite his best efforts to stop Jensen, which included a knockdown, Johansson had to last the distance, due to breaking his right hand. Thankfully, he won a comfortable points decision over six rounds, which has to be one of the shortest round allocations for a professional national title fight.
Gothenburg’s favourite fighting son only competed twice more between 1953-54 due to military service in the Swedish Navy. When he jumped back in the ring in January 1955, he soon started to rack up victories and by 28 August 1955, Johansson was undefeated in 11 fights, landing him a fight with the former European heavyweight champion Hein Ten Hoff. Despite outweighing Johansson by almost 30lbs and having a three inch height advantage, Ingo knocked him out in precisely one minute of the opening round.
Six months later he beat tough Jamaican Joe Bygraves followed by Hans Friedrich seven weeks later. With an unbeaten record of 14-0, Johansson had earned himself the right to challenge the European Heavyweight champion, Franco Cavicchi. Having only ventured out of Sweden once as a professional, Johansson had to enter the lion’s den and challenge The Emilian Bull on 30 September 1956 at the Stadio Comunale, in Cavicchi’s hometown of Bologna.
The pair were well matched. They shared the same height, with Cavicchi weighing only 5lbs more, but looking like he was made of marble. After 12 hard fought rounds, Johansson knocked out the tough Italian in the thirteenth session and in doing so was crowned the new heavyweight king of Europe.
Johansson’s first defence of his newly acquired strap was against nonother than our very own Henry Cooper, on 19 May 1957, at the Johanneshov Ice Stadium, Stockholm. Despite a valiant attempt to gain his first piece of silverware, ‘Our Enry,’ was stopped in the fifth session bringing his record to 14-5. Who would have thought he would go on to win the Lonsdale belt outright three times over, in addition to the Commonwealth and European titles?
Ingo defended his European strap against Welshman Joe Erskine on 21 February 1958, but his big breakthrough which propelled him into world title contention came on 14 September 1958, when he took on Californian resident, Eddie Machen. At this point, the American was undefeated in 25 contests, boasting 24 wins including two victories against Joey Maxim and one draw against Zora Foley. Machen was odds on favourite to win, but Johansson had other ideas. In front of almost 54,000 fans (the largest spectator crowd in Sweden’s history at that point), Ingo knocked down Machen three times in the first round, knocking him out in two minutes 16 seconds. The Swede had earned himself the right to fight for the ultimate fistic crown.
On 26 June 1959, Johansson challenged the sweetheart of boxing, Floyd Patterson for his world heavyweight title. Ingo reportedly clawed in a very respectable $100,000 compared to $300,000 for the champ. Trained by Cus D’Amato, Patterson had beaten Archie Moore for the title in 1956 and had since defended the crown four times against the likes of Pete Rademacher and Brian London. As a relatively inexperienced fighter, Johansson was seen to be the next scalp on Patterson’s list, but the European fighter, similar to Max Schmeling precisely 21 years prior at the same venue, ventured to the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to cause an upset.
The sell-out event of just under 22,000 spectators attracted some of the biggest names including John Wayne and Bill Holden, who were sat ringside in crisp suits and fedora hats. Wayne was even involved with commentary at one point.
Standing roughly the same height, Johansson at 196lbs outweighed 5-1 favourite Patterson by 14lbs. As the pair entered the third round Ingo was 2-0 behind on two of the judges scorecards. That’s when The Hammer of Thor struck. Shortly into the round Johansson unleashed a left hook followed by a big right which floored Patterson. Despite making the count, he was on unsteady legs and when he got to his feet, Patterson turned away from Johansson looking to his corner. The moment he did, Johansson clubbed him with a left hook, sending the champ to the canvas once again. After a further five knockdowns, the contest was declared over. At precisely two minutes and three seconds of the third round, Sweden had its first world heavyweight world champion and Ingo rightly returned to Sweden to a hero’s welcome.
