Henry Cooper

by Robert Edwards

  There was some flak here for Albina, though. Almost as soon as the fight was over (Lily had given her a slightly wincing blow by blow commentary) the Italian press were on the phone. When asked her opinion of what had taken place, she stated categorically: ‘Piero Tomasoni should be ashamed to be an Italian.’

  Unsurprisingly, her remarks were spun somewhat: ‘Henry Cooper’s wife ashamed to be born Italian,’ raged back the headlines, which created some trouble in the village of Boccacci, near Parma, where her parents lived and farmed. It created trouble with Wicks, too, and he reiterated the importance of his previous message: ‘I received another phone call from him, telling me to mind my business,’ she recalled.

  This had been an exhausting, painful and, despite its championship status, trivial fight, and it would be Henry’s only one that year, as 1969 was the year of further controversy; the year when the British Board of Boxing Control proved that, although it was competent (most of the time), it was also politically naive and in thrall to other interests rather than being truly independent. It was to be a lowering experience for Henry, Jim Wicks and the millions of Cooper fans who, irrespective of their opinion of boxing, were coming to adore him.

  At 34, Henry knew full well that his time was running out for another crack at the Big One, the world title. Since Muhammad Ali had been stripped of his own world title in April 1967, over his refusal to accept being drafted for the Vietnam War, the American heavyweight division had undergone yet another unseemly spasm over who should replace him. Naturally, because of the vast amount of money involved, there were several attempts to manage a result, the most persuasive having been the WBA, an organization that enjoyed the widest support (45 out of 50 US states), who announced their roster of eliminators. It did not include Sonny Liston, but perhaps that was fair enough – he had already by then been knocked out by his sparring partner, Leotis Martin, who was definitely not highly rated. Further, Joe Frazier refused to take part in The WBA contest, preferring to line up alongside the New York Athletic Commission, Norris’s old fiefdom and their version of the title as represented by the World Boxing Council.

  The WBA champion was announced to be Jimmy Ellis, Muhammad Ali’s old friend and sparring partner. Of the two men, Ellis was clearly going to be the better match, and Henry challenged him, only to be told that the BBBC would not sanction the fight as a championship bout but merely an eliminator; they were firmly lined up behind the NBC.

  Rather impulsively, Henry resigned his British heavyweight title in protest but the BBBC were quite unmoved. They had in all probability expected his retirement soon anyway and seemed not to care less. A cynic might say that the BBBC had earned as much out of Henry as they were going to and there were other fighters on the way up. Joe Bugner, a strapping lad of 15 stone and only 19 years of age, had just won his fifteenth fight, for example, and was clearly being groomed for a crack at Henry’s titles.

  But there were intimations of age for Henry and the wear and tear that went with that. One of Henry’s party pieces at ringside and in the gym was Cossack dancing – it was good exercise and pleased his fans. While demonstrating the trick at a well-attended training session, though, he managed to wreck the cartilage in his right knee. He had encountered trouble with it before but that had been seen off with painful but necessary cortisone jabs. This was much more serious. Even worse was the condition of his left elbow by now; the wear in the joint was potentially handicapping and the seizures after a fight were becoming both more painful and lasting longer. Few but insiders were aware that for up to a week after a fight the left arm was almost useless. Given that he barely ever used his right hand, in the ring or out of it, unless he had to, then it was clear that the clock was ticking, and loudly, and that both Henry and Wicks could hear it. Nothing was said and nor did it need to be. Wicks, at 75 years of age, had been through this depressing cycle many times before.

  However, Henry reasoned that there were a few paydays left, hence the attempt to match Ellis. But unless the cartilage was attended to he was unlikely to match anyone. The operation, the one that footballers dread and with good reason, was swiftly arranged and went well, although two weeks of total immobility for the right leg were both frustrating and damaging. The 2-inch loss of circumference of the right thigh during recuperation illustrates very well the level of fitness enjoyed by a fighter.

