The Harder They Fall

by Gary Stromberg

  Many things were of great value. There was a thing characteristic of newspapermen and other kinds of writers. I think that writers start off fairly shy, many of them, and become writers to overcome this shyness. I’m sure if you could really get into the brain of Ernest Hemingway or William Faulkner, there would be some shy sixteen-year-old in there someplace. Nora Ephron once said, “The writer is the guy who thinks of the great line on the way home from the party.” All these writers created ways to live, to enjoy themselves, to feel like they were taller than they were, wittier than they were, and maybe more talented than they were. And in many ways, drinking was helpful. It allowed them to live lives instead of being buried in some boardinghouse somewhere.

  The hard thing to figure out is where the tipping point is. Where you go from being a social animal to being a goddamn fool. Where drinking, which helped release you, becomes something that starts to destroy you. It’s very hard for people to determine that point.

  I think the most dangerous drunk is the functioning drunk. It’s one thing to be some poor soul huddled in a doorway somewhere, having lost everything. But the guy who goes off to work, has a cocktail or two before he heads up to the office, and then some at lunch, and then goes home and whacks his wife around—he’s a much more dangerous guy. He forces the people who like him to become co-conspirators. They cover for him as long as they can. Although now, I think, there is much less tolerance of this stuff. In those days, everybody knew somebody who was fundamentally decent, who was turned into Mr. Hyde by drinking. I remember I met Robert Mitchum a couple of times and liked him very much. He was intelligent, self-deprecating, and had a real sense of irony. But if you stayed with him to the point at which he became drunk, he became a nasty piece of work. So that even in the movies, the directors knew that they could only get a performance out of him in the morning. After lunch it was impossible.

  One advantage of being sober for the last thirty-two years is that I’ve lived long enough to see how different stories turn out. I had some friends that stopped drinking but died anyway. In some cases, in the world that I’m in (and it’s not a normal world)—the world of talent—you see people who start out bursting with potential and ability, but they burn out like shooting stars. I’m convinced, more than ever, that drinking did it to them because it cuts memory, which is the mother lode of every writer, and it cuts into physical energy because this is hard work. If you work the way I do, or any good writer does eventually, you get up in the morning, have your breakfast, and then you go to work. And maybe late that afternoon you stop, but at night you’re tossing and turning with the work. All of which comes flowing out, for good or bad, the following morning. And you do it seven days a week even though there are days when you do no writing at all. Your consciousness doesn’t go away.

  I’m walking down the street here in Mexico, yesterday, and I have a scene in my mind from the North River in 1935, part of my novel, a long way from where I am. And it’s vividly alive. That is why so many writers’ marriages collapse. It takes a rare woman or man who realizes that when the person they’re married to is looking out the window, the person is working!

  The people who stay conscious derive amazing benefits from it. They’re aware of the only life that they are going to have, and without it, they end up lying in those hospital beds with tubes up their noses, wondering, “What the fuck was it all about?”

  No, when the fight begins within himself,

  A man’s worth something.

  —Robert Browning, “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”

  Gerry Cooney

  (boxer)

  * * *

  I ALWAYS HATED WHITE heavyweights like Gerry Cooney. Aside from there never being an outstanding one that I could remember—Rocky Marciano was a little before my time—I always felt embarrassed for them. They seemed to be offered up in hopes of knocking off whatever reigning black champion prevailed. Ingemar Johansson, Jerry Quarry, Britain’s Henry Cooper and Brian London, U.S. Olympian Duane Bobick, Randall “Tex” Cobb, and Tommy Morrison—all “great white hopes,” all heavyweight bust-outs.

  From my perspective, Gerry had another problem. He had the most despicable group of managers and handlers I’ve ever observed in boxing. Arrogant guys with smug faces and loud mouths who seemed to think they owned the sport. Poor Gerry looked like a lost child when surrounded by these jerks. I always rooted against him because I didn’t want his managers to succeed, but when Gerry put up that gallant performance against Larry Holmes for the heavyweight championship in 1982, my opinion of him changed. This was some courageous fighter.