The rematch was a whole year later on 20 June 1960 at the Polo Grounds, New York. Patterson weighed in 8lbs heavier than the first fight and Johansson a couple of pounds less. Similar to the first encounter, Johansson was pawing with his jab as Patterson bobbed and weaved. Both fighters were looking to land their haymaker, but it was Patterson who achieved the goal first. Halfway through the fifth round Patterson leapt at Johansson with a clubbing left hook, which landed with devastating force on the Swede’s jaw. Ingo was out cold before he hit the canvas and as he lay there, his left foot started twitching uncontrollably. It took the Swede 15 minutes to fully regain his senses. Patterson in the meantime had just made history by being the first man to regain the world heavyweight title.
The rubber match happened on 13 March 1961 at the Convention Centre, Miami Beach. Johansson received a great deal of criticism for not looking in peak condition for the fight, showing more love to the contents of the kitchen than the discipline required in his training camp. He did however spar with an up and coming fighter by the name of Cassius Clay, albeit the 19 year old braggadocio was the one impressing the onlookers by all accounts.
Before the fight started, the ominous figure of Sonny Liston stepped into the ring and was introduced to the crowds as the leading heavyweight contender. With a beaming smile on his face he walked over to Patterson’s corner and wished him the best of luck. Next up was Max Schmeling who receive a mixed reception of applause and boos, followed by Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano. Interestingly, Marciano was ringside when Johansson won the title and believed he could beat Ingo. The Rock went into secret training but quickly realised he would not be able to regain his previous form and hung up the idea of coming out of retirement.
After exchanging jabs for about a minute, Johansson unloaded a lead right hand, also known as ‘Ingo’s Bingo,’ which floored Patterson. The champion was not dazed like the first fight and came back trading punches. However, after about 30 seconds he succumbed to a right left combination which sent him to the canvas again for the eight count. About 15 seconds later Patterson detonated his own straight right and reversed the script, putting Johansson on the seat of his pants. Not a bad opening round for those in attendance.
By round six, both fighters looked tired, with Patterson’s left eye nicely swollen. With about 30 seconds of the round to go, Patterson unloaded two clubbing right hooks to Johansson’s temple which rendered him incapable of beating the 10 count.
Patterson would go on to fight for a further 11 years, engaging with some of boxing’s most credible heavyweights of all time. Johansson on the other hand returned to Sweden for his last four fights, which in all fairness to him, were not walkovers. On 9 February 1962 Johansson stopped Joe Bygraves in seven rounds, followed two months later with a five round demolition of the Dutch heavyweight champion, Wim Snoek. Eight weeks later Ingo challenged European heavyweight champion Dick Richardson stopping the Brit in eight rounds making him a two-time European champion. Johansson’s swan song was against Brian London. Despite suffering a heavy knockdown in the dying seconds of the final round, Ingo was saved by the bell and very comfortably outpointed London over 12 rounds in Gothenburg.
Sonny Liston was now the reigning world heavyweight champion and Johansson was in line for a title shot. Whether it be the right hand from London which acted as the wakeup call or he had fallen out of love with the sport, Johansson, aged 30 years old, hung up the gloves and never looked back. In an 11 year career he only lost twice in 28 fights, gained Olympics plaudits as an amateur and is still to this day Sweden’s only ever heavyweight world boxing champion. Part of that reason is due to Sweden banning professional boxing on 1 January 1970, citing risk to life from incoming blows as their rationale. Pro fighters from Sweden, such as European heavyweight champion Anders Ecklund were consequently forced to fight abroad for their whole career. The ban was semi-lifted in 2006, but the pro game still has wide resistance in Sweden.
Despite punching holes in each other in the ring, Johansson and Patterson became lifelong friends, making regular visits to each other on both sides of the pond. They attended several boxing conventions together, co-signing memorabilia and fulfilling photo opportunities for fans.
Johansson invested his money wisely in a number of businesses and initially kept a finger in boxing circles, promoting shows in Sweden. Ironically, Sonny Liston featured on four of them between 1966-67.
Johansson’s relationship with his wife came to an end in the late 1960’s. He openly admitted to partying and struggling with fathering duties, so the separation came as no surprise. In search of warmer climes, Johansson moved to Florida in the early 1970’s and in 1979 met Swedish journalist, Edna Alsterlind who had been sent over to cover a feature on the champ. Enamoured by Alsterlind, who was 16 years his junior, Johansson married for the third and final time in 1980.
