Henry Cooper (16 page)

Round one was definitely Henry’s. The BBC radio commentary, from W Barrington Dalby, ex-referee and boxing veteran, was appreciative:

The second round started well, as Henry banged three assertive lefts into Clay’s face in quick succession, but Cassius showed remarkable powers of recovery and delivered a short right-hand counterpunch, which nicked Henry under the left eye, offering Cassius a clear and obvious target. He went to work and, by the end of the second, the eye was bleeding. At the interval, Danny Holland, well prepared as usual, went to work. The BBC continued: ‘Well, Clay managed to wriggle off the hook. He was boxing better in that round but it was Cooper’s round very clearly. Now Cooper has a slight cut under his left eye but nothing very serious.

Dalby spoke a little too soon, for in the third, although Clay’s punch rate dropped and Henry’s increased, the eye started to look worse and worse. The impression given by the commentary, however, is that Henry was comfortably ahead on points on the basis of the number of blows he was managing to land on target, despite rapidly occluding vision. So bad was it that he even led off with his seldom-used right and caught Clay twice.

At one point in this round Clay dropped all pretence at fighting, to the extent that William Faversham, head of the Louisville group, bawled at Dundee: Angelo! Make him stop the funny business!’

In fact, as Clay said later, he was merely trying to keep out of the way and conceal the damage he had sustained. He was not, contrary to appearances, enjoying this fight; he had never been hit more often, and harder, than on this June
evening. It was a sobering experience, but he was as good an actor as he was a boxer. He certainly fooled Jim Wicks who, Henry recalled, was tempted to throw in the towel during the third round.

Now the whole stadium had also started to realize that, despite Holland’s marvellous work with the adrenalin and Vaseline, not to mention the damage Henry was doing, there had to be some doubt about whether he could now go the distance. Dalby commented: ‘That was Clay’s best round, but he still didn’t win it. Now I think Cooper’s judgement of distance is faulty because of the certain amount of blood running into his eye and he’s probably worried about that. Clay was able to be rather cheeky about that.’

Round four was the one that nearly changed the course of boxing history. While Cassius carried on working on the eye, using his trademark long, twisting, flicking jab, Henry tried to keep out of trouble. He was three rounds up despite the cut but he desperately needed to survive. His eye was now pouring blood and the situation was becoming quite critical. Five seconds from the end of the round, Henry finally found his distance and delivered an absolutely perfect left hook, which simply pole-axed Clay: Henry recalls:

An appreciative Robert Daley described the moment:

Henry takes up the story:

Correctly, Little carried on the count until the bell went,
which nobody heard, such was the uproar, at which point all hell broke loose in Clay’s corner, where Dundee had some serious work to do. The use of smelling salts – carbonate of ammonia – was and is expressly forbidden under the rules of the BBBC but Dundee did not hesitate to use them to bring Cassius round, while slapping him hard around the face. He certainly needed to; he further drew attention to the small tear in Clay’s left glove, near the thumb. He was later to admit quite cheerfully that he made it worse by jabbing it with his finger in order to buy time. The glove was not changed, for the simple reason that there were no spares. The manoeuvre with the glove was the mere gamesmanship of a trainer with few options open to him – furthermore, the use of smelling salts was blatantly illegal but probably saved the day.

Dundee recalled to Thomas Hauser in 1991:

Actually, subsequent analysis of the film of the fight, and indeed the radio commentary, put the extended interval at 66 seconds. To normal men, six seconds is nothing; to a fit heavyweight boxer, particularly one made groggy by one of the hardest punches in the sport, it is a vast amount of time.

So, revived and fortified by the smelling salts and the vital extra few seconds of rest, Clay went out into the fifth round in an instinctive flurry of savage jabs, most of which were aimed at the eye. The stuffing now coming out of the glove served to increase the abrading quality of his flicking jabs.

