Floyd Patterson, 71; despite size and quiet demeanor, a heavyweight champ

LOS ANGELES -- Floyd Patterson, an undersized boxer who became the youngest heavyweight champion in 1956 and the first to regain the heavyweight title after losing it, died yesterday at his home in New Paltz, N.Y. He was 71.

Mr. Patterson had Alzheimer's disease for about eight years and prostate cancer, nephew Sherman Patterson said.

Fighting out of a defensive crouch from behind his gloves -- it came to be known as Patterson's peekaboo style -- Mr. Patterson was a devastating puncher in some fights, a human punching bag in others, almost always a mystery as a boxer.

When he knocked out Ingemar Johansson in 1960 after losing the title to the Swede the previous year, Mr. Patterson was hailed as a boxing superstar. Two years later, after he had been knocked out in the first round by Sonny Liston, he was voted ''flop of the year."

Wrote the late Jim Murray in the Los Angeles Times: ''An intense, gentle, tormented young man, perpetually sad, perpetually bedeviled by nameless anxieties, Floyd Patterson is pathetically miscast as a pugilist."

New York columnist Red Smith characterized him as ''a man of peace whose life has been devoted to beating men with his fists."

After knocking out Johansson in 1960, Mr. Patterson confessed that he didn't like what that fight had done to him.

''I was so filled with hate," he said. ''I wouldn't ever want to be like that again."

And yet, he took his ring failures hard. After the first-round knockout by Liston at Comiskey Park in Chicago, a shamed Mr. Patterson sneaked out of the ballpark -- in fact, clear out of town -- wearing dark glasses and a false beard. Had he not been arrested for speeding two states away, the disguise probably would have worked.

Mr. Patterson had knocked out an aging Archie Moore, the light-heavyweight champion, for the vacant heavyweight title in 1956, at 21 becoming the youngest heavyweight champion.

Had it not been for Johansson, though, Mr. Patterson's career, and championship, might have passed with little notice. After winning the title, he defended it successfully, knocking out light-hitting Tommy (Hurricane) Jackson and Olympic heavyweight champion Pete Rademacher, then stopping Roy Harris, a journeyman whose main claim to fame was that he hailed from Cut 'n' Shoot, Texas, and knocking out Englishman Brian London in 11 rounds.

Johansson, who was accompanied almost everywhere he went by an entourage that included his fiancee, Birgit Lundgren, was ridiculed by some for what appeared to be lax training practices and called a coward by others for having backed out of an Olympic championship bout several years earlier.

Even so, the unbeaten European champion loomed as Mr. Patterson's first big test when they fought in 1959 at Yankee Stadium in New York.

As it turned out, Johansson, was far too big a test. After two rounds of sparring, the Swede clocked Mr. Patterson in the third with a left to the head and a right to the jaw, dropping him for a nine count. Six more times in the round, the relentless Johansson floored Mr. Patterson. There were 58 seconds left when the fight was stopped.

A year later, this time at the Polo Grounds in New York, a newly dedicated Mr. Patterson showed up. He took charge immediately, escaped potential trouble in the second, then gave Johansson a fearful beating in the fifth.

After working on the Swede's closing left eye, and connecting with body blows as well, Mr. Patterson floored him with a left hook, a groggy Johansson taking a nine count.

Punching at will, Mr. Patterson unleashed a thunderous left hook that ended Johansson's heavyweight reign six days short of a year.

The punch knocked Johansson flat on his back, where he lay, out cold.They fought again a year later in Miami. Johansson decked Mr. Patterson twice in the first round, then was knocked out in the sixth by Mr. Patterson's short overhand right to the head.

Mr. Patterson knocked out Tom McNeeley later that year in another defense of the title, then ran afoul of Liston, who followed up his 1962 first-round knockout with another a year later. Mr. Patterson tried twice more to win the title a third time but was battered for 12 rounds by a taunting Muhammad Ali before their 1965 fight was stopped -- Mr. Patterson had trained for it in a renovated chicken coop. Then he lost a disputed 15-round decision to World Boxing Association champion Jimmy Ellis in 1968.

Life in the Patterson household was not easy. Floyd Patterson was born in Waco, N.C., on Jan. 4, 1935, one of 11 children. The family moved to Brooklyn soon afterward. His father, Thomas, worked but there was never enough money and Floyd was always deeply conscious of his ragged clothes and the family's frequent moves.

He took to skipping school and committing petty thefts, and finally was sent to a school for delinquents, where he was urged to take up boxing.

''If it wasn't for boxing, I would probably be behind bars or dead," he said in a 1998 interview.

He won the Olympic gold medal in the 165-pound division at the 1952 Helsinki Games, then turned pro under the tutelage of the legendary Cus D'Amato, who later had another heavyweight champion in Mike Tyson.

Overall, Mr. Patterson finished 55-8-1 with 40 knockouts. He was knocked out five times and knocked down a total of at least 15 times.

''They said I was the fighter who got knocked down the most, but I also got up the most," Mr. Patterson once said.

He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991.

After retiring in 1972, Mr. Patterson remained close to the sport. He served twice as chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission.

Mr. Patterson and his second wife, Janet, lived on a farm near New Paltz, N.Y. After leaving the athletic commission, Mr. Patterson counseled troubled children for the New York State Office of Children and Family Services.

He also adopted Tracy Harris two years after the 11-year-old boy began hanging around the gym at Patterson's home. In 1992, Tracy Harris Patterson, with his father's help, won the WBC super bantamweight championship.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this obituary.