  Of course, footballers understand these matters very well indeed and their clubs have developed to a fine art the rehabilitation training necessary in order to recover. The nearest club to the Cooper household was Arsenal and so, after a fortnight of inactivity, it was to Highbury Stadium that Henry commuted, Monday to Friday, for weeks of the hardest training he had ever endured. To a boxer, strong legs are useful rather than vital, merely the means of delivery for the punch. To a footballer, they are everything and, after experiencing the rigours of the Arsenal circuit training programme, Henry developed a profound respect for the regime and an even greater respect for the club.

  The level of training required to recover the status quo was huge, so much so that Henry was not in a position to defend his European title, which, under EBU rules he was obliged to do within six months of every defence of it. Very practically, he resigned it before the EBU took it away again, to concentrate on fitness. He was to discover that, even though he was only 35, the work rate required to gain back all that he had lost was now of a wholly different order.

  But now there was some unpleasantness in the Cooper camp. Danny Holland, as Wicks’s trainer of record, simply wanted more money. The convention, that a trainer receives a fee of ten per cent of a fighter’s earnings, which comes from the manager’s take, was quite a normal one. Unfortunately for Holland, he had always been signed up on salary and wanted to change the arrangement. In fact, he was already the highest paid trainer in the country, as Wicks was not an ungenerous man, and he was earning in the region of £4,000 a year. But with the large purses that Wicks was generating on Henry’s behalf, he wanted more.

  Holland, though never really trained Henry in the way that Angelo Dundee trained Ali, or Cus d’Amato trained Patterson; his responsibilities were by now chiefly to do with cuts, for Henry had really always trained himself, with George’s assistance. There had been friction between Wicks and Holland over the arrangements for some time and they came to a head just as the team were preparing to take back the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles, which Henry had surrendered. ‘On the Friday before we were due to set up camp, Danny rang Jim to tell him that he wasn’t going to go unless he was paid more money’ says Henry. ‘Jim told him that if he wasn’t satisfied he had better go somewhere else. Danny said, “All right, I will.”’ And that was how it ended after 14 years.

  Obviously, a replacement had to be found, despite the fact that Henry had experienced very little eye trouble since the plastic surgeon had operated on him, but this was no time to take risks. Eddie Thomas, the ex-British welterweight champion, was happy to step forward and assume the role. As both a fighter and a manager Thomas was a figure who commanded enormous respect and also understood the importance of the big moment, which might unnerve a more junior corner man. Crucially, he was accomplished at dealing with cuts. But cuts were less important now than age was.

  Henry found that he was not knocking over sparring partners with the same ease as before. Certainly, they were not knocking him over either, but it was another indication that he was, if realistic, looking at the end of his career. The objective now became simple: recover fitness, take back the titles, British and European, which he had surrendered, and aim to retire undefeated. The recognized world title, given that Joe Frazier now held it, was a most unlikely prospect, and anyway was not a match that Wicks would have sanctioned willingly.

  But Jack Bodell, who had seized the title after Henry had surrendered it, was quite another matter. Henry had stopped him in two rounds in 1967 and saw no reason to imagine that anything had changed. Bodell, a southpaw and somewhat ungainly with it, was no
t a particularly easy man to fight, but Henry discovered, on the evening of 24 March 1970, that the new champion had matured somewhat. ‘Having the title certainly gives a man something,’ says Henry. Although he was still a clumsy sod, he took me the distance.’

  Henry won this fight by a very large margin, in fact, but, as we have seen, a left-hooker opposing a southpaw is never a simple task; it was more a matter of awkward jabbing, although he managed to put Bodell on the canvas three times without knocking him out. So, a pleasing fight, not merely to recover the title, but the knowledge that he could, after such a long layoff, still box 15 rounds with a younger man and still win. But while Henry was clearly supremely fit, thanks to the ministrations of the Arsenal trainer, George Wright, his left elbow was now completely seized up for over a week. Knees, Arsenal could help with but elbows, alas, were off-limits for obvious professional reasons.

