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Remembering Roy Harris, the Boxer from Cut and Shoot Who Fought Floyd Patterson

Former world heavyweight title challenger Roy Harris passed away last week at the age of 90. This coming Friday, August 18, marks the sixty-fifth anniversary of the fight between Harris and the incumbent champion, Floyd Patterson, one of the quirkiest promotions in the history of fistiana.
Patterson vs Harris was a great triumph for the vendors of hucksterism. It was plain to anyone with a discerning eye that Roy Harris had no business in the same ring with Floyd Patterson — when the match was terminated, Patterson was ahead by 20 points (!) on one of the scorecards – but the promotion yet turned a handsome profit.
Roy Harris hailed from Cut and Shoot, a hamlet in southeast Texas on the edge of the Big Thicket. That imbued him with a ready-made hook. A publicist could concoct a heady brew from that place name alone and Roy “Cut and Shoot” Harris was fermented into a backwoods hillbilly in the mold of the comic book character L’il Abner. There was a fly in the ointment, however. Harris was an elementary school teacher with a college degree, but this fact seldom crept into stories about him as it animated the spoilsports. (The sports editor of an Indiana paper opined that Harris would have a better chance of overcoming Patterson “if he were, say, an unemployed artichoke picker who never finished the eighth grade.”)
As part of the pre-fight hoopla, Harris appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Shirtless and barefoot, holding an old hunting rifle, he is flanked by his hound dogs. Back in those days, getting one’s face on the cover of Sports Illustrated, which sold for 25 cents on newsstands (remember newsstands?), was the crème-de-la-crème of pre-fight hype.
The accompanying story by Joe David Brown was full of fanciful fluff. It was actually true that Roy Harris practiced his craft in his backyard in a makeshift ring with barbed wire on one side and an occasional feral pig wandering about, but one must take with a grain of salt the assertion that whenever he ran out of sparring partners, his brothers would go out and shanghai barflys from local honky-tonks.
To be certain, the legend of Roy “Cut and Shoot” Harris was growing before he made the cover of S.I. As an amateur, he often fought barefoot. His father, Henry Harris – Big Henry to the locals – worked his corner wearing a coonskin hat.
Big Henry was no slouch when things got feisty. According to author Brown, he once ax-handled 16 people to the hospital during a disagreement at a local dance hall. Talking to a UPI reporter, one of Roy Harris’s brothers asserted that his uncle Bob, Big Henry’s sibling, once cut off a fellow’s head with a pocket knife. “In self-defense, of course,” he added, lest anyone get the wrong idea.
Down in southeast Texas, one didn’t mess with the Harris clan, but Roy Harris’s press clippings were of no use to him when he locked horns with Floyd Patterson on a Monday evening on a balmy 1958 night in Los Angeles. He had a moment of glory in the second round when he caught Patterson off-balance and scored a flash knockdown, but otherwise it was all Patterson who knocked Harris to the canvas in the seventh round and twice in the eighth and once more in the 12th before Harris’s cornermen insisted that Roy call it a night. At the finish, Floyd was unmarked and Roy was a bloody mess.
The “10-point-must” system was then fairly new in California and there was no consensus as to how to score a lopsided round. Referee Mushy Callahan scored round seven 10-6 and round eight 10-5. His scorecard favoring Patterson heading into the aborted rounds was the widest, but not by much. The judges had it 117-98 and 116-102.
The fight drew an announced crowd of 21,680 including many out-of-towners wearing 10-gallon hats. Perhaps another 200,000 witnessed the mismatch on a big screen. Patterson vs Harris was beamed to 151 closed-circuit outlets in 133 cities in the United States and Canada including eight locations in Texas. The tub-thumpers did their job well. Everyone made money.
In defense of Roy Harris, although he lacked a big punch, he could fight more than a little. His breakout year came in 1957 when he advanced his record to 22-0 with narrow decisions over Bob Baker and Willie Pastrano and a one-sided decision over journeyman Willi Besmanoff. Roy Harris was only a cruiserweight by today’s standards and Baker, a rugged campaigner from Pittsburgh, out-weighed him by 26 pounds.