By 1980 Ingo’s waistline was around 300lbs. Incredibly, despite carrying a rather swollen frame, one of his big passions now was running marathons. In 1981, losing approximately 50lbs, Johansson ran the Stockholm and New York marathons, and by the mid 80’s had clocked up 10 races.
Towards the late 1980’s Johansson moved back to Sweden full time, living with wife Alsterlind in Stockholm. Sadly, Johansson started to display symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in the mid 90’s and in the coming few years started to deteriorate. In 2003 he was moved to a care home and passed away on 30 January 2009 at 76 years of age. Ray Patterson, attended the funeral because his brother Floyd had passed away in 2006, to the same virulent disease.
Johansson was named Ring Magazine’s fighter of the year in 1958 and 1959, in addition to Sport Illustrated Sportsman of the Year in 1959 and the Boxing Writers Association of America’s Fighter of the Year, also in 1959. In 2002 Ingo was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame and if you want to grab a glimpse of the champ now, a fitting bronze statue of him is on full display outside the Ullevi stadium, Gothenburg. To this day, he remains one of Sweden’s most influential sportspeople.
Let's take a look at Ingemar Johansson's style and his fights with Eddie Machen and Floyd Patterson.
Bad Left Hook
Savant Sundays: Ingemar Johansson
Swedish heavyweight great Ingemar Johansson is the subject of this week’s look back into boxing history.
Swedish heavyweight Ingemar Johnasson fought from 1953 to 1963, finishing his career with a 26-2 record, and only losing to one man, Floyd Patterson. 19 of his first 21 fights came in Scandinavia, with the others in Germany and Italy. Johansson dominated that regional scene before making his U.S. debut at Yankee Stadium, beating the legendary Patterson inside of just three rounds in 1959.
That victory earned Johansson the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year award, making him just the third international athlete to claim the distinction to that point. But Patterson avenged the loss a year later at the Polo Grounds in New York, and a Miami rubber match in 1961 also went Patterson’s way, both via knockout. Johnasson fought four more times after the Patterson trilogy before hanging up his gloves at age 30.
Dimensions and Style
Johansson is billed at 6’0”, and generally weighed in near the 200 lb mark, a build typical of his heavyweight era. An orthodox fighter, Johansson was great with the jab. He either kept his right hand locked and loaded at his chest, ready to deliver devastating follow-up shots, or shuffled his gloves by his jaw. He was a patient fighter who knew when to fire, and had textbook footwork and plenty of ring savvy. He’d alternate between a conventional and a wider stance.
There isn’t an abundance of Johansson fight footage, but let’s take a look through what is available in full form.
Ingemar Johansson vs Eddie Machen (1958)
Johannson must’ve circumambulated Machen at least 10 times before the stoppage of this fight at 2:16 of round one. His movement wasn’t poetic, but effective and consistent. He was very active with his jab, keeping Machen at bay. Machen tagged him upstairs with a right hook, but Johansson absorbed the contact well and came back fighting.
Johansson was a bit choppy with his steps before setting up a short right with yet another left jab that sent Machen to the canvas. Machen got back up, and they tangled up on a couple occasions, where Machen would pummel Johansson’s head to try and make up ground. A flurry of uppercuts and crosses against a defenseless Machen downed him for a second and third time, giving Johansson the victory.
Ingemar Johnasson vs Floyd Patterson (1959)
Patterson was getting low, bending forward to show Johansson a variety of looks while picking his shots sparingly. Johansson once again took the outside of the ring in this bout, and got busy with his jab, defending well against cross attempts from Patterson.
Most of Johansson’s jabs were not landing as the second round drew on. It seemed more as if he was trying to establish distance from Patterson and keep him from exploding upward the way he was famous for doing. Johansson let off an impressive series of 1-2 combinations, including an uppercut-straight right combo that were his first impactful shots to land in the round.
Johansson’s footwork and body positioning kept forcing Patterson to almost sidestep before lunging. It worked at the end of the second as he caught Johansson flush with a left hook to the face. A right cross followed a left, and Patterson didn’t know what had happened, except that he was on his back. When he rose, he was clearly discombobulated, walking away from Johansson. The Swede proceeded to finish the job with five more knockdowns, including a very dangerous shot to the back of the head, ending the night in under nine minutes.
