Let’s put Jets-Patriots in boxing terms, which Eric Mangini has done since he arrived. It’s a heavyweight rematch, it’s a grudge match, and history hangs in the balance.
Which is why Teddy Atlas, the former Mike Tyson trainer who has befriended the Jets coach, last week suggested Floyd Patterson-Ingemar Johansson II as the one to show the team the night before Sunday’s game in Foxborough.
“First of all, it’s on a big stage,” Atlas said yesterday. “Patterson became the first heavyweight in the history of the game to regain his title. That was before the days when guys regained titles three and four times. And obviously the significance there with the [Patriots] winning streak and the enormity of what they’ve done with the season they’re having and the odds being what they are.”
Patterson had lost the title on June 26, 1959, when the Swede, with his famous Toonder and Lightning right hand, knocked him down seven times at Yankee Stadium. Patterson, filled with hatred for the new champion, was an underdog when he regained the title at the Polo Grounds on June 20, 1960, with a leaping left hook that left Johansson flat on his back in the fifth round. The Jets were humiliated 38-14 in the opener by the Pats.
“He gets dropped seven times, walks back to his corner not knowing where he is,” Atlas said. “You get beaten that way, it’s hard to visualize how you’re gonna come back. A heavyweight champion had never regained the title and he comes back and knocks him out with a sensational left hook and leaves him laying on the floor with his foot quivering.”
Atlas was in the office of Jets video director Steve Scarnecchia when he recommended the fight.
“He gets all the film together for Eric,” Atlas said. “When I mentioned ‘quivering foot’ he kinda smiled. I said the twitching foot’s gotta be worth a certain amount of points.”
Atlas, who visits Weeb Ewbank Hall once a week, will be on the premises today to find out if it will indeed be Patterson-Johansson. He also has suggested the Cornelius Boza-Edwards-Bobby Chacon junior lightweight rematch, voted fight of the year in 1983 by Ring Magazine. Boza-Edwards, a Ugandan southpaw, had KOd Chacon in the 13th round in his first title defense. Chacon, floored in the first round, then badly cut, decked Boza-Edwards in the 12th round to avenge his defeat.
“Once in a while they’ll show more than one fight,” Atlas said. “I’m not sure what he winds up going with. Obviously, you gotta see what’s available from the standpoint of getting tape.”
There are weeks when Mangini will not show the Jets a fight, but not many.
Atlas said the essence of a fighter is, “the ability to overcome something. “
That’s the essence of the Jets’ fight this week. Just don’t expect it to end with Bill Belichick’s quivering foot.