Floyd Patterson was by any measure an unusual and interesting man. He was the first heavyweight champion to lose a world title and then win it back. He was also the youngest heavyweight champion ever, until the arrival of Mike Tyson more than 25 years later. Patterson had first wrested the title from a doddering Archie Moore in 1956, a fight that was only possible upon the retirement of Rocky Marciano, and he won it with no particular difficulty: Patterson knocked Moore out in the fifth round. It was and is said that Moore had ‘taken a dive’ against Marciano in their last fight together but Moore’s loss to Patterson triggered the end of his heavyweight career, although he remained light heavyweight champion, his proper weight, until 1961.
It was almost as if Patterson could scarcely believe his own luck. Always a man short on self-confidence, he had been discovered and trained by that Svengali of the boxing world, Cus d’Amato, who would, many years later, also discover little Mike Tyson as a confused, abused and tearful teenager. Patterson had, embarrassingly, lost his title to Ingemar Johansson, who had stopped him quite luckily in June 1959, and he had recovered it a year later by knocking Johansson out. He had defended it twice more, once more against Johansson and then against Tom McNeeley, before being destroyed twice in quick succession by Liston.
Those two defeats by Liston, which were followed by that brutal humiliation at the hands of Ali in November 1965, which had ruined any popular following enjoyed by the champ, had not done anything to assist his already atrophied sense of self-regard. Essential pieces of kit for Patterson as he prepared for a fight included a hat, as well as dark glasses and a false beard. One of the first details he always needed to know – really needed to know – at any venue which was new to him was the direction of the exit, so total was his sense of humiliation at even the prospect of defeat. Patterson was a man with the foetid breath of his Bedford-Stuyvesant origins forever blowing on the back of his neck. Failure, for Patterson, would consign him back from whence he had come, just another young black man from a crowded cold-water walk-up and cursed forever by a criminal record. Such was Patterson’s innate humility that the prospect of loss clearly terrified him. Such insecure fighters were as putty in the hands of subtle motivators like d’Amato, and under certain circumstances they would pay a price for that, not least a financial one. In Patterson’s case, so badly did he even take the prospect of defeat that, as we have seen, d’Amato had been, even by the extreme standards of the heavyweight division, ludicrously over-protective of his fighter, and not merely to keep him out of the clutches of the forces of darkness as he identified them.
But despite his psychological handicaps and nervous disposition, Floyd Patterson had at his disposal a bewildering arsenal of punches, manoeuvres and combinations thereof – a great coffer of imaginative alternatives to which only he and d’Amato had the keys. They all had codes, too; d’Amato would shout them out from the corner and Patterson would obediently deliver them. One of his most dangerous weapons, if only because of its weird unpredictability, was the ‘kangaroo’, a whirling, leaping confection, really rather more African than Australian, which surprised his opponents as often as it stunned them. The Cooper left hook was a relatively simple and straightforward thing by comparison. But Patterson also had extraordinarily fast hands, very much faster than Muhammad Ali’s, although Ali’s speed around the ring, his main means of defence, was quicker. Patterson seemed to still be operating at the same extraordinary fast-forward rate that had made him stand out at Helsinki in 1952, over a dozen years before. Henry remembers, with feeling: ‘God, he was quick; he didn’t move around as fast as Ali did, but his hand speed was just ridiculous. He was a fantastic puncher, hard and fast. He and Cus d’Amato worked by numbers, and you just didn’t know which one was coming up next.’
Jim Wicks was a little wary of matching Patterson with Henry, the main reason being not that Patterson was particularly dangerous, but that Henry’s left elbow was giving him more and more trouble now. Because Henry had a slight height advantage, he would have to punch downwards, which would put an unnatural strain on the elbow joint – every seriously good punch has something of the uppercut about it, otherwise the strength in a fighter’s legs becomes irrelevant. The elbow problem remained a well-kept secret as there were plenty of boxers who knew very well indeed how to take advantage of such a weakness (not that Patterson would be one of them – he was simply too polite) but this was also the reason why Henry’s virtually pristine right had also started to come more to the fore. Pleasingly, it was rather better than he thought it was, although the sudden shift in polarity went quite against all his instincts. God forbid he should ever contemplate actually leading with it: the inexperienced spectator might even mistake him for a southpaw.
