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Keiter recalls night
with Cosell

I went to the Honolulu Quarterback Club yesterday to hear national wrestling champion Travis Lee speak. This was a silly thing to do, as Lee, of course, is currently at Cornell University (but his family and his high school coach were there, which was nice).

So we got a Les Keiter story instead.

This was in 1959, Keiter's first big New York fight. The first Floyd Patterson-Ingemar Johansson fight, at Yankee Stadium. A couple of guys named William Holden and John Wayne would sit next to Keiter on the radio broadcast in order to pump their new movie.

But this story is significant not because of the fight or the fighters or the movie stars. No, we tell this one because it marks the epic first meeting between ...

"My partner," Keiter said, "was a young man named Howard Cosell.

"The first of several confrontations that we had."

Patterson was the undefeated American champ. Johansson had just hit an opponent so hard he knocked him through the ropes, left there to be counted out on the apron, like something out of a Rocky movie.

"He called it, with a bow to Sweden, 'the Hammer of Thor,' " Keiter said. "And in interviews, he said, as he looked at his fist. 'I never know when the Hammer of Thor is going to strike. But when it strikes ... the lights go out.' "

There was a meeting the day before to sort out the logistics of the madness of the mayhem of the event. The movie people were there. The broadcast team.

"All of a sudden, coming through the door was William Holden. And he sits down all the way at the end of the table," Keiter said. "And right after he arrives, Duke Wayne, John Wayne comes in. And he goes and sits at the other end of the table."

Perfect. Now the young man in the gray suit could lay out every detail of every interview the movie stars would give, and when, and where, and blah, blah, blah.

"And he goes on and on," Keiter said. "And while he was talking -- and everybody was bored to tears -- Bill Holden pulled out a bottle of J&B scotch. About this high. Took a swig of it, leaned over and yelled, 'Duke!' "

Then Holden slid the bottle all the way across the long table, like a bartender in the old West. Wayne stopped it with a hand, slugged it back, and yelled out:

"Bill!"

Then the bottle came sliding back. Whooooosh.

This went on a few more times.

"It was like watching a tennis match," Keiter said. "Nobody offered us anything."

THE NEXT NIGHT was crazier than anyone had imagined. The movie stars were mobbed.

"And the producer leaned over my shoulder," Keiter said, "and said, 'Fellas, in one minute 200 million people are going to listen to your every word. Good luck.' I stuck my hand out to Cosell, who I hardly knew, and I said, 'Well, good luck to us, Howard.' He looked at me and snarled, and said, 'Relax, kid, you'll get used to the big time!' "

Keiter is possibly the first person in the history of the world to tell a Howard Cosell story without doing a Howard Cosell impersonation. But then, he's Les Keiter.

"OK, the fight starts. The first two rounds, nothing. Like two amateurs feeling each other out. But suddenly in the third round, the Hammer of Thor struck. Patterson went down on his back."

There was no limit on that in those days.

"He was up and down seven times in that round," Keiter said.

At last the fight was stopped. Johansson had won. Keiter was to interview Holden and Wayne, who gushed like average fight fans after what they'd just seen. Cosell was in the ring for the interviews.

"Also, dozens of Swedes jumped in the ring to salute their new champion," Keiter said.

"Cosell goes through the Swedes. 'Excuse me, I'm Howard Cosell. Excuse me.' "

Johansson was tight-lipped, so Cosell went to Patterson: "Floyd! What happened?"

And in what Keiter calls a "beautiful, modulated voice" the answer went out to 200 million around the world.

"I got hit, Howard."

It should be noted that Cosell did, eventually, get used to the big time.