Mind you, in a way I guess they were two different people because although the Ali who filled Clay’s boots had just as much to say for himself, a lot of the fun had gone out of him as he became poisoned by politics and bigoted thoughts. Instead of the old banter and blarney to try to get bums on seats, he was trying to convert people to his way of thinking with what amounted to sermons and hard-line political speeches. Thanks to the influence of Albina I had converted to Roman Catholicism, but I didn’t go around shoving my beliefs down people’s throats.
Many cynics were doubting his sincerity, but I’m sure it went much deeper than just trying to get out of fighting in Vietnam – his ‘I’ve got no quarrel with them Vietcong’ quote put a lot of white Americans in lynching mood and his stance was costing him an absolute fortune in lost commercial and endorsement contracts.
Leading up to our fight he had got himself heavily involved with Black Power spokesman Michael X and then Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad, whose son Herbert took over Ali’s management after he had broken with the syndicate of white Kentucky businessmen who had handled him in his early years as a professional. Some saw it as out of the frying pan and into the fire.
In fact it was Michael X who made the first approach about staging a world title fight in Britain between Ali and me. Jim Wicks gave him short shrift and told him he would be dealing with Harry Levene, Mickey Duff and entrepreneur Jarvis Astaire, who held the ace card because of his Viewsport company that was a pioneer of closed-circuit promotions. This, of course, was way before satellite TV. Just imagine what we could have earned had there been pay-per-view television then!
The contest was beamed live to cinemas and theatres in every major city in Britain apart from London. Ali was on a guaranteed £100,000 purse – a huge amount at the time – plus considerable ancillary rights, such as North and South American closed-circuit income and television, radio and film rights. It was the most successful promotion in the history of British boxing.
I was on my best-ever payday of a guaranteed £50,000, plus a percentage of the European and Far East TV and closed-circuit takings. It may not sound a fortune in these days when world champions can demand millions of dollars but believe me, it was tasty take-home pay in that pre-decimalisation era.
We attracted 45,000 spectators to Highbury – home of my favourite football team, Arsenal – and hundreds of thousands watched the fight on screens in places like Tokyo, Bangkok, Dortmund, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Manchester. I don’t kid myself they were queuing up to see me, but the legend that was, uh, Muhammad Ali, even though most people continued to refer to him as Cassius Clay in the build-up for our fight. Many of them were willing me to land my left hook on his chin again, and I was told that the majority of viewers in America – the white ones – were supporting me. Fancy being hated in your own country. Thank goodness I’ve never experienced that and always fed off my wonderful home support.
Despite the spiteful Press treatment he had been getting in the United States, Ali received a rapturous welcome on his arrival in London. There was no doubting his popularity was, if anything, on the increase outside his homeland, and he commented quietly and not in his publicity drum-beating way: ‘I’ve been driven out of my own country because of my religious beliefs, yet every other country in the world welcomes me. It’s a strange feeling. All I ask is the same treatment and respect in my country as other boxers and athletes get from Uncle Sam.’
When it was pointed out to him that other American boxers and athletes were not refusing to join the US Army, he replied: ‘My religion is against war and I am within my legal and moral rights to claim exemption on the basis of being a Conscientious Objector. If I weren’t the heavyweight champion of the world there would be none of this fuss. While I’m here in Britain I don’t want to be bothered with questions about my personal affairs, such as the draft case and my divorce. I’m here to defend my title and that old man Henry Cooper had better watch out. I’m feeling real mean.’
In the countdown to the fight, that memorable moment when I floored the then Cassius Clay in the fourth round at Wembley was replayed on television and in cinemas scores of times. While it helped sell tickets, it worked against me in a way because every time it came on the screen or a photograph of the knockdown was reproduced in a newspaper it reminded Ali of the main danger to him. My left hook, my ’Ammer.
I knew this was going to make it that much harder to land my main weapon. There was no way Ali was going to forget to duck because he was getting constant reminders of what could happen if he exposed his chin for a split second, as he had at Wembley. In training I practised feinting with my left and landing with my weaker right hand, but I knew my best chance still lay with the good old left hook. To be honest, I couldn’t hurt a fly with my right.