The fight was generally forecast to be a trade-off between two potential weaknesses: Henry’s eyebrows against Patterson’s rather suspect jaw, a target that Johansson had first identified. Donald Saunders said: ‘This is a fight that should have taken place seven years ago,’ forgetting perhaps that in 1959, while defeating Patterson may have yielded the world championship to the winner, had anyone been able to get to him, the price to pay for that would be facing Sonny Liston, the most feared heavyweight ever.
The Patterson fight – actually the American’s British ring debut – was arranged for 20 September 1966 at the Empire Pool, Wembley, and initially it seemed as if Henry might even be in the ascendant. For two rounds he attacked with remarkable aggression, trying hard to connect with Patterson’s only known (physically at least) weak point, his jaw. But by the third round, Patterson had found his pace and started to retaliate with his famous combination punch flurries. He caught Henry full in the face at the end of the round and put him down for a short count but appeared to have done no serious damage. Henry recalled later: ‘I tried to fight him as I did Ali. Patterson was a counter-puncher…’ Like a fool I took the fight to him, and though I did hurt him once or twice to the body, I didn’t connect to the chin.’ And in round four, Henry was on the receiving end of what he still claims was the finest punch he ever took. It came after a dazzling left/right combination to the face put him down again, and he wisely took a count of nine, giving a confident nod to his corner, but when he rose, Patterson let rip with another right/left, which Henry, still according to some observers not fully recovered from the knockdown, simply didn’t see coming. ‘Suddenly, the lights went out,’ says Henry. ‘He had a hell of a good punch, Patterson.’
Typically, Floyd Patterson helped a dazed Henry to his feet and cradled him back to his corner, all the while consoling the loser. Spectators were moved: ‘Floyd wanted to help him to his feet and later cuddled him, and tried to console him,’ wrote the Boxing News, sadly. Joe Louis, seated ringside, quietly nodded his approval as Henry dropped, briefly but totally disconnected from the world. This was complete anaesthesia. There was no pain.
And no ignominy, either. There was no shame in losing to a fighter of the quality of Floyd Patterson; indeed, Henry almost looked upon it as a privilege and, despite the murmur of unease, that perhaps he was carrying on a little past his sell-by date, he was and is unrepentant:
If Ali and Patterson had been mugs, then I wouldn’t have needed the press to tell me to go. But one was a world champion and the other an ex-world champion, and there was no disgrace in losing to either. I had the know-how and the knowledge to beat any of the youngsters in this country or Europe, so what was wrong in employing it?
There was another little matter, of course, that of the prospect of a third permanent Lonsdale belt, which, if it was not necessarily as important as a world, or even European title, would only require two more defences of his British one after his win against Prescott. One owned belt was a fine thing, two were remarkable, but three would be unique. He properly felt that he could deal with the obvious contenders for the British title (and he was right) and so retirement at this stage would have been both unnecessary and even hasty. More importantly, he wanted to take this decision himself. Henry
liked the press but he was fully aware of their need to build a story, and Wicks, his conduit with Fleet Street, was frankly running out of them.
Henry was certainly to prove his point against Jack Bodell in June but only after he had delivered a curiously lacklustre performance against another American, Boston Jacobs, in April, shortly after his old opponent Zora Folley finally had his long awaited crack at the world title and Ali had knocked him out. Jacobs gave a good account of himself on the night and appeared to be completely unmoved by Henry’s reputation as a puncher. Henry won on points but it was a fight he should have won inside the distance. One reason may have been that he was well above his fighting weight again and nudging 14 stone, which always made him sluggish, and might have betrayed the long layoff he’d had, but whatever, it was certainly an off day. The news that Albina was expecting another child was a morale-booster, though, but on the other hand, it might well have been a natural distraction.
