“We’ll take that bum from Europe,” was the confident verdict of Floyd Patterson’s camp when Ingemar Johansson crossed the Atlantic to square up to the US’s world champion in New York in June 1959.

From a US standpoint it seemed a not unreasonable prediction. For a quarter of a century the Americans had fought for the world heavyweight title among themselves. No European had won it since 1933 when the giant Italian Primo Carnera had beaten Jack Sharkey on Long Island. And that had been during something of an interregnum in top-class American heavyweights. The great age of Jack Dempsey had gone; Gene Tunney had retired and there were no really convincing home-grown contenders.

On that occasion too, Carnera’s sheer size — at 19 stone (120kg) and 6ft 5¾in (1.98m) he remains the hugest of world heavyweight champions — had much to do with his victory. The over-the-hill Sharkey was five stone (32kg) lighter and had fought a number of bruising battles against Dempsey and Max Schmeling that had taken a good deal out of him.

Patterson and Johansson were more similarly proportioned. Neither, at 13½ stone (85kg), was a big heavyweight by today’s standards. The Swede gave the American and his camp a shock, knocking him out in three rounds. Much examination of the US psyche followed before Patterson regained his title and retained it in their third fight.

Brought up in a pacifistic country whose traditions are highly inimical to boxing, Ingemar Johansson did not have the successful introduction to boxing at Olympic level that is, these days, considered the prerequisite for future success.

He was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1932. Leaving school at 15 he had worked in a road gang while learning to box, and at only 17 was amateur heavyweight champion of Sweden, though he only weighed in as a middleweight. He had then done well as a member of the European team which went to challenge America’s Golden Gloves squad in Chicago 1951, knocking out his opponent in the second round.

But his career then went into reverse when he made a bad impression at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki. In the final, against the huge American Ed Saunders, he was disqualified for “not trying hard enough”. The chairman of the Swedish Boxing Association wrote of him that he “was a plain coward, who brought shame to the Swedish name”. The American press dubbed him “the fleeing rat” and when his name later came up as a “soft” opponent for the until then unconquered Patterson, the label was not forgotten. Johansson was deeply hurt by these attacks which, somewhat unjustly, did not acknowledge the fact his opponent had done as little as the Swede to make a fight of the final. Johansson eventually received his silver medal 30 years later.

After going into seclusion for six months, during which he came close to abandoning boxing for good, Johansson returned to the ring and turned professional. Under the wise guidance of the Swedish publisher and boxing promoter Edwin Ahlquist, he won his first 21 professional fights. He took the Scandinavian heavyweight title in 1953 and in September 1956 knocked out Italy’s Franco Cavicchi in 13 rounds in Milan for the European title.

He defended this against Britain’s Henry Cooper, whom he knocked out in five rounds in Stockholm in May 1957 and against Joe Erskine whom he beat in 13 rounds in Gothenburg in February 1958. By now, boxing writers were speaking of his thunderous right hand as “the hammer of Thor” — or more lightheartedly as “Ingo’s bingo”.

Nevertheless, when he was accepted as a challenger for Patterson’s world title in 1959 few American fight commentators gave him any chance, though they might have done had they fully absorbed the implications of his first-round victory over the then No. 1 contender, Eddie Machen, in September 1958. But that fight had taken place in Gothenburg and attracted little attention in the US.

In the run-up to his world title challenge Johansson’s rather relaxed-sounding training regime also gained wide publicity. Pictured living comfortably at home on mother’s cooking or out dancing with his fiancée, Birgit Lundgren, he gave the impression that he was completely unprepared for the mayhem of the American ring.

In fact, Johansson climbed through the ropes at Madison Square Garden on June 26, 1959, in trim condition and within three rounds had confounded boxing pundits. After stemming the champion’s rushes for two rounds Johansson opened up in the third, and before long had floored Patterson with a tremendous right-hand punch. It was to be the first of seven trips Patterson made to the canvas before the referee stepped in to halt the bout in 2 min 3 sec of the round with the champion in a clearly helpless condition. The crowd, at first stunned, rose to greet the new champion.