Henry Cooper

by Robert Edwards

  By round four Henry was also cut below the right eye and London relaunched his attack to score his first (and, as the record reveals, only) winning round. The champion concentrated on the eye and by round seven the referee, Ike Powell, was showing proper concern about the resultant damage. Happily for Henry the cut was below the eye so that restricted vision was not a particular problem, and he simply swallowed the blood from the damage between his eyes. Shades of Eurydamus the Argonaut. The outcome of the fight and the championship now depended on Henry’s ability to defend the eye as well as inflict meaningful damage on his energized opponent. The middle rounds of the bout were the fulcrum upon which Henry’s championship hopes depended. He had to reach deep, as it transpired…

  Round eight was the point of no return. Despite the ferocious assault he had endured, during which London was warned for ‘careless use of the head’, Henry finally managed to unleash the mighty left hook, which simply shook the champion rigid and nearly took him down, but London was a very, very strong man. More of the same followed, with Henry scoring heavily on aggression and accuracy, and London inflicting even more damage on the badly cut eye (but little else) before Henry took final control with complete authority. The last four rounds were a savage blur of jabs and hooks that confused London so badly that he actually raised Henry’s arm at the end of the fourteenth round, effectively conceding victory, although he had to endure another three minutes of the most brutal punishment that an exhausted Henry could mete out. It was for fights like this one that a boxer trains.

  As an awed Donald Saunders described to his readers in the Daily Telegraph, the fight was ‘…15 of the most bitterly contested rounds I have ever watched…both warriors looked as if they had been fighting with meat axes.’

  ‘It took more out of me than any other fight in my career,’ says Henry. ‘I felt worse after this, more exhausted and in more pain, than with any other. It took me weeks to recover.’

  The loss of blood alone would have dropped most men on the spot; it dropped Henry only shortly afterwards: ‘We got back home (Farmstead Road) and I remember asking George to run me a hot bath, just to help ease some of the pain away. Well, as soon as I got into it, I just fainted clean away, totally out. George had to drain out the bathwater and lift me out.’

  So the new British heavyweight champion was not in any condition to enjoy his laurels; the 3lbs of congealed blood that he had ingested, a giant blutwurst really, also took some time to remove itself ‘I was so swollen up and sore, I couldn’t even wear trousers for over a week.’

  But more pleasingly, this second defeat of Brian London, and indeed the terrible nature of it, served to mend the fences between the two men. Donald Saunders was clearly grasping for something nice to say about the truly ghastly spectacle he had witnessed: ‘…These one-time enemies clasped each others’ shoulders and let everyone know that as far as they were concerned, honour had been well and truly satisfied.’ On Henry’s terms, of course.

  No one was in any doubt that he had earned this rather Pyrrhic victory, as well as casting the pecking order in stone. He was back, and it had been a remarkable turnaround from the previous disappointments of only a year before. Apart from the pleasures of being champion with a seat at the top table of British sport, the boost of confidence that came with it allowed him to relax a little. In quick succession he had beaten three worthy opponents, won the British and Empire title and suddenly entered the world rankings. ‘To think,’ a bemused Henry had said to Saunders after the Folley fight, ‘I am the number one contender for the world title!’

  He had every reason to think that the fight with Patterson for that world title was now a given, but if he did, he reckoned without d’Amato; astonishingly (or perhaps not) Floyd Patterson’s manager accepted a fight with Brian London, only so recently beaten by Henry, but would not countenance a bout with Henry himself. While that may have been something of a compliment, it was also hugely frustrating. D’Amato was in the process of attempting to create a counter-monopoly, in order to defend himself and his champion against the forces of evil as he saw them: the IBC.

  D’Amato was in danger of devaluing Patterson, in fact, by taking the path previously trodden by Joe Louis in 1940-41, the well-honoured tradition of the ‘bum of the month’, whereby Louis defended his world heavyweight title no fewer than 14 times without breaking serious sweat in any of them. Brian London was no bum, of course, far from it, but the implication from the d’Amato headquarters was clear – he would be his own matchmaker, thank you, and he was justifiably nervous of exposing his boy’s weak jaw to Henry’s left hook. Behind all the obfuscation and delay, though, was something even bigger: a genuine fear of Charles Liston.

