Called a “good guy in the bad world of boxing” by the New York Times, heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson (1935–2006) was born on this day in a cabin in Waco, North Carolina. The third of eleven children, he took up boxing at age fourteen.

“It’s easy to do anything in victory. It’s in defeat that a man reveals himself,” Patterson once said. That belief would come to define both his career and his character.

A protégé of legendary trainer Cus D’Amato, Patterson won the 1952 Olympics middleweight gold medal with five knockouts in five matches. Four years later, he defeated Archie Moore and became the youngest man, at twenty-one, to win the heavyweight title.

Barely weighing more than 180 pounds, Patterson was known for fast hands, quick reflexes, and fluid movement in the ring, marked by his signature crouch and weave. “Fear accelerates reflexes,” he observed.

He suffered a painful loss to Sweden’s Ingemar Johansson in 1959, then returned the following year with fierce focus, knocking Johansson out to become the first fighter ever to regain the heavyweight title.

“When you’re knocked down with a good shot you don’t feel pain,” Patterson said. He later lost the championship in just over two minutes to the power jab of Sonny Liston in 1962.

After losing twice to Muhammad Ali, Patterson retired in 1972 at age thirty-seven with a professional record of 55-8-1, forty wins by knockout, and a then-record eight million dollars in purses. “I wouldn’t change a thing about my boxing days,” he reflected. “It made me what I am.”

A man of dignity and integrity, Patterson was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991 and later served two terms as New York State boxing commissioner, advocating for improved safety in the sport.

“They said I was the fighter who got knocked down the most,” he once said, “but I also got up the most.”