  I met Gerry at his modest, colonial-style home located in a New Jersey suburb. He greeted me at the door wearing a black wool beret with a small brim turned to the back, like a jockey might wear, black sweat pants, and a plain, gray, long-sleeved T-shirt. My first impression was that this guy looks in great shape, probably could still go a few hard rounds. Gerry has a huge welcoming smile and a soft-handed handshake that I’ve often experienced with prizefighters.

  Entering the house, I couldn’t help but observe that it is in a state of complete disarray thanks to his two rambunctious children: two-and-a-half-year-old Sarah and her doting six-year-old brother, Jack. Led to the sunken family room, I immediately noticed the enormous photo wall, the highlights of which Gerry quickly pointed out to me. His favorites are not of his fights, or of other fighters for that matter, but pictures of Gerry with Bob Hope and another with Frank Sinatra. Toys dominate this room, in sharp contrast to the many pictures of the pugilistic wars Gerry has been in.

  His children were omnipresent, often wanting his attention, which he gladly gave them. Our interview was interrupted several times by the kids, but Gerry didn’t seem to mind. He truly loved them being around. Sarah hopped on his lap to tell Daddy she loves him, and not to be outdone, Jack does the same. Gerry assured his son that he knows he loves him, but Gerry reminded him that he wanted to be dropped off a block from school so that the other kids wouldn’t see his dad kiss him!

  Gerry eats from a large porcelain bowl containing an entire cut-up roasted chicken. As he speaks, he waves a drumstick for emphasis.

  While telling me his story, Gerry occasionally paused, wanting to feel the experience he was re-creating for me. His eyes closed for a second as if he were being transported back in time. It didn’t seem difficult for him to share with me hurtful events from his past, so confident is he now in his present.

  I grew up in hell. My father was an alcoholic and my mother enabled him. He was a strong guy, physically very abusive. And I grew up basically learning five things: you’re no good, you’re a failure, you’re not going to amount to anything, don’t trust nobody, and don’t tell nobody your business. That’s what I learned in my house growing up.

  I swore I was never gonna be anything like him, and I became just like him. Except I wasn’t physically abusive, but boxing helped me out with that. I spent a lot of my childhood hiding in the basement, because if I hid down there he couldn’t see me and he wouldn’t hurt me.

  I remember he wanted us kids to be marines, so one night while drunk he woke us up and shaved our heads. He would wake us up in the morning by pouring cold water over us, pulling us by the hair and ears, horrible things. I found out later a psycho does those kinds of things. So the last nine years of his life, he didn’t drink and I swear I’m never gonna be like him, and at age thirteen, I started drinking. Boone’s Farm apple wine. I used to hold my nose and drink it down. I liked how it felt. It took care of the hole that I felt. I had a deep hole here [pointing to his stomach], and those five things I learned growing up, that’s how I felt, how I learned to feel.

  My dad wanted to control me I suppose, and that was a way to do it. Make me not feel. But when I drank, all of sudden I became attractive, I became funny, spontaneous—and I fit in. Once I had some Boone’s Farm apple wine … I remember getting so sick the first time I drank it. I was crawling around the backyard saying “I’m never gonna do this ag
ain.” But there was something about those five or ten minutes when I was alright with the world. I’ll never forget that, and so until I got sober and stopped drinking when I was thirty years old, I drank to get to that high. The bad part about my drinking was I was pretty good at it. I learned how to mix and match. I didn’t have to work, just train. I was a young kid. I didn’t have to train until three or four in the afternoon, so I would sleep until two, grab a bite to eat, and catch a train into the city to go spar. I always knew I was going to be a fighter.