  Patterson knocked out a surprisingly durable Brian London in the eleventh round on 1 May 1959. But even then, if Henry thought he could now step forward, he was still mistaken. D’Amato selected Ingemar Johansson as the next fighter to be served up to Patterson, and Johansson knocked him down seven times in three rounds before the astonished referee stopped the fight. Naturally, a rematch was part of the contract, which put Henry to the back of the queue. Despite this frustration his equilibrium was back. It had taken two years and a vast amount of hard work, leavened with equal dollops of dangerous self-doubt. To be sure, there were still opponents of whom he was right to be nervous (particularly his nemesis Joe Erskine), but seven months after the bloody encounter with Brian London he demonstrated that South African Gawie de Klerk was not necessarily one of them. This was to be another cruel fight.

  The plucky policeman from Pretoria challenged Henry for the Empire title at the dire and dismal Coney Beach Arena, Porthcawl (the site of Henry’s previous defeat of Dick Richardson) on 26 August 1959. Ten thousand people turned up to watch. Initially, Henry appeared ‘ring rusty’ as one commentator had it, which he rather showed by allowing himself to be clobbered early on by a wild, unorthodox over-arm right, and for two rounds he was less than impressive, behind on points and with a bad cut under his left eye. One of the dangers of fighting inexperienced opponents (the SP on de Klerk was a pessimistic 5–1) is that because they are unpredictable, they can be occasionally lucky, particularly if they deliver the unortho dox, which de Klerk certainly did.

  It was a fight somewhat characterized by clinches, during which some fairly rough ‘inside work’ was done by both men but, as Henry started to unlimber the left hook, the balance started to shift in his favour. He had much catching up to do, and finally scored his first round, the fourth. There was little hint of what was to come, and Ingemar Johansson (who was in the audience again) may not have been particularly impressed (not that he would need to worry overmuch, in fact) but after a minute of the fifth round de Klerk was unwise enough to drop his guard as the pair disengaged from a clinch, and Henry let rip with the hammer.

  The blinding, perfectly timed left hook that he released detonated under the challenger’s jaw and the rib-bending right hook to the liver that followed it dropped an agonised de Klerk for a count of nine. But the South African was brave: he rose, and Henry went in to finish the job, assaulting his opponent as before and dropping him again before referee Eugene Henderson finally stepped in and stopped the fight. De Klerk, rugged and extraordinarily courageous, had nothing left. After the fight, it was discovered that his jaw had been broken in two places. Most observers felt that the fight should have been stopped earlier or even that there was a technical knockout the first time; the count had perhaps been a little slow.

  The Boxing News was appreciative: ‘Cooper needed no advice from manager Wicks as to what to do. He stalked across and belted the open mouthed and glassy-eyed Springbok with all he had…’ The non-specialist press, however, was rather more mixed. A red-blooded reviewer of the fight in the Western Mail, Alan Wood, was deeply impressed:

  Cooper is a vicious opportunist…in he went to pound de Klerk to the canvas for a further count of nine. As he staggered back to his feet Cooper went in again to beat the South African around the he
ad and body and the referee had to call a halt. It was a perfect performance from Cooper and I would not now like to forecast the result of his next meeting with Erskine. He could well prove the best heavyweight fighter we have seen in twenty years.

  The reporter on The Times was less enthusiastic, if somewhat toadyish in another direction: ‘I turned to Ingemar Johansson, the world heavyweight champion, who was sitting in the third row of the press seats, and he remarked “Impressive.” True enough, but Johansson could have finished the job four rounds earlier.’ There really is no pleasing some people.

  Mischievously, or perhaps in response to this rather softball questioning, Johansson remarked enigmatically to the Daily Mail, ‘I’d rather meet Cooper than Erskine.’