Ingemar Johannson vs Floyd Patterson III (1961)
For the first time in heavyweight history, the mandatory eight count was instituted in this fight. This was crucial due to the amount of knockdowns. Johansson wasted no time utilizing his jab with the sole intent of leading it up with powerful rights – something he did not do as frequently in their first bout.
Johansson knocked Patterson down inside of two minutes with a spot-on straight right that followed after his jab. Throughout the fight, Johansson was in a very wide stance with great posture. A right cross and left uppercut sent Patterson spiraling again.
Patterson returned the favor with a phantom right hand on his back legs that put Johansson on his butt, in what was as action-packed a first round as can be. As the fight wore on and Patterson’s punch count increased, Johansson was not particularly adroit at matching his barrages or making him pay for mistakes.
Patterson lunged at Johansson with a snappy jab and two right hooks to the temple that sent Johansson to the canvas and the eight count got the victory over him.
Appraisal
Johansson’s jab was incredible, and not too many fighters can be a jab artist and consistently throw with as much verve as he could. He had a command of all of the fundamental.
Here’s where Johansson lacked: He was not a great counter-puncher. When a fighter brought the pain full fledge, it slowed him down. Also, Johansson – while capable of throwing a wider variety of punches – loved that jab so much that, like Antonio Cervantes, it was his main weapon for scoring points.
Heavyweights who throw every punch in the book like Patterson would likely give him problems in theoretical matchups. His head movement was very sound but not otherworldly. Nevertheless, Johansson did many things right, enough for his career to see him enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2002. His power was there, so was his footwork, and it’s apparent that his fundamentals were cultivated early in his boxing career.
Ingo is honestly one of my favorite fighters, he wasn't an all-time great but man, he could lower the boom on you with that right hand, appropriately deemed "The Hammer of Thor." It's fascinating, Ingo would often take his time with his opponent, lure him into a false sense of security, and then drop the hammer. His style was basically centered around landing that right hand and he was really good at hiding it and bringing it over quickly when the time was right. This is my all-time favorite image of Johansson, he was a deceptively dangerous fighter and this photo really captures it.
Ingemar Johansson knocks out the tough Italian Franco Cavicchi to capture the European heavyweight title in September of 1956.
In May 1957, Ingemar Johansson knocked out Henry Cooper with a right hook to the chin in round five to defend his European heavyweight title. This was a good win for Johansson, Cooper was a blood-and-guts warrior who had a brutal left hook aptly named "Enry's 'Ammer."
Ingemar Johansson vs Joe Erskine on February 21st, 1958.
Credit: Associated Press
EBU (European) Heavyweight Title "Ingemar Johansson, Sweden's undefeated European heavyweight champion, Friday night ruined Joe Erskine's hopes for a world title fight by scoring a 13th round TKO over the bleeding Welshman. Erskine's seconds tossed in the towel at the end of the 13th round of the scheduled 15 round title contest after the Swede had piled up a huge lead. Johansson had Erskine in dire straits in the 11th, 12th and 13th rounds. He relentlessly pressed his shorter rival to the ropes and pounded him with both hands."
Ingemar Johansson's knockout of Eddie Machen on September 14th, 1958, is one of the most frightening knockouts ever witnessed in a boxing ring. Eddie Machen was a good technical fighter and notoriously difficult, a handful for anyone, I enjoy watching Eddie Machen and he's lucky to have survived this fight. Johansson dominated from the start knocking Machen down three times and then out in the very first round. The refereeing in this fight was awful, the fight should have been stopped after the second knockdown but Machen was allowed to continue. Obviously still hurt from the second knockdown, Machen was backed into the corner and Johansson opened up on him like a machine gun, I don't know how many unanswered shots to the head he hit Machen with but it was a lot and Machen slid to the canvas and hit the ropes on the way down. It was a particularly disturbing knockout that reminds me of the Gerry Cooney knockout of Ken Norton. The photo on the very bottom is Machen afterwards.
The Johansson knockout of Eddie Machen.
On June 26, 1959, at Yankee Stadium in New York, world heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson defended his title against Ingemar Johansson. Johansson staggered Patterson and knocked him down seven times in the third round before the fight was stopped. Ingemar Johansson had reached the top of the mountain in boxing, he was now world heavyweight champion.