His win over Willie Pastrano would take on a brighter tint when Pastrano wrested the light heavyweight title from Harold Johnson (a gift decision, but that’s a story for another day). The Harris-Pastrano fight had a rematch clause that stipulated that if Pastrano lost, Harris was obligated to fight him again within 60 days in Miami Beach where Pastrano, an Angelo Dundee disciple, then hung his hat. The rematch was postponed twice before dying on the vine. Harris had never fought outside Texas before meeting Floyd Patterson.
Whatever his limitations, Harris had a bottomless well of courage as he showed when he stayed 12 rounds with Patterson and again when he accepted a match with petrifying Sonny Liston who blasted him out in the opening round.
In retirement, Roy Harris quit school teaching after earning a law degree from the University of Arkansas. He sold real estate on the side and reportedly cashed in big as Cut and Shoot and neighboring, oil-rich Conroe grew in leaps and bounds. In 1966, he was elected County Clerk and served for 28 years. For someone painted as a backwoods hillbilly, he had quite a life.
Harris passed away peacefully on Aug. 8. A widower for the last 15 years of his life, he is survived by six children, nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. We here at TSS send our condolences to his loved ones.
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Note: Joe David Brown’s Sports Illustrated cover story on Roy Harris is a real hoot. For some unfathomable reason, it was expunged from the Sports Illustrated vault. Brown, who passed away at age 60 at his home in rural Georgia, is best known for his novel “Addie Pray” which was fashioned into the 1973 blockbuster “Paper Moon,” a comedy starring Ryan O’Neal and his real-life daughter Tatum O’Neal, an Oscar winner at the age of 10.
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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.
Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.
“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” Inoue said.
Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.
After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.
Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.
One thing promised by Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”
Cardenas proved his trainer’s words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.
“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.”
Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.
A real fight was happening.
Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.
Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.
In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.
“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”
Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoue’s combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.
In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.
“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”
Espinoza Wins
WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.
“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” said Espinoza.
Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.
Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.
It was Espinoza’s third title defense.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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Undercard Results and Recaps from the Inoue-Cardenas Show in Las Vegas

The curtain was drawn on a busy boxing weekend tonight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas where the featured attraction was Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue appearing in his twenty-fifth world title fight.
The top two fights (Inoue vs. Roman Cardenas for the unified 122-pound crown and Rafael Espinoza vs. Edward Vazquez for the WBO world featherweight diadem) aired on the main ESPN platform with the preliminaries streaming on ESPN+.
The finale of the preliminaries was a 10-rounder between welterweights Rohan Polanco and Fabian Maidana. A 2020/21 Olympian for the Dominican Republic, Polanco was a solid favorite and showed why by pitching a shutout, punctuating his triumph by knocking Maidana to his knees late in the final round with a hard punch to the pit of the stomach.
Polanco improved to 16-0 (10). Argentina’s Maidana, the younger brother of former world title-holder Marcos Maidana, fell to 24-4 while maintaining his distinction of never being stopped.
Emiliano Vargas, a rising force in the 140-pound division with the potential to become a crossover star, advanced to 14-0 (12 KOs) with a second-round stoppage Juan Leon. Vargas, who turned 21 last month, is the son of former U.S. Olympian Fernando Vargas who had big money fights with the likes of Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya. Emiliano knocked Leon down hard twice in round two – both the result of right-left combinations — before Robert Hoyle waived it off.
A 28-year-old Spaniard, Leon was 11-2-1 heading in.
In his U.S. debut, 29-year-old Japanese southpaw Mikito Nakano (13-0, 12 KOs) turned in an Inoue-like performance with a fourth-round stoppage of Puerto Rico’s Pedro Medina. Nakano, a featherweight, had Medina on the canvas five times before referee Harvey Dock waived it off at the 1:58 mark of round four. The shell-shocked Medina (16-2) came into the contest riding a 15-fight winning streak.
Lynwood, California junior middleweight Art Barrera Jr, a 19-year-old protégé of Robert Garcia, scored a sixth-round stoppage of Chicago’s Juan Carlos Guerra. There were no knockdowns, but the bout had turned sharply in Barrera’s favor when referee Thomas Taylor intervened. The official time was 1:15 of round six.
Barrera improved to 9-0 (7 KOs). The spunky but outclassed Guerra, who upset Nico Ali Walsh in his previous outing, declined to 6-2-1.
In the lid-lifter, a 10-round featherweight affair, Muskegon Michigan’s Ra’eese Aleem improved to 22-1 (12) with a unanimous decision over LA’s hard-trying Rudy Garcia (13-2-1). The judges had it 99-01, 98-92, and 97-93.
