Sport: Three-Ring Circus

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Accused at one time or another of being a dirty business, a brutal business, a corrupter of honest politicians, and a perverter of young men's morals, professional boxing has always managed to survive. But it might not survive being a bore. That's what it was last week.

>In Philadelphia's Convention Hall, red-booted Albert Westphal, a flabby (5 ft. 7 in.. 195 lbs.), obscure German who looked like a lady wrestler, was matched off against Sonny Listen, whose career, besides 22 knockouts, included 19 known arrests, two convictions (armed robbery, assaulting a police officer), and a five-year term at the Missouri State Penitentiary. At 1 min. 58 sec. of the first round, Westphal, who had been backpedaling furiously, stood still long enough for Liston to hit him with a pawring left and a ponderous right. Then he pitched forward on his face for Listen's knockout No. 23. Westphal collected $12,000 and a plane ticket back to Germany. Liston got $80,000, of which $18,000 was earmarked for his ex-manager, Joseph ("Pep") Barone, sometime front man for Hoodlum Frankie Carbo.

>In Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens, only 7,813 diehard fans showed up to watch mild-mannered Champion Floyd Patterson initiate Challenger Tom McNeeley into his "Bum of the Year" club. A pug-nosed, ex-Michigan State footballer who once visited a psychiatrist to get his "viciousness" cured, McNeeley butted, elbowed, and threw four low punches in a row. Before he was finally counted out at 2 min. 51 sec. of the fourth round, McNeeley had hit the canvas eleven times (two were ruled "slips" by Referee Jersey Joe Walcott), sported a nearly closed eye and a raw strawberry that covered his entire right cheek. The estimated payoff: Patterson. $300,000; McNeeley, $125,000.

>In London's Wembley Pool, the biggest (12,000), noisiest crowd of the week turned out to watch Local Hero Henry Cooper tune up for a title fight with Patterson by fighting the U.S.'s seventh-ranked Zora Folley—whom Cooper had beaten in 1958. Folley had other ideas. Trimmed down to a rock-hard 194 lbs., he sliced Cooper's tender face with slashing jabs in the first round, split open his nose and left eyebrow. In the second round, blood streaming from his wounds, Cooper fielded a right with his prominent jaw and sank to the canvas like a tired swan. "It was a good punch," Cooper said later, when he found his voice. "I never saw it. I didn't even feel it. If I could have got up, I would have."