Ali had successfully twice defended his title following his farce of a return fight with Liston in Maine when Old Sonny went down and out to what most of us in the trade thought was a phantom punch. He had since stopped former champion Floyd Patterson in twelve rounds in Las Vegas and he convincingly outpointed rough, tough Canadian George Chuvalo over fifteen rounds in Toronto three months before our fight.
Both Ali and I showed we meant business by coming into the ring built for speed. Ali tipped the scales at 14st 3.5lb, which was the lightest he ever weighed as champion, shifting thirteen pounds from when he had beaten Chuvalo just two months earlier. He had really got himself into shape, which I suppose was a compliment to me. I weighed in at 13st 4lb and felt as slim and as fit as a thoroughbred greyhound, without a surplus ounce on me. I knew I was going to need to be at my most mobile for this fight-night of my life. No need this time for Jim Wicks to lead-weight me to a higher poundage.
Ali had refused to sign the contract for the voluntary defence of his championship until promoter Harry Levene guaranteed a largest-possible twenty-foot ring. Harry moaned like hell because he had to have one specially made at what was then a hefty cost of five hundred quid. It was a crafty move by Ali: he wanted as much room in which to manoeuvre as possible. Years earlier, Rocky Marciano had demanded a postage-stamp-size sixteen-foot ring when defending against one of my heroes, Don Cockell, from down the road from me at Battersea. The harder the punch you carry, the smaller the ring you require because it means you can get to your opponent quicker. In that phone-box of a ring, poor old Don had nowhere to hide. Ali had chosen a ring in which we could have had a five-a-side football match. The left hook I had landed back in 1963 obviously left a permanent mark on his memory, and he wanted as much room as possible in which to take evasive action.
I was chuffed to be in the Arsenal home dressing-room. You could almost feel the history of the place where old idols like Alex James, Ted Drake, the Compton brothers and more recently George Eastham and Joe Baker had changed. Now I was getting ready to follow in their footsteps, but to use my fists rather than my feet. I had got into the habit of openly praying and crossing myself before leaving the dressing-room and I had taped under the lace of my left boot small religious medallions that had been given to me by Albina and her Aunt Maria. In my short prayer I just asked God to keep me safe and help me do my best. I never asked for victory, just that I came through it all right. Winning was up to me.
I was almost carried into the ring on a wave of emotion from a huge crowd making as much noise as if good old Arsenal had scored a goal. I was nicely nervous and in perfect mood for the challenge. My preparations had been flawless and I honestly felt I could cause an upset against hot favourite Clay – sorry, Ali.
The last thing I did before the main floodlights were switched off was to wave to Albina who, for the one and only time in my career, was in a ringside seat watching me fight.
She hated every moment of it and hardly appreciated that this big fight atmosphere was the most electric and exciting that I’d ever experienced.
The action sat in Henry’s memory bank like a Technicolor horror movie shot in crimson red. His brave challenge ended – perhaps pred
ictably – in a sea of blood after one minute thirty-eight seconds of the sixth round. It was a nightmare repeat of their first meeting, but this time without the heart-stopping drama of a knockdown. The simple, sad fact is that, as we all dreaded, the scar tissue around Henry’s eyes was too susceptible and all too easy a target for Ali’s slashing punches.
From the emotional singing of the national anthem, there had been an air of optimism over Highbury that matched any from the Herbert Chapman days in the 1930s when Arsenal dominated League football. Everybody was trying to transmit their energy and expectations to Henry as Jim Wicks, trainer Danny Holland and brother George climbed out of the ring, leaving our hero a lonely, proud figure up there in his corner awaiting the first bell.
Albina, looking like a trapped prisoner, immediately looked away as Ali and Henry advanced towards each other. Alongside her, legends of the ring Rocky Marciano and Georges Carpentier leaned forward, eager to see if the modern boxers could match their deeds. Further along the row, the three greatest Welsh actors of their generation – Stanley Baker, Donald Houston and Richard Burton, all friends of Henry – chorused their support.