  What Henry regarded as his European title was by now in the hands of Spain’s José Urtain, a robust slugger from the Basque Country, whose spare-time hobby was the minority sport of championship rock-lifting, so he was clearly a tough prospect, if perhaps a little unrefined. Harry Levene paid an astonishing amount of money to attract the reluctant Spaniard to London and in Henry’s opinion rather over-priced the fight but, after a burlesque of confusion and uncertainty, Levene finally nailed his man. Quite possibly the promoter thought that Urtain was trying to dodge this fight and he even con sidered applying to the EBU to strip him of the title, suggesting Henry take on Jurgen Blin instead. Wicks was having none of it and sat back to watch the fun as a panicked Levene tore all over Europe trying to track the champion down. When he did, he was in no position to haggle overmuch, and undertook to guarantee him £50,000, win or lose – a great deal of money.

  In the event, Henry stopped Urtain fairly easily, despite a cut eye in the first round, a dangerous right swing, which gave him pause for thought in the seventh and a succession of head butts throughout the bout. Henry drew on his vast experiences to produce some of what are euphemistically termed ‘professional touches’ himself. According to The Times, one observer, an unnamed former manager, remarked admiringly: ‘’Enery was gettin’ away wiv murder in there.’

  The referee, Bernard Mascot, finally assented to stop the fight in the ninth, after Urtain’s corner had pleaded their case.

  Having recovered both his titles, the prospect of retirement now loomed. There was an unspoken assumption between Henry and Wicks that the end was near, which would certainly relieve Albina, who, while she hated the prospect of her husband being hurt, had tactfully refrained from urging him to quit, apart from that one previous wince-inducing effort. It was hard for her, and Henry had always realized this: ‘I knew that at 36, when the tell-tale signs arrive, when you take ten days to recover from an injury, when previously it would have taken three, that the game was up. One day in the gym, Jim looked at me and I looked at him, and that was that – this would be the last.’

  One more defence, then, and that would probably be that. The challenger was Joe Bugner, the giant 21-year-old, originally from Hungary, whose family had fled to Britain in the wake of the Soviet repression of the 1956 uprising. Now a naturalized Brit, and therefore eligible to contend for the British, European and Commonwealth titles, Bugner was 6ft 4in and 15½ stone, one of the largest heavyweights on the planet. The match was made for 16 March 1971.

  But Bugner was not ‘reckoned’ by the cognoscenti; big and strong though he undoubtedly was, the press corps viewed with some scepticism his extreme youth against a record of 33 victories out of 34 fights. It was pointed out that most of the opponents were well past their best; even phrases like ‘manufactured fighter’ were whispered. It was widely held that Bugner, a very telegenic young man, was essentially a media creation, the perfect ‘golden boy’. He was certainly nice-looking and blessed with an impressive physique, but could he, would he, fight? The same question had, of course, been asked of another ‘golden boy’, Billy Walker, and Walker had answered, and eloquently; in doing so he had also demonstrated that, whatever his shortcomings as a boxer may have been, cowardice was not among them. Walker had shown, possibly unwisely, that he was prepared to take two or even three punches in order to land one. The same could not in all seriousness be said of Joe Bugner.

  This criticism of Bugner was probably most hurtful to one so young, and indeed several commentators sprang to his defence, but always in the back of their mind was that in facing Henry, young Joe was taking on the most experienced tactician in the European ring, a ring-savvy survivor whose punch, although it had not been unlimbered overmuch, was still a truly frightening attribute.

  Over the years, ’Enery’s ’ammer, as Wicks had christened it all those years before, has almost developed a personality of its own – part of the man, certainly, but to some it was almost alongside him in the ring like a mentor rather than actually attached to his left shoulder. To those who admired Henry, and they were counted in their millions, there were many who detested boxing as a barbaric throwback. They could morally embrace Henry as a fine man but they almost preferred to think of his major asset as an entirely separate entity. They saw in Henry Cooper a model of probity, dignity and quiet pride. His punch, however, was still a truly terrifying thing. That truth was very straightforward, as the Institute of Aviation Medicine had revealed at around the time of the Urtain fight, which had possibly made the Spaniard so reluctant to engage.