  At sixteen, I won the state championship in New York, in front of 21,000 people at the Garden on Saint Patrick’s Day. And then I won the New York Golden Gloves heavyweight title in 1976. My father got sick, so I didn’t go to the finals of the Olympic trials. I didn’t go because, you know, I say because my father was sick, but basically I had low self-esteem. I thought I wasn’t good enough—all those things had an effect on me. I really regret those days that I didn’t pursue the opportunity, even if I didn’t succeed. I was afraid of looking bad—things that hit me at my core. I wasn’t worried about upsetting my father; I was angry at him. My father was a mean, nasty guy. It was his way or the highway. That’s how my life was around him.

  In some ways, I think I became a fighter because he learned how to control life around him, and he was strong. I went to the gym to express my anger. Next thing I know my picture is in the newspaper, so I was somebody. I remember going to the store when I was sixteen and looking at that paper and saying, “That’s me!” Anger fed me and kept me alive. Amazing. I anesthetized the pain all those years, drinking and hiding and later with drugs and not feeling. You know, I say that if I would have not drank, I would have been heavyweight champion of the world. If I would have become the champ while I was drinking, I’d probably be dead today.

  When I was young, every night there were parties to go to, different clubs to hang out in. I could drink pretty good and I could handle it pretty well, or so I thought. I didn’t have somebody in my life that would say, “Hey, Gerry.” They didn’t know how to reach me. You know, I try to work with a lot of guys now. You can tell them things, but most of them can’t hear.

  Fortunately, boxing kept me in line. I did take halfway decent care of myself, but as I got older, I started taking less care of myself. After knocking out Kenny Norton in 1981, I don’t fight again for thirteen months, and in that period of time, I started drinking. I started doing some recreational drugs and then I’m fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world.

  I lost to Larry Holmes in 1982. I think I drank and did drugs during this period of time to have an excuse in case I failed. I could blame the drink: “It wasn’t me.” Now I realize that in life I have to go for that nut. I got to do everything I can to get that nut. And if I don’t get it, it’s okay because I did everything I could.

  I remember the old guys in the gym telling me, “Don’t get caught up,” and I’d say, “Thanks, but it’s not going to happen to me” and then everything happened to me. The thing about life is that it keeps repeating itself.

  You know, I do a lot of work in prisons and with troubled kids and gangs, and I’m thinking, “Am I really helping anybody?” And somebody told me that if you help one person and that person doesn’t go back to jail, he changes the lives of many people. Like in It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart. And that’s a great way of looking at things.

  I go to an orphan program a couple times a week and work with kids and I love ’em, but they’ve been mistreated for so long that it’s hard for them to open up. Just like me as a kid. I can relate to them and talk to them in a language they can understand ’cause I was there.

  Anyway, going back to my career, I used to drink after every fight and would go wild. In 1981, I fought Kenny Norton and knocked him out in fifty-four seconds of the first round. That night was the first time I did some cocaine, and I started drinking twice as much as usual. Coke numbed me out and covered the hole up. Coke also helped me reach my bottom a lot quicker, so I’m grateful for that.

  The pressure was building. Here was a kid with my background on the cover of Time magazine and Sports Illustrated. Everyone was focusing on me, and it was a very frightening thing, especially with the set of tools I had. No skills. The only thing I knew was not to trust anybody. I couldn’t trust my father, my mother, anybody. So there I am, in the spotlight. I go from “You’re no good. You’re a piece of shit” to “Everybody loves Gerry Cooney.” What the hell is that all about? I couldn’t understand or trust it.

  My old man died in 1976, but he never learned how to live. He never enjoyed his life. I went through life with blinders on till I stopped drinking. Then I could finally see. I’d fall down, dust myself off, and move on.

  The night I fought Larry Holmes for the championship, I had a phone line to President Reagan installed in my dressing room. If I won the fight, the president would call to congratulate me. It was unbelievable, but I was so afraid of failing. So in the fight, I got stopped in the thirteenth round. Now, I want to tell you, during this time I got all this shit going on. My managers hate each other. They are also fighting with my trainers. I have this high level of insecurity, dysfunction. Chaos is everywhere, and I’m trying to deal with it all.

