RINGSIDE REPORT (Colin Hart, The Sun): Henry Cooper had to go fifteen bruising rounds with the always awkward Jack Bodell before he regained the British and Empire titles that he gave up in disgust when the Board of Control stopped him fighting Jimmy Ellis for a version of the world championship. Our Enery was always the guvnor against the Swadlincote southpaw, but had his feet trodden on so many times by the clumsy Bodell that he needed a chiropodist rather than Jim Wicks in his corner. Cooper won by the length of the Old Kent Road and had the Derbyshire man down three times, but at least Bodell improved on his two-round destruction of 1967.
HENRY: If there were prizes for being awkward, Jack would be a world champion. I’ve got bruised feet and shins where he kept stamping on me. He doesn’t mean it; he’s just born clumsy. That’s two titles back. Our target now is to regain the European championship that they took away because of my injuries.
FIGHT NO. 54
Venue: Wembley Pool, 10 November 1970. Weight: 13st 7lb.
Opponent: Jose Urtain (Spain). Weight: 13st 11lb.
Result: WON referee stopped fight round 8 (European title).
RINGSIDE REPORT (Reg Gutteridge, London Evening News): Jose Urtain got his mighty physique from lifting rocks in his Spanish homeland, and at Wembley he must have felt as if the Rock of Gibraltar had fallen on him after Henry Cooper had finished bashing him up. Britain’s most popular sportsman regained the European crown with a commanding performance, jabbing the defending champion into dizzy disarray until the referee intervened to say ‘No way Jose’ and led him back to his corner bloodied and beaten after eight demanding rounds. Yes, it was the final curtain for Urtain.
HENRY: It just shows you that being strong doesn’t necessarily make you a good fighter. His boxing technique was all over the place and I found him dead easy to hit with my jabs. I’m sure if it was a weightlifting competition I would come second best to him, but boxing is about more than muscle. Anyway, we’re delighted to have all our three titles back.
FIGHT NO. 55
Venue: Wembley Pool, 16 March 1971. Weight: 13st 5lb.
Opponent: Joe Bugner (Bedford). Weight: 15st 2lb.
Result: LOST points 15 rounds (British, European & Empire titles).
RINGSIDE REPORT (Peter Wilson, Daily Mirror): Harry Gibbs is one of the finest referees I have seen in more than forty years of reporting boxing, but last night in my view he got it badly wrong when he adjudged Joe Bugner the fifteen rounds points winner over Henry Cooper in a dramatic triple title fight. On a decibel count, it was clear that most of the booing and jeering capacity Wembley crowd agreed with my reading of the fight. I made Cooper a clear winner by two points, and I just cannot understand how Gibbs managed to see the 21-year-old Bugner the master of the 37-year-old icon of British heavyweight boxing. After the disappointment of his defeat, Our Enery announced he would be hanging up his gloves. What a sad way for it all to end. One of my favourite sporting personalities deserved to go out a winner, and the way I saw the fight that is exactly what he did do, but it is the impressively built but robotic Bugner who walks off with Henry’s titles. There’s no justice.
HENRY: That’s it, gentlemen. That’s me lot.
BREAKDOWN:
55 fights (374 rounds, 18 hours 7 minutes of ring action).
44 opponents (Joe Erskine five times, Brian London three times, Uber Bacilieri, Joe Bygraves, Zora Folley, Dick Richardson, Jack Bodell and Muhammad Ali twice).
40 victories (27 inside the distance, 11 on points, 2 disqualifications).
14 defeats (8 inside the distance, 5 on points, 1 disqualification).
1 draw.
Henry conceded weight in all but 8 of his 55 fights.
1 May 2011, the final bell rang for Henry Cooper two days before his seventyseventh birthday.
He will be remembered always as a champion human being and a Hero for All Time.
That’s it. That’s me lot.
Also by Norman Giller
Banks of England (with Gordon Banks)
Football and All That: A History of the Beautiful Game
Know What I Mean (with Frank Bruno)
Eye of the Tiger (with Frank Bruno)
From Zero to Hero (with Frank Bruno)
My Most Memorable Fights (with Henry Cooper)
How to Box (with Henry Cooper)
Henry Cooper’s 100 Greatest Boxers
Mike Tyson, the Release of Power (with Reg Gutteridge)
Let’s Be Honest (with Reg Gutteridge)
For King and for Queen and country. The Cooper twins (Henry, left) swore allegiance to King George VI when they started their National Service with the Army, and Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne by the time they were demobbed in 1953. It was forty-seven years later that Henry was knighted by the Queen.
Proud Mum Lily reads a congratulatory telegram after Henry – showing the signs of battle – had beaten world-ranked Zora Folley in 1958. George, as ever, gives his full support.
It is 1955 and the start of the five-fight professional rivalry between Henry and Joe Erskine. They shake hands at the weigh-in before a battle won over ten rounds by the Welsh boxing master, with Joe’s manager Benny Jacobs looking on. Including their three contests as amateurs, they met each other eight times. Henry won the last three to come out top 5–3 in their two-man war; below is how it ended in their sixth duel, with Joe bent over the bottom rope like a giant violin bow.