Jack Bodell, who enjoyed the very nineteenth-century soubriquet of the ‘Swanlicote Swineherd’, challenged Henry Cooper for his British and Empire titles at Wolverhampton Wanderers’ home ground, Molyneaux, on 13 June 1967. Possibly the most ungainly boxer these islands have ever produced, he was also potentially a man who might cause the odd upset, mainly because he was a southpaw, which for a conventional boxer is rather like fighting a mirror image of oneself – right foot forward, leading with the right. Bodell was not at all a dirty fighter but on occasion he could look it, as if he was simply wired up differently from other men. An almost entirely left-handed man like Henry, when facing a southpaw, often has to resignedly rethink his game and either use the right hand or await opportunities if he wishes to avoid embarrassing accidents. Henry’s philosophy, as we shall see, was to try to finish them quickly, but first size them up to avoid trouble. There was no question of even trying to look at ease. ‘They always bring you down to their level,’ says Henry, with rare derision. For a left-side boxer like Henry, southpaws were always hard work: ‘You could never look good against them.’
Bodell plunged in during the opening round, using his weight advantage to work Henry onto the ropes, and even inflicting a modest measure of damage upon him. At 27, he had the advantage of age and weight but not, alas for him, subtlety. Henry spotted his weaknesses very quickly and saw the opportunity to use his left hook, over the top of Bodell’s right, but only when the challenger swung it; it was a rare occasion of Henry Cooper uneconomically accepting two punches in order to land one but, he reasoned, if that is what is necessary, then so be it.
Nearly two minutes into the second round, he saw his chance and launched one of the longest left hooks of his career. It was of necessity a compromise of a punch, a hybrid; it sailed over the top of Bodell’s right arm and shoulder and hit him on the jaw, after which point the whole matter became quite academic. Henry went after the dazed challenger, thumping him onto the ropes and chasing him around the ring. Obeying the received wisdom about facing southpaws, he even hit with the right a few times, at which point the referee, Ike Powell, saw that the game was clearly up. He stopped the fight, giving Henry his fastest yet championship victory.
Henry and Albina’s second son, John Pietro, arrived on 5 August 1967, closely followed by yet another challenge for the British and Empire title, this time from Billy Walker, whose home turf was very close to the Cooper clan’s first London base over a century before, in West Ham. Walker’s brother George had fought (and fought very well) as a professional and Billy was an extremely promising, if rather inexperienced prospect. He had both youth and strength on his side but, as he later admitted with beguiling modesty, ‘You need three things to be a great fighter: heart, a good chin and boxing ability. Unfortunately, I only had two out of three.’
In many ways Billy Walker was a product of the times. He was extremely telegenic and the thought persists that his career was pushed too far too fast for the sake of his appeal to a television audience. It was exactly the policy of so many unscrupulous managers over time, although this time the culprit was not Billy’s manager (actually his brother George) but rather Harry Levene and his ally Jarvis Astaire, who had made a large investment in offering a contract to Walker and were quite keen to recover it as quickly as possible, which is why the encounter between Billy Walker and Henry Cooper was in reality something of a mismatch in Henry’s favour (which takes nothing away from Walker’s bravery). The fight took place at the Empire Pool, Wembley, on 7 November 1967. Billy Walker quipped a revealing aside before the fight: ‘I reckon even my friends will be rooting for Henry.’ They weren’t, in fact.
Henry, having seen Walker in action as an amateur, knew that he was extremely tough and planned for a long fight. He was unlikely to knock his man down quickly – ‘Billy had a very hard head.’ – and so assumed that he would have to soften him up somewhat before producing the hammer. This is more or less what happened, although Walker gave an extremely good account of himself for the first three rounds, despite which he absorbed some serious punishment in the opener, and it was at the end of round five that a cut appeared on the challenger’s eye. In the interval it was plain what was required: the faintly distasteful task of opening up the cut. ‘You know what to do,’ said Wicks, and Henry went in and did it; George Smith stepped in towards the end of round six and stopped the fight, to Walker’s intense and visible disappointment. Henry’s grip on his third Lonsdale belt was now complete and unassailable.
