I was a tremendous boxing fan back in the early 60's

Some more memories from then....

Floyd Patterson had a training camp in Highland Mills, NY, near a bungalow colony we used to go to, and he'd let the public in for free to watch him train, which was unheard of at the time.

I also vividly remember the Grifith-Paret fight, with refere Ruby Goldstein seeming to freeze while Paret, held up in a corner by the ringpost, absorbed punch after unanswered punch.

And my favorit fighter of the time?

A guy that I'd be surprised if anyone besides Turnbull or SC remembered:

Middleweight Florentino Fernandez.

Very rarely did they feature knockout artists on the Friday Night Gillette Fight of the Week, because, obviously, if the fight ended early they figured they would lose a lot of viewers.

So most of the fights, while featuring the better fighters of the day, produced very few knockouts.

But Fernandez was a true knockout artist who had a decent string of television KOs before being matched with - and losing to - middleweight champ Gene Fullmer.