The
New York Times
’s Robert Daley, ringside, was sympathetic to Henry’s plight: ‘In two minutes 15 seconds, he nearly tore Cooper’s head off his shoulders. Few men have absorbed such a beating in so short a time. Blood was everywhere; it was now gushing out of Cooper’s wounds.’

But, as the appreciative crowd and commentators pointed out afterwards, despite the apparent punishment Henry received in that shortened fifth round, he stayed on his feet.

Suddenly, Clay was not clowning any more. It did not take long to reopen the wound and two minutes into the fifth, Henry was quite a dreadful sight, with blood pouring down the left side of his body. The crowd, clearly distressed at Henry’s plight, collectively moved by his courage and upset at his lost opportunity, roared at Little to stop the contest, throwing their newspapers and programmes into the ring. Fifteen seconds later, Little finally obliged. Clearly, the damage was so bad that it was beyond even Holland’s
skill to repair it. Quite unable to see clearly, Henry had absorbed more than enough punishment.

Clay may have done massive damage to Henry’s eye but in the process he had learned that while he himself clearly didn’t have a glass jaw (he received several such lefts in the earlier rounds) he had discovered a few things about punching and in-fighting that he clearly hadn’t known before. In his career to date he had simply never experienced a punch like this one. The bragging stopped as he realized how lucky he had been not to lose this fight; only the intervention of Dundee with his chemistry set had saved him.

Curiously, Little did not disqualify Clay for Dundee’s tactics though he would have been quite entitled to do so. This fight has always been controversial from the point of view of the attempt by Dundee to exaggerate the tear in the glove rather than for anything else and, while Dundee makes mention of the smelling salts cheat in his recollection of the fight, time has served well to obscure it. But watch the fight and it is clear that technically, by the letter of the regulations, Henry should have won it, for that infringement alone, as Clay was clearly quite out of it as he reached his corner.

So it was a relieved and subdued Cassius Clay whose hand was raised in victory; there was no clowning, bar a wordless gesture of five fingers once the gloves were off, and the crown stayed firmly in the corner. Afterwards, he said of the fight: ‘Cooper was great, the toughest I have met by a long, long way. I wasn’t clowning; I was trying to conceal how much damage his punches were doing. The punch which put me down at the end of the fourth was the hardest
one I have ever taken. He shook me up – he hit me harder than I’ve ever been hit.’

He appeared cross with Tommy Little, though: ‘He’s a dirty referee and I’m telling the world. Henry Cooper hit me on the break and the referee wasn’t doing anything about it.’

Little hadn’t done anything about the smelling salts either, but naturally no one mentioned that, not even the supine Board of Control.

Clay’s split boxing glove, liberated from the ring by some enterprising agent of his, appeared the very next day in the window of Albert Dimes’s betting emporium in Soho, from where it soon disappeared. No doubt it (or something resembling it) will turn up one day. It is more likely, realistically, that at least four of them will.

Aside from the eye damage, which was hideous to behold, Henry was not, despite Robert Daley’s concern, particularly hurt, as he explains: ‘When I fought Clay, even the second time, after he’d changed his name, he was never really going to hurt anyone. He had this long, flicking punch which was very fast, and it could damage an eye, but it wouldn’t actually hurt.’ That statement, of course, is entirely relative: ‘But oh, he was fast, you’ve got to give him that. He was the fastest heavyweight I’ve ever been in a ring with, there’s no doubt of that.’

Certainly he had impressed. He had even used his right fist to good effect and, although Wicks was probably relieved that his fighter was not going to be obliged to take on Sonny Liston, Henry himself, who had little say in the matter at the time, recalls: ‘The press, particularly the American papers, had really built up Liston to the point
where he might as well have had four arms and two heads. He was a good boxer, Liston, but a bit crude. I’d have fought him if I’d had the chance; better him than Marciano.’

Of course he never would; Clay’s next fight was against Sonny Liston for the world title. It took place on 25 February 1964, and famously Clay, having taunted and mocked the champion for weeks beforehand, totally outwitted him. At the opening bell of round seven Liston quit while still on his stool, a thing that had not happened since Jess Willard had done it against Dempsey in 1919. But as we have seen, Willard had a rather better excuse.