  I had this girlfriend at the time who got into a terrible car accident. It was very depressing. I felt some guilt about it because the day of the accident we were supposed to go out, but I was drunk and didn’t show up. She goes out and gets in a car wreck. Alcohol was perfect for me, helped me get rid of the guilt. All these things, you know …

  I went to a party in the penthouse of Caesars Palace hotel. Everybody I ever wanted to meet from sports, movie stars, Frank Sinatra was there for me. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Muhammad Ali, everybody. I was on top of the world and I couldn’t feel a thing. Couldn’t feel it. ’Cause I knew it could be taken away from me.

  I think I was overtrained for the Holmes fight. I had a trainer who was a good trainer, a good man. I love him, but I trained a little too much. I learned since being sober: balance, work hard, but play. So I worked too hard for the fight. It was 115 degrees in Vegas. I got every kind of excuse you can imagine. Holmes was a great fighter. That was my biggest excuse! He was a great fighter. The press kept telling me I couldn’t go the distance with him, so I tried to go the distance instead of just go out and fight. And you know, Holmes is ranked the fifth greatest heavyweight in history, and that’s the guy I had to fight that night. I hadn’t fought in thirteen months ’cause Don King wasn’t letting me. King owned everybody, and I wasn’t signed with King, so he was keeping me out. He didn’t want me to gain the experience I needed in order to beat Holmes ’cause I wasn’t signed with him. So I was only fighting once a year. Not nearly enough.

  This fight was the first time that I wasn’t nervous. I just wanted to hit him. I’ll tell you a story: I’m fighting Jimmy Young in Atlantic City, and I’m in my dressing room on the third floor, all by myself, and I’m thinking, “This guy’s gonna kill me.” So I start thinking about jumping out the window, but I didn’t. I went out and beat him. Knocked him out in four rounds. Flash forward … 1981, I’m fighting Kenny Norton, and three nights before the fight, we’re on Warner Wolf Show. Warner says, “How you feelin’, Gerry?” Kenny is sitting next to me, and I look at him and say, “I wish I was fighting you right now!” I was full of shit, you know what I mean? I couldn’t wait the three days? See, I had that fear, but in some ways it made me work so much harder. They made me out to be a monster, but I was just a man.

  I didn’t have that fear when I fought Holmes. I wish I had! I just wanted to hit him. I didn’t like him as a man. So I go twelve rounds with him. I get three points taken away for low blows. I go out for the thirteenth round saying, “You can’t hurt me.” And I let him hit me instead of saying, “Let me go out there and take him out this round.” Then he knocked me out.

  After that I really crashed and burned. That was really a tough time, for a couple of years. I didn’t want my
mother worrying about me, so I’d go over to her house once a week, sit in front of the television for a couple of hours, then leave.

  I kept thinking of John Lennon’s “I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round.” That’s where I was at the time. I regret it. Nobody cared about me and I didn’t care about them. I was just existing, surviving, and that’s what my old man did. Paid bills, drank when he wasn’t working, and drank while he was working, and so I didn’t have any options. I couldn’t stand my managers. They hated each other. I was the hero to my family, so I’m fixing everybody with money: “Let me fix this problem, let me fix that problem.” It got to the point where my family expected it, and so I finally had to cut them out of my life.

  So I needed to go through all of that. I had a couple friends I stayed in touch with, but that was it. I also stayed close to women. They would hold me and tell me I was okay. And even that eventually stopped working. Then I don’t fight for a bunch of years. All of a sudden Spinks beats Holmes and they’re calling me to see if I want to fight Spinks, and I say, “I’ll take it tomorrow!” So I go to training camp and the fight doesn’t happen for two years. I’m in training camp for two years for a fight that’s supposed to happen in six, seven weeks. It was postponed ’cause of this lawsuit or that thing. So I start drinking again. “This fight ain’t ever gonna happen,” I tell myself. It’s on, it’s off. Even when I’m walking into the ring I’m thinking, “This ain’t gonna happen.” I was drinking right up to the night of the fight. Not taking care of myself. And I got stopped in the fifth round.