BoxRec

never know what to make of him. i think
he was a solid boxer. not as good as the
irish thought he was, but no fluke either.

He may have been a bit underrated at some point, it's the other way now. Everyone calls him underrated to the point that, if anything, he's overrated. He moved pretty well for a big guy and had a nice hook. Absolutely horrific defense.

He was simply a decent fighter in a great era.

uptconnect wrote:He was simply a decent fighter in a great era.

really? i think the 80s were better than people at
the time thought they were, but "great" seems a
stretch. "decent fighter" i agree.

The Heavyweights weren't great, the rest of the fighters certainly were.

sorry, my bad- accidently posted in the wrong forum ...

it was the golden era from about 1980 to 1995

the heavies went from Holmes to Tyson and Holyfield

as an afterthought there were certainly some WBA champs who had the potential to be great .....Dokes and Page in particular

Holmes is unarguably a true great

the Cooney effort was certainly worthy of praise but 'racial' marketing made it overshadow other huge efforts to rest the crown , namely Snipes, witherspoon, Bonecrusher, williams...all of whom would possibly have beaten anyone but Larry that night.

After only a handful of championship rounds he fought Holmes ????? Never could figure that out either. Don't know why his team didn't let him box 8 or 10 more guys and learn a little more. I'll tell ya folks that fight with Holmes was a good one. Gerry did well.

max hord wrote:After only a handful of championship rounds he fought Holmes ????? Never could figure that out either. Don't know why his team didn't let him box 8 or 10 more guys and learn a little more. I'll tell ya folks that fight with Holmes was a good one. Gerry did well.

10 million dollars speaks loudly.

max hord wrote:After only a handful of championship rounds he fought Holmes ????? Never could figure that out either. Don't know why his team didn't let him box 8 or 10 more guys and learn a little more. I'll tell ya folks that fight with Holmes was a good one. Gerry did well.

It's a shame Gerry didn't build upon his effort against Holmes ; he only engaged with the worn out 70's fighters..Lyle, Norton, Young etc when he could have done battle with the relevant fighters of his era like Tubbs, Witherspoon, Berbick, Weaver, Coetzee, Carl Williams, Page etc etc. .

that damn Charlie !

eb

Yeah, it would have been interesting if he would have had at least a couple of fights against those types of guys. He did put up a good fight vs Holmes; much better than most of Holmes' challengers.

One big reason why he didn't have a better career was his management team; they were not really boxing people. They just wanted the big $ in mega fights and didn't want or care about developing him. They should have put him in against a couple of real contenders before the Holmes fight.

After the Holmes fight, they should got him an easy fight, then he should have been brought him along against better and better competition. Instead, he fought irregularly and against weak opposition; Eddie Gregg was OK, but that was about it until he fought Spinks.

i don't know much about him (that's why i started the
thread), but from what i understand the whole holmes
endeavour had this great-white-hope undercurrent
and after that cooney kind of felt he let many people
down. flip side of hyping a fight to the extreme. so for
him in a way that was kind of the end of things.

i would think that holmes would have beaten him even
if gerry had been build up more carefully, but that is
nothing to be ashamed of. holmes is an undisputable
ATG10 heavyweight.

all in all i see a great fighter of the second row in him.
like ron lyle or earnie shavers. on their best night each
of them gives every ATG a very tough night.

agree

I've been in some very heated debates about Cooney's worth as a fighter on this forum since I have been a member. I won't bring up ancient history, but I think the best word to describe Cooney is potential. He had the potential to of been heavyweight champion of the world. At 6'5"-6'7" and having the amateur pedigree that he had, in combination with all the heart and will you could ever ask of a fighter he was a wrecking ball. His left hook may very well been the single hardest punch of the 1980's and 1990's. I think someone said it best earlier on this thread that the driving force behind Cooney's great fame, as well as his short comings, was the fact that his managers were not boxing people. A often forgotten fact in the life and career of Cooney is originally he was offered to Cus D'Amato, and the deal was for Cus to be both a manager and trainer of Cooney. Cus turned it down, saying that he couldn't be both and do the kid justice. SO D'Amato recommended Victor Valle to Cooney to take over the young fighter's training and not long after the 'Wacko Twins' became Cooney's managers. Had it went the route of working with D'Amato, who knows how it could have turned out.

wow ... thnx for that piece on cus.
thread already paid of for me ... :) ...