But with that victory over Liston, the legend was born. To the infuriation of many, black and white alike, Clay promptly confirmed the open secret: that he was already a member of the Nation of Islam and would be henceforth known as Cassius X. Shortly afterwards he would accept the name Muhammad Ali. 

A
lthough Henry had been stopped by Clay, that encounter, still the most famous in the history of the post-war British ring, did more than perhaps any other to boost his career, particularly after the humiliation of that second Zora Folley fight. ‘'Enery's 'ammer' had now passed into the lexicon of sport, indeed of the nation, as having a personality of its own, at least among those who had not been clobbered by it. The Clay fight created a huge interest in him among a wider circle. He had long enjoyed a huge popularity among boxing aficionados but now his appeal was apparently countrywide. He would appreciate this soon.

The defeat had not been a personal disaster; neither had there been any particular shame in losing the fight on the basis of a bad cut, and everyone knew it. As Robert Daley
had been quick to point out in the
New York Times
, the ‘Badly cut Briton was never floored'. The post-match endorsement of Henry supplied by Clay, a complete
volte-face
from his pre-fight histrionics (and not a policy he would adopt often again), had actually served rather well to boost Henry's stock.

However near he had come to glory, though, there was still the small matter of earning a living. His near knockout of Clay (and the American's victory by dint of the clear cheating in his corner) had ensured that his value as a boxer was as high as it ever had been and would go higher still. His fight against Zora Folley in 1958 had (at the time) seemed just as important a match, with Folley as senior contender for the world championship. Now that Henry had shown that he could, up to a point, handle cuts – unless they were as bad as the one he had suffered here – his value was assured. No British fighter would, during Henry's career, earn more from the ring than he did, even though the income tax situation was crippling, and would get even worse.

The damage by Cassius to the left eyebrow had been horrendous and took several months to heal properly. The difficulty was simple: surgical stitching repaired the outer surface, whereas the inner damage merely knitted together to form hard subcutaneous scar tissue. If another punch landed on the healed outer wound, the encysted scar tissue underneath acted as an anvil. Something would have to be done (and would be, later on) but meanwhile Henry went about his usual routine, training in the gym above the
Thomas à Becket
, downing his unique cocktail and lunching in the West End, as Wicks proudly paraded his boy about.

On 24 February 1964 he had his third and final encounter with Brian London. Defending his British title was one thing, but there was a second outright Lonsdale belt at stake, too, as well as the European title, which had fallen vacant on the retirement of Ingemar Johansson. The fight was hard but nowhere near as remorseless as their previous effort. The two men were actually on much better terms than they had been before Henry had both firmly satisfied Cooper family honour in 1959 and seized the title for the first time. Henry won on points after a tiring but not particularly punishing 15 rounds. At one stage the crowd even slow hand-clapped; they were looking for the sort of fireworks that had lit up the Wembley football arena against Clay but it was simply not to be. Happily, the left eyebrow repair remained more or less intact this time.

An example of the high-handedness of the Board of Control had popped up literally minutes before the fight with London. Quite arbitrarily it had been decided, but not announced, that the amount of protective tape a boxer wears under the glove would be more than halved. This was dangerous for two reasons. Firstly, when heavyweights hit each other – and you have to be there to grasp the sheer power behind the punches – the impact of the blow will serve to spread the knuckle laterally and invariably damage the joint. Bursitis is often the result. Secondly, the risk to the opponent is correspondingly increased. When Holland saw the amount of tape provided he protested and Wicks backed him up, as did Harry Levene, for whom the cancellation of the fight meant financial disaster. Quite calmly, the Board of Control officials, Onslow Fane and Teddy Waltham, reversed the decision and issued Holland with more tape. It
wasn't enough, as it transpired, as Henry damaged his left hand on London's head during the fight.