Ingemar Johansson holding the New York Daily News the morning after winning the world heavyweight title, the headline reads, "INGO'S RIGHT! His Swedish punch floors Floyd 7 times to win heavyweight crown."
One thing about Ingemar Johansson, his upper body was built for power, broad shoulders and neck, it's not hard to see why he punched so hard.
Ingemar Johansson on the cover of Sports Illustrated after winning the world heavyweight title.
Ingemar Johansson pictured in the early 1950s before he turned pro, I can't get over how broad his shoulders are, he was like a tree trunk from the waist up, not hard to see how he generated his brutal punching power.
Ingemar Johansson had a brutal series of fights, I'll talk about the other two fights which Patterson won when I profile Patterson later in the thread, don't want to rehash the same stuff if I can help it. Of the 31 men who have laid claim to the heavyweight championship of the world during the gloved era, Patterson and Johansson are generally regarded as two of the least able. But the unique chemistry of their combined flaws and strengths produced one of the most exciting rivalries in the history of boxing's glamour division.
Their protracted war was waged over a period of two years, in three pitched battles for the heavyweight title that consumed a total of only 14 rounds. All three fights ended in a knockout, with Johansson winning the first and Patterson the victor in the second and the third. Between them they made 12 trips to the canvas. And each fight was better than the one preceding it.
Ingemar Johansson wearing the richest prize in boxing, the world heavyweight title belt.
Ingo on the cover of The Ring magazine after winning the world heavyweight title.
This is a program from the fight that Ingemar Johansson became world heavyweight champion, it's one of my favorites, I love the image of the old-timers Tom Cribb and Tom Molineaux on the front, two bad a$$ bare knucklers from the 1800s. Tom Molineaux was born into slavery in Virginia in 1784, he fought his way to freedom.
After becoming world heavyweight champion, Ingemar Johansson got all kinds of endorsement deals, he plugged everything from cars, razor blades, hair tonic, becoming the heavyweight champ will catapult you into superstardom.
A Schick Razor blades advertisement featuring Ingemar Johansson.
Ingemar Johansson also appeared in some roles in the movies and television, he played a marine in the Korean War film "All the Young Men" in 1960 and also started in the 1960 Swedish spy film "48 Hours To Live."
After Ingemar Johansson lost the world heavyweight title to Floyd Patterson, he fought a few more times and called it a day. On February 9th, 1962, Ingo took on the Jamaican Joe Bygraves again and stopped him in seven rounds.
Credit: Associated Press
"Ingemar Johansson toyed with Joe Bygraves of Jamaica before a sellout crowd of 6,200 at the Maesshallen Stadium Friday night. Irish referee Andy Smythe stopped the fight at 2:08 of the 7th round. At that point Bygraves, who had taken a four count in the 2nd round from a short right from Johansson, was almost out on his feet. His left eyebrow gushed blood from a barrage of punches taken in the 6th round. Midway through the 7th round Bygraves dropped his hands in a neutral corner and referee Andy smythe had no alternative but to stop the fight."
Post fight comments
"I didn't want to rush in and throw caution to the wind after that 2nd round knockdown. I wanted to make sure of winning. So I held off, pushed out those long lefts and softened up Bygraves. My right? It was there if I would have needed it, but I didn't." - Ingemar Johansson
"If Ingo wins back the European title, then he will strike for Sonny Liston - and a Johansson-Liston fight in the open air in Goteborg would pull in a crowd of 60,000." -Edwin Ahlquist, Johansson's adviser
On April 15th, 1962, Johansson fought Dutch heavyweight Wim Snoek, Snoek put up a good effort but Johansson got him with "The Hammer of Thor."
Wim Snoek, the brave Dutch heavyweight who also ran a popular bar in Amsterdam, shocked the Stockholm crowd by knocking down former World heavyweight champion Ingemar Johansson with a left hook in the first round. Johansson was groggy as he rose, that's not in dispute, but many felt the count was a very long one. Snoek rushed in with more hooks, but Johansson was now dancing away reducing the effect of Snoek's punches. Johansson had a small cut on his forehead as he sat down for the rest after the first round.