A kiss for Jim Wicks (above), with trainer Danny Holland looking on, perhaps enviously, and a right bang on the nose for Joe Erskine (below) in the British and Empire Heavyweight Championship contest that Henry won on a twelfth-round stoppage at Earls Court in 1959.
Henry the ‘Mean Machine’ beating Newport giant Dick Richardson for a second time in five rounds.
It’s the morning after the fight before, and Our Enery enjoys breakfast with Albina while reading about his fifth-round British and Empire title victory over Welshman Dick Richardson at Wembley.
Jim ‘The Bishop’ Wicks looks on as Henry and Zora Folley weigh in for their second fight. In the background, left, film actor Stanley Baker, a long-time friend who followed Henry’s career closely, and promoter Harry Levene. It was to end in tears, with a second-round knock-out defeat for Henry.
The most famous punch in British boxing history has landed, and Cassius Clay crashes against the ropes in the fourth round at Wembley Stadium in 1963. The ‘Louisville Lip’ was saved by the bell, and – with a little time-saving help of a torn glove – he came out for the fifth round to force a victory, when Henry suffered the unkindest cut of all.
Cassius Clay was now Muhammad Ali as he returned to London in 1966 to defend his world heavyweight title against Henry at Highbury Stadium in 1966. Viewsport showed the fight in cinemas across the nation, billing it as Britain’s ‘Fight of the Century’. Henry later became a popular television celebrity, starting his broadcasting career as a captain in the original A Question of Sport. Here he is with question-master David Vine and Freddie Trueman, the cricketing legend who followed Cliff Morgan as his rival team captain.
The end of a dream. Henry is covered in his own blood as his world-title challenge against Muhammad Ali is called off in the sixth round at Highbury in 1966.
One of the last action shots of Our Enery as he goes toe to toe with Joe Bugner in his final fight at Wembley Arena in 1971. The fifteen rounds points decision and the three titles went to 21-year-old Bugner. The public sympathy went to 37-year-old Henry.
Henry the doting dad, playing with his sons John Pietro (left) and Henry Marco the year after he hung up his gloves to follow a career as a full-time celebrity and charity fund-raiser. Oh yes, and as a golfer.
Sir Henry with the love of his life, Lady Albina Cooper, loved and admired by everybody who came into contact with her. She was Henry’s strength and shield and he never recovered from her passing in 2008.
Henry’s most treasured possessions were his hard-earned Lonsdale Belts. No other boxer in history has ever won three
of them outright. That is an empty smile above, as he prepares to put his Belts up for auction after his savings had been wiped out by the crash of the Lloyd’s Names syndicate. He was advised he could get as much as £100,000 for the Belts, which eventually went under the hammer (not Enery’s ’Ammer) for a disappointing £42,000, but it was enough to save the Coopers from bankruptcy.
In happier times, Henry popularised a national catchphrase with ‘Splash it all over’ from his series of Brut television commercials, including in the company of football idol Kevin Keegan. They became firm friends.
Granddad Henry has just become Sir Henry, and helping him celebrate at Buckingham Palace is grandson Henry James.
Henry had earlier become a Papal knight, honoured from Rome for his charity work, and it was Cardinal Hume who conferred the knighthood on behalf of the Pope.
Never happier than when on the golf course, Henry clowns around with comedian pal Jimmy Tarbuck and his golfing hero Seve Ballesteros, who sadly passed on in 2011, in the same week as Our Enery.
Henry had not finished jabbing. He was the front man for a successful fight-the-flu television and poster campaign for senior citizens, inspiring pensioners with the challenge: ‘Don’t get knocked out by flu, get your jab in first.’
Comfortable in the presence of princes or paupers, Henry was a king in his own right when ruling over the great showbusiness charity, the Grand Order of Water Rats, as King Rat, with the Duke of Edinburgh among his subjects.
Later he became equally popular with the Duke’s grandson Prince William when helping to raise funds for Sport Relief. Sir Henry generated millions of pounds for charity during his lifetime.
Henry was the first sportsman to win the coveted BBC Sports Personality of the Year award twice, before presenting it to his successor Princess Anne, popular with viewers for her Olympic equestrian performances. He met Prince Charles on scores of occasions, chiefly when helping to raise funds for the Prince’s Trust. Henry was a particular favourite of the Queen Mother, and he had a portrait of her on the wall at his home in Kent.
Good friends after they finished hitting each other, Muhammad Ali and Henry are reunited in London in 1993 on the thirtieth anniversary of their famous Wembley fight.
The last journey for Henry. Hundreds of people lined the streets of Surrey to pay their final respects as the funeral car took the folk hero to a thanksgiving service in Tonbridge, Kent, before a private crematorium ceremony when Henry’s ashes were mixed with those of his beloved Albina.
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
The Robson Press (an imprint of Biteback Publishing Ltd)
Westminster Tower
3 Albert Embankment
London SE1 7SP
Copyright © Norman Giller 2012
Norman Giller has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the publisher’s prior permission in writing.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.
ISBN 978–184954–425–2
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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