But, despite the disappointment of the Clay fight and the irritating behaviour of the Board of Control, Henry was now as close to the top of the tree in Europe as he could be. There was trouble in store, however, but it came not from the British regulators this time but the European Boxing Union (EBU). Henry had been challenged for the European title by the hefty Karl Mildenberger and the fight was arranged for 9 September 1964.

The fight was actually scheduled to take place in Germany because neither Levene nor Solomons was prepared to promote a fight with a German boxer at that time and the simple truth was that, as a result of the British promoters' reluctance, their German counterparts invariably bid less, despite the fact that the challenger was a countryman of theirs. Even though it was a mandatory defence, Henry would still have to pay Wicks his 25 per cent but now out of a much smaller pie. He was now commanding at least
£
20,000 a fight at home, whereas his share of any European championship purse would be less than half that.

But a few weeks before the fight Henry's left elbow started to give him trouble and the two specialists he consulted advised a fortnight's complete rest. Obviously a boxer in training for a fight simply cannot rest and, therefore, Wicks requested that the fight be postponed. Unsurprisingly, the EBU refused and Henry was unceremoniously stripped of the title he had won from London. He used the time to do as the specialists had ordered.

Unwisely, Henry accepted a fight as a late substitute in a match against Roger Rischer at the Albert Hall in November. It was a match hastily arranged by Mike Barrett. The main event had been originally intended to be a lightweight fight but Dave Charnley, who was a very big draw indeed, was unwell. Henry, still smarting from the EBU's decision, only had a fortnight's notice for the match. Winter training was never his particularly strong point and he paid the price for his hasty preparation. ‘If anyone asks me which fight of my career I want to remember least,' he recalls, ‘then this was it.'

Roger ‘The Dodger' Rischer, a black Californian, was experienced, crafty and crude. He even managed to put Henry on the canvas twice in the eighth round. It was a complete mismatch of styles and was not only a particularly tedious fight but did no good to Henry's reputation. He lost (and clearly) on points; the referee was Harry Gibbs. Henry's behaviour after the fight was revealing. Interviewed on television he was asked if he agreed with the verdict, and the public waited for the embarrassment of boxing's traditional ‘we-wuz-robbed' argument. Of course, they didn't get it. ‘Oh yes,' said Henry, apparently relaxed, ‘he was well on top.'

Henry, despite his frankness with the press, was rather lowered by the outcome of the Rischer fight as well as the behaviour of the EBU, and Albina saw her opportunity to suggest that he might consider retiring. This was, as she told me, less than wise: ‘I did ask him to quit…I remember when Henry was very disillusioned. He told Jim Wicks that I wanted him to stop. Mr. Wicks rang: “Listen, you just look after your house and leave the business to us.” I was quite
clear about that message – you mind your Ps and Qs and get on with your work.'

‘Woman, mind your house, woman, mind your place,' were the clear and perhaps even slightly sinister messages. She refers to Wicks in that rather formal way not, I must point out, because he exercises any particular influence over her even from beyond the grave, but rather more because she has innate Italian courtesy. She never asked Henry to retire again. When he finally did, she felt quite reborn.

Albina was never part of boxing, had never yet even seen a fight, and the Coopers as a couple did not, as a rule, socialize with other fighters. ‘I could never really became close or friendly with another boxer's wife,' she says. ‘I've never mixed with them. It's such a cold sport. I don't feel there was ever any warmth to it. You can't get close to someone whose husband is going to fight yours.'

Likewise, Henry found it quite difficult to spend leisure time with anyone he might have to hit. Retired fighters were different, of course, because they had a wisdom about them that a working boxer always finds valuable, and the
ex-boxer
is usually keen to impart, but dinner with Brian London, even after their reconciliation? No.

So, although the Rischer fight was an embarrassing error, both before and during, that winter brought an interesting approach from the Nation of Islam. The subject was a potential rematch between Henry and Muhammad Ali, as the world champion now styled himself. The caller was Malcolm X, displaying that same naivety that would ensure that he was dead by the end of February 1965. He was, despite the avowed hostility of the Nation of Islam to boxing, actually attempting to negotiate a fight.