For five rounds Henry forced the pace as Ali skipped and danced his way around the ballroom-size ring, the long laces on his snow-white boots twirling as he showed off the Ali Shuffle. Once, twice, maybe three times Henry got home with the left hook that had dumped the then Cassius Clay on the canvas in their first meeting. But instead of going down, Ali had the presence of mind to grab and hold while his head cleared before getting back on his bike and into his rhythmic retreat behind long, stabbing punches that were worryingly catching Henry in his tracks.
The bloody climax came with the dramatic suddenness of a landslide, just as we were thinking that Henry was on safe ground and everything was going reasonably well. As Henry tried to cut off Ali’s retreat and drive him into a neutral corner, he was suddenly met with an avalanche of short left- and right-hand punches to the face. It was a blur of combination punches that come from only the greatest fighters, and as Ali turned Henry on to the ropes, ringsiders were sprayed with blood gushing from a wide-open gash along the so often vulnerable left eyebrow.
A sideways glance showed that Albina was hiding her face behind her fight programme, wanting to be anywhere but at that ringside watching her husband suddenly looking like the victim of a razor attack. Jim Wicks, Danny Holland, brother George and matchmaker Mickey Duff were like a poorly tuned barbershop quartet as they screamed from the corner for Henry to make one last desperate attempt to land the ’Ammer. But he was now blinded by a curtain of his own blood and missing wildly.
The roars from the crowd had gone from optimistic support to wild rage, because many thought that a butt caused the damage. Even Henry made that instant allegation, until he saw replays that showed the injury was definitely the result of a fusillade of deadly accurate punches.
There were soon cries of ‘Stop it, ref !’ mixed in with the angry growls as Henry’s blood ran like a red river down his chest, darkening his royal-blue shorts. Ali showed no mercy, and even though he later said he hated doing it, he continued to pour punches into the widening wound. This was the bloodsport of boxing at its most terrifying and repellent.
It was an astonishing turn-around. Barely a minute earlier Henry had been more than holding his own and was ahead on many scorecards. Now here he was drenched in his own blood.
Scottish referee George Smith, his shirt turning crimson, ushered Ali to a neutral corner and needed just a perfunctory inspection of the damage to wave the fight over. Henry punched the air in disgust and frustration, and let fly with an expletive that edit-suite technicians carefully removed.
The dream was over, submerged beneath rivers of his blood, of becoming the first British-born fighter to win the world heavyweight title since New Zealand-based Bob Fitzsimmons back in 1897. Yes, this was the unkindest cut of all.
In that sixth round we had been boxing at long-range for about half a minute when he caught me as we both moved forward to launch punches, and as he moved away to continue his dance routine I felt blood oozing from a cut over my left eye. Immediately after the fight I told reporters there had been a clash of heads.
I was not accusing the champion of doing it deliberately; he never was that type of dirty fighter. But my honest opinion was that the damage had been caused by his head. There was so much blood flowing that I could not believe it had been done by punches. Ali threw a right hand as I was coming in and something hard hit me – in the heat of the battle I thought he’d butted me. Afterwards, looking at the film, I could see I had made a mistake and I later apologised to Ali for coming to the wrong conclusion.
It was in the moment just after the right hand landed that our heads came together, leading me into thinking the injury had been caused by a butt. In the heat of battle you don’t always get the sequence of things right, and on this occasion I admit I was wrong.
He threw a left and a right, shortening his punches, and the effect as I came forward was a chopping blow on my eye with the heel of his glove. The eyebrow immediately split wide open.
It was the worst cut I ever had in boxing, deeper and longer even than in my first fight with him. Nobody had to tell me it was a bad cut. I knew at once that I was in desperate trouble. I could feel the warm blood gushing down my face and on to my shoulders and chest; it was really blinding me, and was like trying to see through a red-stained window. I was not aware of any pain, just frustration that my old jinx had struck again and in the most important fight of my life. And I was also angry because I thought, wrongly, that Ali had opened the cut with his head.
