Floyd Patterson delivered a number of knockout punches during his Hall of Fame career, but it might have been the fights he won beyond the boxing ring that made him great. Born in 1935, he overcame poverty and prejudice to become the youngest world heavyweight championship in history. He would later became the first man to regain the crown after losing it. Boxing legend Muhammad Ali called Patterson the most skillful fighter he ever faced.In the first biography of the former heavyweight, Alan Levy covers Patterson's meteoric rise as boxer while giving equal attention to the boxer's life away from sport, including Patterson's work as an activist for civil rights causes in the 1960s. Joining Ali and George Frazier as boxers who used their celebrity to bring attention to social issues, he became an icon of the movement.