When Johansson got out to round 2, he looked completely recovered. With ease he blocked Snoek's predictable blows. Then in the 5th the famed right hand from Ingo dropped Snoek, and the Dutchman failed to beat the count.
The always talkative Snoek as usual brought his case to the press: The count over Johansson was a long one, he maintained. " Had I been permitted to box on, I'm sure I could have finished him off, " he told reporters. ( Boxing News, April 20, 1962 ).
In regards to the 1st round knockdown, the UPI wrote:
"Johansson gained a few seconds respite when Swedish referee Bert Loewendahl went to great pains to wipe Ingo's gloves before letting the bout resume."
Snoek was actually down twice in the 5th round, having been dropped for the count of '9' earlier in the 5th before Johansson put him away for the full count at 1:15 of the round.
Post-fight comments
"In the first round, Loewendahl was slow in counting and even steadied Johansson while he was still dizzy from my blow. And got another 8 or 9 seconds from the referee, who certainly took time wiping his gloves." -Wim Snoek
"Of course the referee had to wipe Ingo's gloves. Otherwise, there is always a risk of blindness, and we can't risk anything considering what has happened in boxing recently." -Edwin Ahlquist, Johansson's manager
On June 17th, 1962, Ingemar Johansson stopped England's Dick Richardson in eight rounds to become a two-time European heavyweight champion. Once again, "The Hammer of Thor" struck down.
Credit: Associated Press
Ingemar Johansson of Sweden crashed two terrific rights onto the jaw of Welshman Dick Richardson and won the EBU heavyweight championship in the 8th round before 55,000 hysterical fans here Sunday night. With blood streaming from a cut in the corner of his left eye, Johansson sent Richardson slumping helplessly to the canvas for a count of eight. The big Welshman rose groggily to his feet and Johansson stormed in with another pulverizing right which dropped Richardson like a stone. The Welshman rolled over onto his back, out cold. The time was 2:16 of the 8th round in the scheduled 15 rounder."
The final fight of Ingemar Johansson's career was against Brian London, a dull, often clumsy 12-round heavyweight bout on April 21, 1963, in Stockholm, where Johansson won a points decision despite being knocked down in the final seconds by London, marking Johansson's final professional fight. The fight was characterized by clinching and slow action, with Johansson relying on his jab, while London, a former British champion, finally unleashed his offense too late. Ingemar Johansson would retire after this fight, I think he'd had enough and he knew his best days were behind him.
Credit: Associated Press
The 12 round bout, billed as another step in Ingemar Johansson's march to a return shot at the heavyweight title, ended with Johansson staggering to his feet, his eyes glassy and his arms hanging at his side. Johansson, 200, apparently had the better of the dull fight until the final minute. He concentrated on his left jab to pile up points, and never landed his famous right hand. Brian London, 206, carried the fight but he could not land a solid punch until the final seconds when he stunned Johansson with a left and crashed him to the canvas with the right. The count had reached four and Johansson had just lurched to his feet when the bell rang. Referee Andrew Smythe of Ireland, the sole judge, awarded the fight to Johansson."
Ingemar Johansson retired from boxing in 1963 after the tough win against Brian London, allowing him to pursue business ventures and a comfortable life. Johansson saw the writing on the wall and knew it was time to call it quits, he retired with a record of 26-2 (17 KO) and had been world heavyweight champion, in fact, Sweden's first ever world champion. He is currently inducted in the International Boxing Hall of Fame, not too shabby.
Final comments on Ingemar Johansson. I'm fascinated by him, I've always been fascinated by hard punchers. But it's his deception that really gets me, he was deceptively clever, he jabbed you into boredom until he saw the opening and let that right hand go, he knew he had thunder in that hand.
Let's do some photos of Ingo. Nice training sequence.
Nice shot from LIFE magazine.
A few of my favorite Ingemar Johansson cards. This is the 1962 Kalendarium-Bild Film Stars, sick image of Johansson punching through a brick wall his right hand which was aptly named "The Hammer of Thor" and "Ingo's Bingo."
This is the photo that was used for the 2011 Ringside Boxing Round Two Mecca Turkey Red Ingemar Johansson card, cool stuff.