  For Joe Erskine was on the card that night, too. He was fighting Bruno Scarabellin, a 30-year-old (and extremely game) pork butcher from Venice and, while Erskine outpointed the hugely tough Italian fairly comprehensively, he did not dispatch him with the finesse that the Welsh audience quite expected. Erskine therefore also witnessed the quite pitiless attack that Henry had unleashed on the hapless Gawie de Klerk. Perhaps that was unwise of him; Erskine was challenging Henry for the British and Empire titles on 17 November. While he may well have dominated Henry in the two professional bouts they had fought before, he could surely see that while this was clearly the same man he was also by now a radically different opponent. Something had changed.

  Henry’s third encounter with Joe Erskine would provide one of the British sport’s most enduring images, that of a completely unconscious Erskine spread across the bottom rope, dead to the world. The fight, at Earl’s Court, was to be controversial, in fact, but not immediately for that reason.

  Despite the aggression and maturity that Henry had shown four times in a row, there was still a measure of uncertainty on the part of the pundits as to whether this was merely a ‘good run’ or something more than that. Was this a re-invented and remotivated Cooper who could now be taken seriously as a world-class fighter? Ever pessimistic, Donald Saunders of the Daily Telegraph had his doubts. In an unusually convoluted piece on the morning of the fight he wrote:

  Erskine, as he proved when out-speeding and out-smarting Pastrano, on his night is the best boxing heavyweight in the world. Cooper, by stopping Richardson, indicated that his left hook is as powerful as that of any current heavyweight and his brilliant points win over London also shows that he knows plenty about the Noble Art. In effect, the artist who cannot punch opposes the craftsman who hits hard. With some temerity I chose the artist to triumph.

  Saunders would see for himself later that evening the degree to which Henry’s aggression, quite counter to his nature, had asserted itself.

  Henry started as he meant to go on. In round one, when Erskine slipped, Henry caught him with a mighty left, which dropped him to the canvas. When he got up, Henry simply hit him again. Erskine was able to respond with a few overarm rights, one of which opened a cut at the side of Henry’s left eye. It was an eventful first round, and Danny Holland produced the Vaseline/adrenalin rather earlier than he would have liked.

  Erskine, technically one of the best boxers the British ring had ever produced, closed in for round two, negating Henry’s slightly longer reach, but some of the best punches travel mere inches, and a hard hook to the body had the Welshman in trouble again at the end of round two. One spectator commented: ‘Henry Cooper won this fight in the first round.’

  And he may well have done, but there were, in fact, many more to go. At the end of round five Henry clobbered Erskine a ‘split second’ after the bell after the challenger dropped his guard. It was a perfect but quite undefended right. It was indeed a blatant foul and there were predictable and justified howls of protest from Erskine’s corner. Benny Jacobs, by now reinstated – reluctantly – by Erskine as his manager, leaped into the ring and berated first Wicks and then referee Eugene Henderson. Henderson calmly ordered Jacobs out while Erskine’s corner men worked frantically to revive their dazed prospect. At the start of the sixth Henderson cautioned both fighters, but particularly Henry. He may well have been too surprised to issue a formal warning. Henderson had witnessed (very close up indeed) the damage that Henry had inflicted on de Klerk, but sneak punches had played no role in that.

  Erskine continued gamely but it was clear that he was fighting by ‘courage and instinct only, as one report had it. The end came in the twelfth round. Henry dropped his hapless foe for two counts of seven before lashing out with a blinding combination left/right to the jaw that propelled poor Erskine clean off his feet and left him draped inelegantly over the bottom rope, totally out cold. There were only five seconds to go and Henderson, who, as we have already seen, was not a referee to stop a fight unless he absolutely had to, declared the contest over, which it certainly was. It had been a brutal experience for Erskine, a real heartbreaker; truly, this was not the same Henry Cooper to whom he had given those boxing lessons before. ‘We were really worried,’ says Henry. ‘We were convinced that Joe had broken his back.’

  Even with this totally authoritative (if perhaps slightly grubby) display, which involved Henry giving perhaps the finest technician in the sport the worst thrashing he ever received, the praise was faint. ‘…I cannot see Cooper ever taking that crown off Ingemar Johansson, who has already beaten him in five rounds,’ said Harry Carpenter. ‘Cooper can be hit too easily ever to stand a chance with a really heavy puncher.’

