Henry Cooper

by Robert Edwards

  Nothing much happened in the first rounds. I punched a couple of intentional misses with the right to limber up and make sure that the right hand was in order. He had probably thought that I would be beginning the fight by pouring on everything I had. But I rapped him with the left. I wanted to make him cocky and lure him out. He had thought, of course, that I would be a violent smasher as I had knocked out so many opponents.

  His knockout record was 10 out of 16, in fact. After 2 minutes 47 seconds of the fifth round, the punch that Henry never saw coming landed on his chin. It was a classic left, left, followed by a blinding right cross and Henry became Johansson’s seventeenth victim. Peter Wilson wrote sadly:

  The Englishman’s eyes were staring blindly at the blue sky above, his limbs twitching helplessly. He was lolling finally against the ropes as he fumbled with them, trying – oh, so desperately – to pull himself upright before the count of ten had been reached…He was slogging his numbed muscles, but he was like a man who had touched the live terminal of a high voltage wire and had been shocked out of his senses.

  Yes, quite a punch. ‘It was so quick, I didn’t see it coming,’ said Henry. ‘Dat’s de whole idea,’ artlessly responded a justifiably smug Johansson. But as Henry would discover again, you never do.

  Actually, Ingemar Johansson rather liked Henry, as he recalls in his memoirs:

  Henry Cooper is one of the most pleasant people I have met, and in many ways an unusual boxer. He really seems too kind for boxing. He is so like his twin brother that I can’t tell the difference between them when they are together. They must be together before I’m sure of not calling them by their wrong names.

  All in all it was a rough day for the brothers Cooper. George, Henry’s main sparring partner, was disqualified against Albert Finch, Johansson’s sparring partner, for an alleged low punch, although Sydney Hulls of the Daily Express, perhaps trying to salvage something constructive from such a dismal day, rather plaintively disagreed: ‘I did not think Cooper’s two-fisted spasm of body punches had landed below the belt. The blows appeared strictly and energetically on the target area.’

  But that opinion was little consolation as the lowered little team flew back to Blighty. Two title fight losses for Henry – Empire and European – in depressingly quick succession. Wicks, however, had kept the faith, for he had already made his plans clear in Stockholm. ‘First Henry needs a couple of fights at home to get back his confidence,’ he’d gurgled to a depressed and more than slightly sceptical press corps.

  What Wicks actually had in mind for his slightly reduced fighter was another crack at Joe Erskine for yet another championship, the British one. If this seems a rash policy with the gift of hindsight, then it should be borne in mind that Erskine, although a supreme tactician, was not a particularly strong puncher. Conversely, whatever he lacked in brake horsepower he made up for in guile. Joe Erskine really was a very fine boxer indeed and any deficit he suffered in the ability to create a punch was further offset by his ability to take one, as he himself was to find out.

  In truth, the action outside the ring was almost as interesting, and serves as an exemplar of the seamier side of the sport. Joe Erskine had discovered that his manager, Benny Jacobs, had, not to put too fine a point on it, been stealing money from him. The two men were by now communicating only through the medium of Erskine’s trainer, Archie Rule. It seems that Jacobs had a severe gambling problem and was not above being economical with the truth concerning – ahem – the exact amount of Erskine’s purses. Erskine fired him on the eve of this fight. He would re-engage with him later but on the night of his fight with Henry, he was, to say the least, understaffed. But it didn’t show.

  The attention span (and collective memory) of a fight crowd is astonishingly short; the bout went down in history as being supremely dull but the first seven rounds were, in fact, swift and rather full of action, including a warning to Henry in round four for ‘steadying’ the back of Erskine’s head before punching him. Henry, in fact, landed at least three crushing lefts, one of which nearly dropped his opponent, but Erskine responded with strong (but not debilitating) body punches and from round eight the chubby Welsh fighter simply plodded back to win narrowly on points. Harry Carpenter calculated the margin to be a quarter of a point, the smallest possible.