No one had ever done this before at any weight and Henry was starting to cost the Board of Control, who paid for the belts, rather a lot of money. Immediately, he announced that he would now challenge Karl Mildenberger for the European championship, which he had been forced to resign in September 1964. If he won, he would be back exactly where he had been four years before, albeit with an extra belt for his groaning trophy cabinet.
Harry Levene, perhaps having seen his investment in Billy Walker depreciate somewhat, overcame his scruples and agreed rather reluctantly to promote the fight at Wembley on 18 September 1968, which gave Henry fairly light duties in the ring that year; it was to be his only fight in 1968. Challengers were actually becoming few and far between, for the simple reason that he had beaten all the rated British heavyweights and many of his old adversaries were retiring. He was in the no-man’s land between generations.
But he was busy. Wicks was in constant receipt of requests for Henry to make appearances, in television commercials, on chat shows and radio and TV commentary slots, and some of the sums of money involved were quite startling and, when all was said and done, less than arduous. It was perhaps the inevitable rehearsal for retirement, calls for which had rather receded with his defeat of the young and strong Billy Walker.
So, in between all these novel engagements, he maintained his fitness regime and enjoyed his new baby. He was relaxed, he had nothing to prove and he looked forward to taking back the title he felt was rightfully his. Mildenberger, of course, was the boxer he would have fought previously had he not been incapacitated and it became clear on the night that he had not necessarily improved as an opponent with the passing of time.
This was not a particularly inspiring fight, being characterized mainly by rule infringements, both in the ring and in Mildenberger’s corner. It was a fight of clinches; after ten months out of the ring, Henry took a round and a half to settle down before belting Mildenberger hard ‘on the break’, while coming out of a clinch, which clearly troubled the champion, for while Henry was being warned for this sneakiness by the indignant Italian referee, Nello Barroveccio, poor Mildenberger simply fell over.
Unwisely, Mildenberger’s seconds applied smelling salts quite liberally during the second interval, which suggests that Henry had actually hit him rather hard and that the champion might no longer be quite the master of his subject, but the use of the ammonia created a rare storm of protest from the BBBC officials, which rather begs the question: where they had been looking on the evening of the fight with Clay in 1963? There was indeed so
me uncertainty as to whether this fight was being held under British rules or European ones – it was a European title fight, but it was being held in London – and further confusion arose later on.
Mildenberger was in turn warned for ‘careless use of the head’ several times but Henry seemed untroubled; he put the champion down again in round seven and arguably the fight should have ended there, but just before the closing bell of round eight, Barroveccio stopped it, not because Mildenberger was unable to continue, but because he had clearly butted Henry, causing a rather nasty cut. Without hesitation, Mildenberger was disqualified. It was a stout piece of refereeing.
At first it had been assumed that Henry’s victory was as a result of being injured while clearly in the lead, according to a new and rather baroque EBU regulation, but no great commotion erupted upon Mildenberger’s disqualification. Obviously to win a fight in this way is not as satisfying as doing so in the traditional manner, but Henry was now British, Empire and European heavyweight champion again. He would be called upon to defend it within six months, and that process would not be a pleasant experience.
But, despite the pleasure of the European title, there was another nagging commercial worry. The grocery business had done rather well for some time but it was starting to take up an inordinate amount of time, almost to the exclusion of all else, yet it was now losing money. Henry had discovered that his partner, Harry Cooper, while a perfectly pleasant fellow, seemed quite happy for Henry to be doing the lion’s share of the work. During some periods Henry would be in the shop all week, which made training and PR work almost impossible. Not only were the losses mounting, but he was also forced to forgo some lucrative television and promotional work, which made things infinitely worse. As he explains, he was reinforcing failure:
I’d introduced Harry to the boxing crowd, which might have been a mistake, because frankly he started to behave a bit like Jack the lad; the business wasn’t going well, and the creditors always seemed to be calling me about it rather than him. It cost me a lot of sleep. I paid some of the company’s losses from my own account, but around Christmas 1968, I just decided to call it a day. I paid off the staff and pulled the shutters down. That was that.
Henry Cooper Page 19