  Which rather begs the question: what on earth does a man have to do in order to be taken seriously? In fact, Henry would be denied again a chance at the world title, a match to which he had every right since his win over Folley, for in June 1960 Floyd Patterson, driven by the humiliation of losing his title to Johansson a year before, knocked the giant Swede out. In five rounds.

  With the recovery of Patterson’s crown (a unique event at the time) the US heavyweight division promptly deteriorated into an unseemly farce; Cus d’Amato, Patterson’s manager, knew full well that the only challenger who had, by right of conquest, an entitlement to fight for the title was Sonny Liston, who had shot up the rankings to undisputed number one contender with dizzying speed by stopping Nino Valdes, Zora Folley and Eddie Machen, who were all themselves fighters whom d’Amato had refused. D’Amato was no less protective of his boy than Jim Wicks was of Henry. Clearly, Sonny Liston was not going to go away unless somebody shot him (a thing which more than one policeman would have been happy to do had anyone asked them nicely) and so a ridiculous logjam built up – everybody wanted a crack at Patterson, nobody wanted a crack at Liston, but Liston’s brooding presence, coupled with Patterson’s (or d’Amato’s) clear reluctance to engage with any of the top five (apart from Johansson, whom he was to beat again in 1961) meant that the world title as defined by the World Boxing Council (WBC) was quite literally inaccessible. It was to stay in virtual cold storage until Liston finally got his chance in September 1962, proving that Patterson and d’Amato had been entirely right to avoid him – he totally flattened Patterson in a terrifying display of barely controlled aggression – in just 126 seconds. The bad boy, who had announced before this fight that he would like to ‘run Patterson over with a truck’, had arrived on the world stage.

  For Henry Cooper, though, these dramas were all in the future as he reflected upon his remarkable transformation. He had won five bouts in succession, including the one against the US number one contender (as Folley had been then) and he had even beaten his nemesis Erskine, but he was still not, as we have seen, quite yet the darling of the press. The pundits were not yet believers, indeed many never would be. However, he had other objectives to fulfil as the 1950s gave way to a new decade – for Henry Cooper, British and Empire heavyweight champion, was engaged to be married.

  * The character of ‘Mountain Rivers’ played by Anthony Quinn in ‘Requiem for a Heavyweight’ (1962) was loosely based on Nino Valdes. Aptly, his crooked manager was played by Jackie Gleason, who was, so far as I am aware, no relation of Bobby�
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  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A MARRIED MAN

  ‘Chance only favours the prepared mind…’

  LOUIS PASTEUR, (1854).

  In their stately peregrinations around London’s better restaurants, Henry and Jim Wicks had settled into a comfortable routine. Monday usually saw them at Simpson’s in the Strand and Friday usually saw them at Sheekey’s, the famous fish restaurant off the Charing Cross Road quite near Jack Solomons’ Soho office. In between, there were rich pickings to be had in a bewildering variety of places; lunch with Solomons, a decreasingly frequent event as he surrendered his turf to Levene, would invariably be at Jack Isow’s, the kosher restaurant in Brewer Street. Then, of course, there were the Italian bistros.

  Henry had been casting an appreciative eye over the new waitress at Peter Mario’s, a restaurant in Gerrard Street, for some time before he finally summoned up the courage to ask her out. She was the niece of Maria, the wife of the owner, Peter Rizzi, and her name was Albina Genepri. She had in fact been in living London since 1948. Forty-five years on, she recalled to me their disastrous first date:

  He asked me what I was doing one Saturday night, and I said ‘nothing’. So he asked me if I’d like to go to the cinema and I said ‘yes’, but I really didn’t think he was serious. I thought he was taking the mickey! He was so tall and I was so tiny, and I simply couldn’t imagine what he saw in me. So, I didn’t think that he meant it, but he turned up on the Saturday evening, and I gave him a cup of coffee and just carried on working. After about 40 minutes he asked me when I was going to be ready and I said I was busy. Oh dear! He didn’t come back for three weeks, I was really worried.