Brooks Ken - Ingemar Johansson: Swedish heavyweight boxing champion

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

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e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-2023-7

2016 Ken Brooks. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover: Ingemar Johansson, 1958 (Kurt Durewall)

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All quotations in this book come from interviews conducted by the author, as well as magazine, book, newspaper, and broadcast accounts of the day.

My thanks to the following people who granted interviews: Rolf Johansson, Maria Johansson Gregner, Birgit Lundgren Johansson, Edna Alsterlund, Patrick Johansson, Thomas Johansson, Olof Johansson, Paul Gallender, David Ladd, Joe Gallison, Robert Daley, Gene Kilroy, Paolo Roberto.

My gratitude to the following people who contributed their time and efforts; Ove Karlsson, Erik Stenberg, Larry Farber, Paul Gallender, Joakim Berglund, Marja Durewall-Nilson, Tommy Holl, Lucy Waldrop, Barbara Waldrop, Ken Sizemore, Hallman Bryant, Dan Cuoco and the International Boxing Research Organization.

If you could stitch together the ideal heavyweight champion, piece by piece, how would he look?

The question was posed in 1987 to the late Reg Gutteridge, dean of BBC boxing commentators, whod seen a lifetime of the sports greatest fighters.

Gutteridges response: Larry Holmes jab, Joe Louis left hook, George Foremans uppercut, Sonny Listons raw power, Rocky Marcianos aggression, Jack Johnsons defense, Ken Nortons physique, Joe Fraziers determination, Jack Dempseys infighting, Floyd Pattersons hand speed, Muhammad Alis showmanship, and

Gutteridges final ingredient: Ingemar Johanssons right hand.

***

I will make no claim here that Ingemar (Ingo) Johansson belongs on the same tier with Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Jack Dempsey, or any of the other giants of the game.

His infighting was nonexistent, his jab without sting, his chin suspect, his title reign too short. Boxing historian Mike Casey calls Johansson one of the most technically lacking of the heavyweight champions, and I wont argue too heartily with that. But Casey adds: Whatever else Johansson didnt possess as a fighter, I say unhesitatingly that he was one of the greatest natural punchers that boxing has ever seen. It was this singular skill, this gift from the boxing gods, that set Ingemar apart from his contemporaries.

For six days short of a yearfrom June 26, 1959, when he kayoed Floyd Patterson, to June 20, 1960, when Floyd returned the favorIngemar Johansson ruled the world, at a time when the heavyweight champion was among the most heralded men on earth and a title fight was as big as the Super Bowl and World Series combined.

It was quite a ride, however short, for him and for us. He brought dimple-chinned, leading-man glamor to a moribund game and challenged the sports establishment by refusing to kowtow to mobbed-up promoters. He defied traditional training regimens by flouting the boxer-in-trainings vow of celibacy, openly living with a shapely Swedish dish while still married to his first wife. He appeared on the cover of Life, was named Sports Illustrateds Sportsman of the Year, hit fashionable nightspots on two continents, and charmed hardened sportswriters as easily as he did Hollywood starlets. Journalists hailed him as the best thing to happen to boxing since bareknuckle Boston strong boy John L. Sullivan swaggered from bar to bar boasting, I can lick any man in the house.

Once a champ, always a champ (Kurt Durewall).

In retrospect, one could be excused for dismissing Ingemar as a lucky one-shot champ, one of those ignominious fewamong them Jack Sharkey, Buster Douglas, and Leon Spinkswho won the heavyweight title only to lose it in their first defense.

But there is so much more to the Ingemar Johansson story, for beyond his fistic exploits, and there were many, lies a tale of ultimate redemption, and of enduring love.

***

First, the redemption: disqualified for passivity while fighting for the gold medal against the American Ed Sanders in the 1952 Olympics, Ingemar, just 21, was branded a coward, a pariah even in his own countryespecially in his own country. For shame, Ingo, read a typical Swedish headline of the day, and editorials called for the young man to give up the game for good. But Ingemar was made of stronger stuff than anyone knew, and by turning professional, by fighting his way through the ranks, and by gaining sports ultimate title, he proved it.

And then there is the story of the boxer and the hometown girl for whom he fell, and fell hard, in 1954he a 22-year-old Gteborg boxer, she a 17-year-old brunette beauty. During their three years on the heavyweight title stage, from 1959 to 1961, Ingemar Johansson and Birgit Lundgren were the sporting worlds answer to Liz and Eddie. (Or was it Eddie and Debbie? Liz and Richard? Eddie and Richard?)

Ingemar and Birgit were boxings First Couple. They lived together, traveled to America togetherthoroughly modern exemplars for the looming sexual revolution. However brief his reign, Ingemar heralded the coming of the Sixties Swingin Jock, the prototype Namath/Belinsky, a bridge from the ho-hum Eisenhower era into the hip Kennedy years. Ingemar and Birgit eventually married (in 1963) and divorced (in 1983), and remained friends through the years.

Ingemar was an inveterate romantic and in 1979 he fell again, sparking a 24-year relationship with Swedish journalist Edna Alsterlund. The two married in 1996. It was a loving and successful union, but when the complications of Ingemars dementia caused the couple to split, there was Birgit to carry him through his final round.

***

There are full-length biographies of nearly every heavyweight champion, including four books on the life of Floyd Patterson, the Ali to Johanssons Frazier. Yet there exists not a single prior full-length book on Ingemar, a boxer whose accomplishments have been sadly overlooked. Perhaps this is understandably so, for less than a year after Johanssons final fightagainst Brian London in April 1963the world had a new heavyweight champion in Muhammad Ali, a man whose prodigious talent and personal magnetism proceeded to overshadow everyone in his wake.