  For Henry, this marked his fourth defeat in a row: Bates, Bygraves, Johansson, Erskine. If this continued, it was going to become hard to make a living. There was always plastering, of course, but plasterers did not as a rule eat lunch at Simpson’s in the Strand or, indeed, wear hand-made suits. The nagging self-doubt that invariably accompanies such a string of defeats was growing to such an extent that he seriously considered quitting.

  One of his main difficulties, which first arose with the Bates fight, was the vulnerability of his eyes to damage, which, while it was relatively painless, invariably laid him open to defeat. He had started to become defensive, a tactic which, while it certainly served to make him a technically far better boxer later on, was not what was required now if he was to take full advantage of his rapidly developing left hook, which, when all was said and done was, apart from his agility, the main weapon in his armoury.

  Wicks’s counsel on using the hook was quite subtle. He held that there was actually no need to connect with it all the time; for some opponents its mere existence would be enough to threaten and compromise their mental composure. ‘Just let them feel the wind of its passing, son,’ he told Henry, ‘just the wind of its passing. Just let them know it’s there.’

  Meanwhile, Wicks took the view, as he always did, that Henry should get on with his business and his corner men should be allowed to get on with theirs. It was something of a pet theme of his, this tidy division of labour. Danny Holland had developed a novel approach to dealing with cuts: an adrenalin compound, mixed with Vaseline, ensured that the astringent chemical, which served to neatly close off broken blood vessels, could be applied using his own hand-made swabs, and be expected to last most of a three-minute round. It worked well as a tactic, for with less than a minute to repair such debilitating damage, speed was of the essence. The British rules did not permit some of the more exotic substances commonly used in America, which were little more than crude hard-setting fillers for cuts, and which had contributed to the ruination of many a fighter’s eyebrows, and therefore their careers.

  But now, after this little string of defeats, Henry’s commercial value was suddenly very little, at least domestically; his stock was at a very low ebb. Other fighters who found themselves in a similar position always ran the risk of being ‘overboxed’ in ludicrous mismatches by cynical managers, so that at least they would earn something out of them before moving on to other hopefuls. Wicks, it must be said, was not cut from that cloth; he was fully convinced of Henry’s long-term value and while he was concerned at his boy’s plummeting morale, the pair maintained their agreeable routine. At a time when self-doubt was nagging Henry, Wicks was a rock of stability.

  Given the iron grip exerted by Jack Solomons and Harry Levene on the promotion of the sport in Britain, there was a small gap in the market: Germany. The clear reluctance of the two main Jewish promoters to accommodate German fighters meant that boxing in Germany was developing on a separate but parallel path from that in Britain, cut off from it by both culture and recent history. To be sure, the purses were smaller, as neither Marshall Aid nor the ludicrous exchange rate seemed to have had the same effect on boxing as it had on BMW, but at that stage Henry was still faced with the simple imperative of rebuilding his resume and the money was really quite secondary. There was also the possibility of exacting some sweet revenge for the near miss from that doodlebug in 1944.

  Swiftly, Wicks organized a fight with the German heavyweight champion, Hans Kalbfell. The German boxer was 2 inches taller and more than a stone heavier than Henry who entered the ring at 13 stone 61bs, more or less his perfect fighting weight. Clearly, something had happened, as Henry gave the German champion a compr
ehensive boxing lesson and scored a runaway points victory; it is unlikely that the hapless Kalbfell won a single round out of the ten.

  The crowd was remarkably unpartisan (possibly buoyed by a large contingent from British Army over the Rhine, who cheered their ex-comrade very hard indeed) and appeared delighted as they chaired Henry round the Westfalenhalle, celebrating what was probably his finest technical career performance to date. What this must have done for poor Hans Kalbfell’s morale can only be guessed at but it had all certainly served to motivate Henry.

  That single (but vital) victory over a national champion went a long way toward rehabilitating Henry in the eyes of the sport and, more particularly, in the eyes of the promoters, but Wicks felt that there were other German boxers who probably made obvious matches, particularly those who had faced top Americans in the ring. Kalbfell had actually boxed Archie Moore, for example, and a further logical choice was the ex-European champion Heinz Neuhaus, who, while possibly over the hill (‘past his best’, as the boxing euphemism went), was still apparently formidable. Back to Dortmund the cheered little team went.

  There was another reason to return to Germany, as Henry’s rather spartan training regime had clearly not ruined him for the manliest game of all; her name was Hilda. With typical media savvy and promotional deftness, Wicks announced grandly, in the wake of the well-reported defeat of Kalbfell, that Henry had profited hugely from a motivational encounter with an eccentric and reclusive German shrink, ‘Doctor Whassisname’, as Wicks christened him. The gullible British press, who had a huge respect for Henry, and shared his low morale concerning the future, rather latched on to this. Had they known the truth, that Henry’s German girlfriend was helping to relax him more than any fictitious mad professor ever could, there might even have been a xenophobic backlash, particularly from a disapproving Levene or Solomons, but just as probably from the tabloid press, which was as ethnocentric then as it is now, however gullible they were where Wicks was concerned. The Bishop certainly knew his business; he was able to conjure up a huge amount of attention on the flimsiest of pretexts. As well as being a good manager, Jim Wicks was himself absolutely wonderful copy, particularly during the silly season.

  But on returning to Germany for the Neuhaus fight, Henry learned that the rules of the ring as they had evolved in Germany were not necessarily consistent with complete fairness. The convention had emerged that a fighter had to win a bout by a margin of five clear points in order to be awarded the referee’s decision if there was no knockout. Henry had certainly accomplished that against Kalbfell and in his opinion he did so again against Neuhaus but the decision was to be disappointing: a draw. Although Henry was dropped in round four, he fought back strongly, but not, alas, strongly enough. But a draw was better than a defeat.

  Both boxers and crowds hate draws. A boxing match, like any other duel, is supposed to resolve something and the better referees took the job of judging a close fight very seriously indeed, and occasionally took the odd risk in coming to their decisions, which is why a draw is a relatively rare occurrence in professional boxing.

  There was one more encounter to come in Germany, but this time in Frankfurt, on 19 April 1958. The opponent was the German light heavyweight champion, Eric Schoeppner, and the fight was to lead to the only disqualification of Henry’s career. Wicks was of the opinion, having seen Schoeppner already, that Henry would knock him out easily but the German’s management was convinced it was a fair match.

  Henry recalls Schoeppner as ‘useful, but a bit flashy. Naturally, as a light heavyweight, he was fast, and possibly even ahead on points for the first five rounds, but in the sixth, Henry managed to put him on the ropes with a left and followed through with a mighty left hook just as the German turned away. As the punch connected, Schoeppner dropped to the canvas, quite senseless. In fact, he had to be stretchered out of the ring and was to be hospitalized for five weeks. It was to prove the end of Schoeppner’s ambition to fight for the world title against Archie Moore. But the celebrations in the Cooper corner proved to be both precipitate as well as short-lived, as the announcement came over the tannoy that Henry had been disqualified.

  The disqualification was both unexpected and unwelcome. The reason – rabbit-punching – was, given the speed of a fighter’s reactions, hard to justify. It had been said of Joe Louis that an opponent would be on the canvas before Louis realized that he had even hit him; it is a trait shared by many top class professionals and Henry was no different.

  As well as a disqualification, Henry was fined the equivalent of £700 – half the already meagre purse – which, it later emerged, the German Boxing Federation sorely needed; the German economic miracle had clearly not trickled down into its coffers, as it was forced into some difficult financial gymnastics from time to time. Of course, the disqualification did not in any way invalidate the efficacy of the punch itself; it was, after four years in professional use, clearly developing into an awesome weapon.

  Heavyweight fighters can take more time to mature than those men in the lower divisions, it is often said; one reason for this must be the sheer variety of their opponents. Any man from any weight can technically fight at heavyweight, there is no minimum or maximum, so over his career a heavyweight fighter might be called upon to fight men of a huge range of skill and weight, from less than 12 stone to more than 16, which makes the top division both unpredictable as well as arduous. Henry was, by that late spring of 1958, starting to mature nicely. He had learned to live with the risk of cuts, as Wicks had known he would, and his burgeoning faith in Holland’s skills allowed him a degree of relaxation that had been rather obviously absent before.

  He had grown up to trust only family, particularly George. There was a closeness about the Cooper household, and a particular closeness between the twins; they could even at times finish each others’ sentences, which could make for a slightly fractured conversation if others were present – most confusing. Henry’s willingness, initially wary, after that short string of defeats, to accept the input and judgement of others, marked a sea-change in him and the pleasing succession of fights in Germany (plus the fringe benefits) allowed him a reserve of energy that he had previously wasted on fretting and worrying, clearly a trait he had inherited from Lily.

  So, it was clearly time for a UK comeback now. The chosen opponent, on 6 September 1958, would be the very rough Welshman, Dick Richardson, whom George had defeated on his own professional debut in 1954. The arena would be home turf to Richardson: the dreadful, seedy Coney Beach Arena at Porthcawl on the South Wales coast. The Welsh fighter enjoyed a 17lb weight advantage over Henry, as well as the extra edge of enjoying his own very liberal interpretation of the rules. Henry had known Richardson as something of a thug and a bully in the Army and had wisely given him a fairly wide berth.

  This was a now a critical fight for Henry. The three encounters in Germany had not paid particularly well – £1,500 or so each – and, although they had served to restore both his credibility and his self-confidence, he needed to shine against Richardson if the level of his purses was going to rise. In the event he would receive f,6,000, which, although it was the equivalent of four fights on the Continent, was still not a vast amount, given the level of expenses he was incurring. Henry was confident, if wary.

  Richardson attacked immediately, a thing that Henry had thought he might do, for he knew his man: ‘Dick realized that very few referees were strong enough to disqualify a man in the first round.’ That is presumably why Richardson overtly head-butted Henry and opened a huge vertical cut on his eyebrow, which bled profusely. Henry managed to hold the charging, swinging Richardson off, protecting the eyebrow so that Danny Holland could effect some useful running repairs between the rounds, but this was not looking promising. It looked even worse in round five, after a fairly well-balanced second, third and fourth rounds, when Henry was floored by a painful right to the body. Richardson, assuming that he had his opponent exactly where he wanted him, went dashing in and pro
mptly impaled himself on what was probably the best left look that Henry had yet delivered in his career. As he launched it, it was already near textbook perfect, and Richardson’s own momentum made it even better. His feet actually left the canvas and he was quite out cold before collapsing. It was such a fine punch that even the usually partisan Welsh crowd cheered.

  It had been two years since the loss to Peter Bates and the forced reassessment of his career. To a professional fighter, that is a very long time indeed, but Henry had proved, in this win over Richardson, that it had been well spent. He showed, in succession, that he could take a punch, recover from a knockdown, deal with cuts and also deliver a classic left hook of truly terrifying power. Some fighters, even the most highly rated ones, can perhaps do one or even two of these things. To be able to do all four was remarkable. He had also showed enormous courage, as well as an enormous left.

  Obviously this splendid punch needed a name, and naturally it was Jim Wicks who thought one up. Ingemar Johansson had ‘The Hammer’, so now ‘’Enery’s ’Ammer’ had arrived. It would dominate the upper reaches of the heavyweight division of British boxing for more than a decade and almost change the course of sporting history.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE COMEBACK KID

  ‘I loved the garish day, and spite of fears, Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.’

  JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, (1834).

  Charles ‘Sonny’ Liston was not, it must be said, considered by many to be a perfect role model for American youth – particularly black American youth, given that the administration of the sport was entirely white. He was boxing’s perfect bad boy, illiterate, violent (when drunk), an ex-convict (coached to box in prison by that almost inevitable Catholic priest) and managed by the mob. He was also possessed of what was probably the hardest punch in the history of the ring. The Cooper left was, some maintained, but a friendly caress by comparison. Unfortunately, Liston also enjoyed using his huge ham-hock hands (15-inch circumference) on policemen, which made him to say the least unpopular with the forces of law and order.