Wicks was unmoved. He agreed to a meeting, which took place in Marylebone, but nothing came of it. It was clear to Wicks that Malcolm X knew little of boxing or its commercial imperatives so blandly, but with no particular sense of irony, he referred him to Harry Levene.

Malcolm X had, until the previous year, been a close friend and associate of Muhammad Ali, but was so no longer, as a power struggle for the soul of the American Black Muslim movement had forced Ali into making choices between Malcolm and the spiritual leader of the movement, Elijah Muhammad. The two men were at loggerheads; Malcolm X had realized that some of the tenets of the movement were frankly absurd and attractive to only the most gullible. Stating this would cost him his life. He was assassinated on 21 February 1965 on the orders of Elijah Muhammad.

Interestingly, when the Cooper/Ali rematch did take place in 1966, Wicks received a request for a commission from the Nation; again, he referred them to Levene and that, predictably enough, was that.

Of course, Henry was extremely interested in a rematch with the world champion. He had proved, the vulnerability of his eyebrows apart, that given the right circumstances he had Ali's measure but meanwhile there were titles to defend and a living to make; clearly the two activities did not necessarily coincide. Wicks, sticking to his principle of rejecting ‘ugly' fighters, turned down a request for Henry to defend his Empire title against that rough handful, George Chuvalo, in Toronto. The reason was actually money for the purse offered by the Canadian promoter was a paltry
£
8,000. ‘Jim would never let me take my coat off for less
than
£
20,000,' says Henry. ‘After all, I could fight anywhere for nothing.'

There was a persistent buzz of interest in a return fight with Ali that died down rather rapidly in the backwash created by the new champion's second defeat of Liston, the implication being clear that Liston had taken a dive, or ‘swallowed it'. Rumours grew about a deal between the Nation of Islam and the Mafia, for example, and it was this fight, which took place at the obscure location of Lewiston, Maine, on 25 May 1965, that put paid to the established convention of an automatic rematch between any fighter and the man who had deposed him. In future, such rematches were to be a matter of pure negotiation.

Of the six fights Henry fought after losing to Rischer only one was of any importance: the defence of the British and Empire title against Johnny Prescott. Previously he had put away two Americans, Dick Wipperman in round five at the Royal Albert Hall, followed by Chip Johnson at a match at the Civic Hall in Wolverhampton. The Johnson fight offered some needle for Henry, as it was this fighter who had effectively ended George's career in the ring by inflicting a huge cut on his eyebrow. After losing to Johnson, George had, in fact, announced his retirement and chose to fall back on the experience he had gained with Reg Reynolds and build up his own plastering business, which was to prosper.

Rather as his first fight with Brian London had shown, the way to rouse Henry to heights of aggression normally unseen was for his opponent to have beaten his brother. Johnson was unwise enough to announce to the press that he would take care of Henry as he had taken care of George
and seize his rightful place in the world rankings. Henry, of course, was informed of this:

As George returned to the plastering trade, Henry was diversifying and, with hindsight, this was probably an error. He had met, while on holiday in Las Palmas, a businessman, coincidentally named Harry Cooper, who owned a greengrocer's stall in Holloway market. It obviously paid but he was attempting to expand his enterprise to include a shop. He had thought that Wembley might be a good location and asked Henry's advice as a resident. Henry gave it, that it was a good location, and thought little more of the matter.

However, once back home in Wembley, the phone rang. It was Harry Cooper, with something of a hard-luck story; his business partner had, apparently backed out of the proposed transaction, leaving him dangling somewhat. Henry obliged with some funding and his name, and the business, ‘Henry Cooper of Wembley' at 4 Ealing Road, Wembley, was duly established. It was to go well for a while, even though it seems fairly clear that it was something of an ambush.

Henry had encountered Johnny Prescott before, as a sparring partner at the
Thomas à Becket
. The young Midlander was
very much the rising star. Danny Cornell's report of their curious encounter read: