Cooper, after the 2nd Ali fight

As mentioned, Cooper's problem was not cuts, it was he was knocked out and outpointed by virtually every world class opponent he fought.

The exceptions being Clay/Ali who did indeed cut him to ribbons, and one glorious night when Cooper was given the benefit of the doubt (not quite a hometown decision) in a close fight with a near prime Foley. Foley would get his revenge a few years later steamrolling Sir 'enry in two.

 

And Floyd

 

He looks like LIzzie Borden's Father.

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Wasn't it after this fight that Ali said something along the lines of the was so much blood he could hear him bleeding

 

cooper gets a bum deal.

Aside from zora folley here is a list of ring magazine top ten rated contenders cooper beat.

dick richardson (euro champ, beat ezzard charles and bob baker)
joe bygraves (comonwealth champ)
brian london (beat pastrano, radmacher, roger rischer and zora foley)
joe erskine (beat chuvalo & pastrano)
alex miteff (beat nino valdes)
roy harris (world title chalenger)
wayne bethea (beat ezzard charles & ernie terrel)
karl mildenburger (world title chalenger & euro champ)
hubert hilton (rated in top ten 1966)
jose urtain (beat 4 euro champions, ring magazine fighter of the month)

*heinz neuhaus (draw in germany)

heinz was a euro champ who beat rex layne and dan bucceroni

 

should have beat clayh in fight 1 either by dq or tko due to cheating/smelling salts

 

Have you evidence of this? And what cheating was there?

Clay/Ali had a rip in his glove, the glove was going to be replaced at the end of the round. Some Officals thought there was no spare gloves, so one went back to get some from the dressing rooms.

He was called back, as a spare pair had been found. By this time Ali/Clay's glove had been repaired to the satisfaction of the ref, and about 10 seconds later than normal the fifth round began.

 

Lets be honest, The Ring just stuck with a strange tradition, of always having at least one European in its ranking no matter what. Richardson, Bygraves, London, Urtain and Erskine were very fortunate to have been rated top 20 let alone top 10.

Bethea, Harris and Miteff were solid fighters, but again were never really top notch.

Mildenberger did deserve the kudos he got.

Cooper was a fine domestic fighter, an iconic of our era, but the era was shown for Domestic and European fighters to of been relatively weak.

 

I give 'Enry more respect for battling Joe Bugner 15-Rounds in 1971.

Damn, even in 1972, he would given Muhammad Ali a better fight than Bugner,
or Terry Daniels versus Joe Frazier.

 

I read in a book years ago , henry claiming that Ingos people deliberately put Coopers corner facing the sun so he couldnt see.

Incredible ha ha!

 

It is 2 complicated 4 dumbasses 2 understand , I know .
But thank u 4 d info nonetheless .
Which helps 2 explain another loss by Cooper .
And wasn't d Patterson loss due 2 some bother/vision disturbance caused by d .. cuts ?

 

no, cooper was outclassed by patterson who never looked better. too much speed.

cooper was a very good fighter who paid his dues within the top ten, he was far from a token euro fighter.

cooper beat foley when he was riding high and avoided by patterson -something eddie machen, nino valdes, bob cleroux, mike dejohn, george chuvalo, henry clark and bob foster - fighters who the uninformed would regard as better than cooper - could not manage. A tired foley also beat bonavena first time around even though he may have dropped a hometown MD in the return.

 

lets be honest those fighters all beat rated fighters to make their ranking its how it worked then. they paid their dues.

You didnt get bumped into the ratings for being an undefeated winner of missmatches or hung onto a rating after losing to a champion, you had to beat rated fighters ......even if you were european.:hi:

 

Doug Jones , Johnny Summerlin , Young Jack Johnson , Alejandro Lavorante managed 2 destroy Folley , and then Ernie Terrell beat him .
I do agree that Folley was far from a bad journeyman , something like the Monte Barrett of his day , a somewhat lesser version of big Montell .
Folley was great as a stepping stone , a measuring stick if u like .
I didn't try 2 mock Cooper in my post u quoted , I consider his reasoning as legit , unlike most people .
What is less legit is Ingo's "victory" over him .
That was my only point in my post u quoted .
And most of d guys u mentioned above were total crap , btw , except from Chuvalo , Cleroux , Machen and Bonavena whom were somewhat better than Folley himself despite dropping d decisions 2 him (drawing in Machen's case) .
Having watched highlights (is d complete fight available ?) of Cooper vs Folley 1 , I conceded that Cooper didn't beat Folley despite the judges' verdict ..
Those guys I excluded from being total crap were still not good , just good for their **** poor era ..
Just because I watched some of them fight .