Ingemar Johansson & OS
2025-02-18
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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 disqualified 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 wouldn't dare to fight me, you coward!'
They withheld my finalist's silver medal; on the victory dais my place was vacant; The Swedish flag remained unfurled at the presentations.
This is a selection 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 Olympic 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 laughed 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 medal 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 fault 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 badly in that fight.
What is the truth about that fight that besmirched my name and character... and that Sweden said would 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 professional. 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 else does.
And then in the final I was matched against Sanders, like myself 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 reply later in another form - from the ring.'
- Ingemar Johansson#Boxing #Quotes #InegmarJohansson
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