  Interested in the physics of boxing, the simple impact of that famous punch, the RAF team arrived at the room over the Thomas à Becket with a quite remarkable camera; it would shoot 1,000 frames per second and even then it could not really witness the speed of Henry’s left hook. After a little bit of work with pencil and paper, it was calculated, with some disbelief, that from inception to delivery, over a distance of approximately six inches, Henry’s left fist landed on target after an acceleration of over 30 times the force of gravity, with an impact of more than four tons per square inch. That entire process took 7/ 100ths of a second. Truly, it was a gift from God. A punch like this one, which would knock out a horse, simply cannot be developed. ‘If it was that good then why didn’t I knock them all over?’ was Henry’s predictable response.

  Bearing in mind that Henry was at the end of his career when these observations were made, with an audible crepitus from the elbow behind that left fist, not to mention the pre-existing knuckle damage, then we can only speculate as to its quality when his career was at its peak and pity those men who had to endure its effects.

  Training for what would be Henry’s last fight was as rigorous as ever. The team stayed at the Clive Hotel, Hampstead, and training took place at the BBBC’s own gymnasium on Haverstock Hill. Immediately, Henry realized that he was measurably slower than even a year before. Sprains, which were annoyingly frequent, took far longer to mend than before and one or two of the sparring partners were remaining obstinately vertical. Further, the speedballs were not disintegrating with the same pleasing regularity. Over the years Henry had gained a reputation for being rather hard on sparring partners, but he had rationalized this. ‘Well, that’s what they were for,’ he says. ‘They were getting paid about £20 a round, which frankly is more than they could probably expect actually fighting.’

  Now it was all a little different. A fortnight before the fight, his thoughts on retirement finally crystallized; he was chatting with Albina on the telephone one evening and he simply came out with it. He had already decided to retire should he by some unlikely misfortune actually lose this upcoming fight, but his performance in the gym had pointed out to him that he was simply getting too old for this. No, he would call it a day, come what may. It was as if a great weight had been lifted and, predictably, Albina was relieved and delighted. For the remaining fortnight of training after that telephone call he concentrated fully on the matter in hand. He had shared his thoughts – finally – with Wicks, who may have been relieved, but who also rationalized that there would be no shortage of work of a publ
icity nature. Henry could easily spend the rest of his working life doing something he already did superbly well – just being Henry Cooper.

  So, by the time the eve of the fight arrived, confidence was high; the Cooper camp knew full well that Bugner had never fought a full 15-round contest before, that Henry was as fit as he could be and that there was certainly enough power in the excruciatingly painful left jab or hook to give a good account of himself. The betting odds rather reflected this: Henry was 5:2 to win on the evening before the fight. Donald Saunders commented:

  The enormity of Bugner’s task can be gauged from the fact that, since winning the British and Commonwealth titles in January 1959, Cooper has beaten off the challenges of Erskine (three times), Dick Richardson, Brian London, Johnny Prescott and Billy Walker – without once being in serious danger of defeat.

  Rather to Wicks’s concern, the odds had rather changed by the morn ing of the fight, though too late to be reflected by the press coverage, which had been predictably extensive. Wicks was suddenly in receipt of a flurry of nervous telephone calls from mystified bookies, including Albert Dimes, as a tidal wave of bets was simultaneously placed up and down the country, the vast bulk of them in the London area and the vast bulk of them for Bugner to win. Was Henry ill? Had he hurt himself in training? The questions were asked. Calmly, Wicks denied that anything was wrong (which was entirely true) but this development may well have given him pause for thought. Of course, betting coups were nothing new to him – he could remember some memorable ones of his own, after all – but he was experienced enough to realize that they were usually unwelcome. He decided to keep quiet to Henry for this was not a matter of boxing, it was purely a matter of money. His own was firmly on Henry.