Ali said afterwards that because of his religious beliefs he did not want to cause me any more damage and so laid off, but if you ever see the film you’ll notice he pounced like a panther, landing as many punches on the eye as he could. I’m not knocking him for it because that’s the fight game for you, but I just wish he had not come across as hypocritical. I really liked the bloke, and that nonsense did him no favours with the many people who wanted to see me shut his big mouth.
As in our first fight, I was left thinking about what might have been. Most judges at the end either had me dead level or just in front on points, and I knew I had plenty in reserve. It was the fittest I’d ever been in my life. In eleven rounds of boxing Ali had never had me in serious trouble apart from the cuts. I’d had him down once and had won more rounds than I’d lost.
I often wonder what I could have achieved but for the cut-eye curse. But it’s no use crying over spilt blood.
Jim Wicks got taken in by Henry’s instant assertion that a butt had caused the damage and said in the dressing-room afterwards: ‘Clay or whatever he calls himself nutted us. If he’s the religious gentleman he likes us to think, he’ll give us a return. In our two fights, he’s hardly won a round.’
Across the marble halls of Highbury, in the visitors’ dressing-room Ali was holding court. ‘Henry hurt me just once,’ he told reporters. ‘He caught me a good left hook in the third round, but I was far too fast for him tonight and he could not follow up. I opened the cut with a left-right combination. Henry is a man of honour and I’m sure that once he gets over the disappointment of his defeat he’ll accept that I did not cause the damage with my head. With as pretty a face as I have, do you think I’d go around butting opponents? Man, my one idea is to keep my good looks and want nobody’s head anywhere near my face. As soon as I opened the cut I wanted the referee to stop it; the blood disturbed me a lot. It was pure violence, and that’s against my personal feelings and my religion. Henry’s a good fighter but his flesh is weak. Tell the old boy it’s time to call it a day. He has fought with honour, but he’s a bleeder and always will be.’
Ali returned to London later in the summer of 1966 and polished off Brian London in three rounds on a Jack Solomons promotion at Earls Court that was a financial flop. The Blackpool boxer could never capture the public support like Our Enery. He lacked that special Cooper charism
a.
Henry had expert and expensive plastic surgery on his damaged eye while he considered his future. Albina, shaken by her first and only experience of seeing him fight (well, she looked for at least a minute from behind her programme), wanted him to hang up his gloves, but did not try to interfere in a decision she knew he had to make for himself. He talked it through with The Bishop and decided there was still plenty to fight for: he wanted a third Lonsdale Belt outright and he felt the need to win back the European crown that had been taken away from him without a fight.
Our Enery – with everybody anticipating his farewell to the fight game – fought on for another four and a half years!
ROUND 9
FREUDIAN FLOYD AND THE BLOND BOMBER
Floyd Patterson was a charming but complicated man, whose psychological problems earned him the nickname Freudian Floyd. The depths of his haunting self-doubt are best illustrated by the fact that he disguised himself with a beard and dark glasses because he was so ashamed of the first of his two one-round defeats by Sonny Liston, who violently wrenched the world heavyweight title from him.
When he was at ease with himself and boosted by self-belief there were few better-equipped fighters in ring history. Just Henry’s luck that he was brimming with confidence and assurance when they met at Wembley Arena on 20 September 1966.
Jim Wicks admitted worrying through sleepless nights before agreeing that Patterson was the right opponent for Henry’s comeback after his bloody world championship challenge against Ali. ‘We wanted to keep in the world title picture,’ The Bishop said. ‘Patterson had been a good champion, but we thought he was past his best after his defeats by the animal Liston and then he got a hammering from Ali. But we got it wrong.’ Henry was knocked out by what he later described as the greatest punch he never saw, a right to the jaw that travelled with the speed of light and literally knocked our hero sideways.
Henry Cooper Page 9