Fight by Fight: Gerry Cooney

[bollocks]

The Spoon would have flattened Cooney by about round 6 IMO

[Caractacus]

Cooney would have probably knocked "The Spoon" out in the first round, just like "The Bonecrusher" did .

[Caractacus]

Sometimes it pays to roll the dice and gamble...

[Ambling Alp II]

Witherspoon had his ups and downs. He fought many of the other top heavyweights of the era. Most were competitive fights. Won some, lost some. Deserves credit for fighting some tough competition.
I do think some people do hold Witherspoon in higher esteem than they should. He stopped Bruno in 11 rounds. Don't think he stopped any one of note (unless you count Tillis) in the mid-rounds or earlier. The chances of him stopping Cooney by then are remote.

Cooney only fought Holmes. He did do well even though he lost. His management knew it was too risky for him to fight guys like Witherspoon. Had he fought them before Holmes and lost, a huge payday would have gone out the window. Had he fought someone like Witherspoon after Holmes and lost, he would have not got the big paydays against Spinks and Foreman.

Would be interesting to see his career earnings compared to Witherspoon.

[hhaehre]

Cooney would have probably knocked "The Spoon" out in the first round, just like "The Bonecrusher" did .

I remember reading that Witherspoon was out of shape for the second Bonecrusher Smith fight.

That was his usual state, out of shape. All because of Don King naturally.

[DrDuke]

Witherspoon looks better than Cooney in many aspects, from the overall resume and a fight against Holmes, until the boxing abilities. Cooney carries more of a puncher's chance there.

[HomicideHenry]

Definitely would have improved his performance. But even at that I am shocked and appalled how poor Cooney was matched up over time. How anyone honestly thought he would succeed without any real tests is kind of perplexing.

Cooney became one of boxing's most popular fighters while he was still just a prospect, still in his developmental period. I'd say that occurred sometime between May 1980, when he beat Jimmy Young, up through May 1981, when Gerry KO'd Ken Norton. That's when media went nuts about Cooney.

By that time, the sheer amount of money involved in a potential Cooney-Holmes fight was so huge that nobody, especially Cooney's managers, was going to jeopardize the pot of gold. Therefore Cooney's development was frozen right then and there, so he could be rushed immediately into the Holmes bout. Nobody wanted to take a chance of ruining that fight by exposing Cooney to a tough opponet who could threaten him. At least not until the Holmes fight was done and out of the way.

Oh I'm aware that greed has dictated careers more than anything else in the boxing business. The Jack Johnson "great white hope" era is probably an excellent example where men who had a modicum of talent or ability were pushed way too damn fast strictly because the money was insane for the time period.

The men who took their time on the way up, like Jack Dempsey, ended up succeeding when they very easily could have been cannon fodder for Sam Langford, Joe Jeanette, Sam McVea, etc. because everybody was crazy about trying to knock off the top black heavyweights.

With Cooney... It was the fact that there literally was nobody who was interesting. That time period of the late seventies and early eighties was literally one of the weakest eras in heavyweight history. Add on an unpopular champion who was argumentative with the press, etc--- everybody just bought into Cooney hoping and wishing so bad he amounted to something.

It was a perfect storm scenario to make an incredible amount of money with a guy who was basically unproven. And it's a shame, he should have been matched tougher and would have benefited greatly from getting in some battles. It wouldn't have hurt him one bit if he lost along the way, because it would have forced him to have improved.

Then again outside of Victor Valle I don't think nobody in the Cooney camp actually gave a crap about Gerry as a fighter. So maybe he never would have improved, because they fed him so much hype that when he did lose he basically mentally gave up on the fight game.

[Caractacus]

I don't think anyone was ever excited to want to see a Tim Witherspoon fight tho.
with Cooney he was either going to knock out his opponent in an exciting manner
or loose and embarres himself and his fans that were rooting for him.