Aleem, 34, was making his second start since June of 2023 when he lost a split decision in Australia to Sam Goodman with a date with Naoya Inoue hanging in the balance.
Check back shortly for David Avila’s recaps of the two world title fights.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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Canelo Alvarez Upends Dancing Machine William Scull in Saudi Arabia

Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who has acquired a new nickname – “The Face of Boxing” – is accustomed to fighting on Cinco De Mayo weekend, but this year was different. For the first time, Canelo was fighting outside the continent of North America and entering the ring at an awkward hour. His match with William Scull started at 6:30 on a Sunday morning in Riyadh.
In the opposite corner was 32-year-old William Scull, an undefeated (23-0) Cuban by way of Germany, whose performance was better suited to “Dancing With the Stars” than to a world title fight. Constantly bouncing from side to side but rarely letting his hands go, Scull frustrated Canelo who found it near-impossible to corner him, but one can’t win a fight solely on defense and the Mexican superstar was returned the rightful winner in a bout that was a fitting cap to a desultory two days of Saudi-promoted prizefighting. The scores were 115-113, 116-112, and 119-109. In winning, Canelo became a fully unified super middleweight champion twice over.
Terence Crawford was in attendance and HE Turki Alalshikh made it official: Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) and Canelo (63-2-2, 39 KOs) will meet in the Fight of the Century (Alalshikh’s words) on Sept. 12 in Las Vegas at the home of the city’s NFL team, the Raiders. For whatever it’s worth, each of Canelo’s last seven fights has gone the full 12 rounds.
Semi-wind-up
In a match between the WBC world cruiserweight title-holder and the WBC world cruiserweight “champion in recess” (don’t ask), the former, Badou Jack, brought some clarity to the diadem by winning a narrow decision over Noel Mikaelian. One of the judges had it a draw (114-114), but the others gave the fight to “Jack the Ripper” by 115-113 scores.
A devout Muslim who is now a full-time resident of Saudi Arabia, the Sweden-born Jack, a three-division title-holder, had the crowd in his corner. Now 41 years old, he advanced his record to 29-3-3 (17). It was the first pro loss for Mikaelian (27-1), a Florida-based Armenian who was subbing for Ryan Rozicki.
The distracted CompuBox operator credited Mikaelian with throwing 300 more punches but there was no controversy.
Tijuana’s Jaime Munguia, a former junior middleweight title-holder, avenged his shocking loss to Bruno Sarace with a unanimous 12-round decision in their rematch. This was Munguia’s first fight with Eddy Reynoso in his corner. The scores were 117-111 and 116-112 twice.
Surace’s one-punch knockout of Munguia in mid-December in Tijuana was the runaway pick for the 2024 Upset of the Year. Heading in, Munguia was 44-1 with his lone defeat coming at the hands of Canelo Alvarez. Munguia had won every round against Surace before the roof fell in on him.
Surace won a few rounds tonight, but Munguia was the busier fighter and landed the cleaner shots. It was the first pro loss for Surace (26-1-2) and ended his 23-fight winning streak. The Frenchman hails for Marseilles.
Heavyweights
In a 10-round heavyweight match fought at a glacial pace, Martin Bakole (21-2-1) and Efe Ajagba (20-1-1) fought to a draw. One of the judges favored Ajagba 96-94 but he was outvoted by his cohorts who each had it 95-95.
Bakole, a 7/2 favorite, came in at 299 pounds, 15 more than he carried in his signature win over Jared Anderson, and looked sluggish. He was never able to effectively close off the ring against the elusive Ajagba who fought off his back foot and failed to build on his early lead.
The fight between the Scotch-Congolese campaigner Bakole and his Nigerian-American foe was informally contested for the heavyweight championship of Africa. That “title” remains vacant.
In a 6-rounder, heavy-handed Cuban light heavyweight Brayon Leon, a stablemate of Canelo Alvarez, was extended the distance for the first time while advancing his record to 7-0 at the expense of Mexico’s Aaron Roche (11-4-1). Leon knocked Roche to the canvas in the fourth round with a right-left combination, but the Mexican stayed the course while eating a lot of hard punches.
Photo credit: Leigh Dawney / Queensberry Promotions
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