I'd consider Cooney a couple of levels below Lyle & Shavers.

Agree with Henry..........ain't no "if's" that matter.

max hord wrote:After only a handful of championship rounds he fought Holmes ????? Never could figure that out either. Don't know why his team didn't let him box 8 or 10 more guys and learn a little more.

10 milions $$$ was guaranteed and available with no delay. If they decided to follow your way, it would take additional 2 years (roughly) and there is a good chance Cooney would lose some of those 8-10 fights - and the possibility for this kind of payday as well.

Even if he wins all those fights, that does not mean he automatically wins with Holmes... and only in this case (if he wins the title and defends it) this kind of investment would be beneficial. Sounds more than risky to me.

gregor wrote:

max hord wrote:After only a handful of championship rounds he fought Holmes ????? Never could figure that out either. Don't know why his team didn't let him box 8 or 10 more guys and learn a little more.

10 milions $$$ was guaranteed and available with no delay. If they decided to follow your way, it would take additional 2 years (roughly) and there is a good chance Cooney would lose some of those 8-10 fights - and the possibility for this kind of payday as well.

Even if he wins all those fights, that does not mean he automatically wins with Holmes... and only in this case (if he wins the title and defends it) this kind of investment would be beneficial. Sounds more than risky to me.

plus i am not sure at the time of their fight if
holmes had that ATG status we give him today.
so they could as well have overestimated their
fighter's ability as underestimated holmes'.

He was rushed into fighting Holmes. He was a solid contender.

The 1980s was a poor era for Heavyweights. If anyone tells you anything other than that they are not worth listening to.

Nile4000 wrote:Tex Cobb should have been looked at as an opponent for Gerry.As well as Gerrie Coetzee, Big John Tate, and Bernardo Mercado.

Here's some boxing irony for you. Gerry Cooney was scheduled to fight Earnie Shavers, but a cut in training prevented it from happening. Who got the call to fight Shavers? Tex Cobb. Cooney was working color commentary for the fight.

Il Duce wrote:The Davis Brothers "Eddie and Johnny" each KO'd Gerry in the Amateurs, where he
could not be protected.

The 'chin' was always fragile, and everybody around Gerry knew it.

I never saw how Cooney's chin was fragile. He took a tremendous amount of punches from Holmes throughout the contest, and it was sheer exhaustion that finally brought Cooney to the canvas. His kayo losses to Spinks and Foreman, were simply matters of huge amounts of inactivity.

man wrote:

gregor wrote:

max hord wrote:After only a handful of championship rounds he fought Holmes ????? Never could figure that out either. Don't know why his team didn't let him box 8 or 10 more guys and learn a little more.

10 milions $$$ was guaranteed and available with no delay. If they decided to follow your way, it would take additional 2 years (roughly) and there is a good chance Cooney would lose some of those 8-10 fights - and the possibility for this kind of payday as well.

Even if he wins all those fights, that does not mean he automatically wins with Holmes... and only in this case (if he wins the title and defends it) this kind of investment would be beneficial. Sounds more than risky to me.

plus i am not sure at the time of their fight if
holmes had that ATG status we give him today.
so they could as well have overestimated their
fighter's ability as underestimated holmes'.

I think you can argue that they made a good decision in taking the big $ vs Holmes; at least financially.
However, after that fight, he had the big $ and was still young. They could have developed him; haad him fight an easy one, then a couple of tough gatekeepers, and build him up to fights vs Dokes, Weaver, Coeztee etc. He should have been fighting those guys in the mid-1980s.