Cooney VS Bob Foster

Cooney might actually kill Foster.
Foster was the much better fighter
And far greater in historic significance.
But he wasnt the better heavyweight.
Cooney prior to Holmes hurt him seriously.
As he would've hurt Spinks prior to his fight with Holmes (Cooney’s).

 

Weaver was a slow starter and Cooney would have a good chance of bombing him out of there early.
Page was less than remarkable and motivated in many of his early fights (Trevor Berbick, David Bey, and Witherspoon) a win vs Cooney isn’t guaranteed
Coetzee was a good fighter but could be caught early
Dokes likely had the best chance of the group
We never got to see what Cooney was really made of due to careful matchmaking by the Wacko Twins and Cooney being under developed by Valle. Cooney likely would have fared better with a completely different team around him but he was always going to self implode it just might have been a little later in his career and not as soon. Cooney could fight he just had a mediocre management and team around him and wasn’t properly moved or developed. Then you have the alcohol and drugs that were going to be there regardless so I don’t think had he beat Holmes in ‘82 that he would have been champion long. He was always going to self destruct regardless and pretty much admitted that in his book (which is a very honest look at his career by Cooney himself he doesn’t make any excuses and admits his problems were almost all self inflicted)

 

Young could still fight

 

I hate to say it because I’m a Bob Foster fan…but Conney by KO

 

Name one legit HW contender Foster beat ? because everytime he moved up to HW he lost to every known HW.

Foster would have no chance, yes Foster was a great LHW. But at Heavyweight he made no impression. And he would be KO'ed by the much bigger Cooney.

 

Bob Foster is right up Gerry Cooney's alley, he is old and too thin to compete at heavyweight, he has lost to heavyweights in the past.

 

Bob was a great light heavyweight but he should keep to his weight class.Cooney is just to big and strong for him

 

I like it when we get new posters who contribute to the discussions.

I’m not fond of obviously trolls.

 

This, all day.

 

OK, upon what do you base this in Foster’s resume?

What heavyweight of consequence did he ever knock out? Or even beat?

What heavyweight of consequence failed to dominate him (most knocked him out)?

Your claim lacks any foundation.

His BEST showing against any heavyweight of any note was losing most every round to a very cautious Ernie Terrell, who was 202 pounds. Foster was so emboldened by his showing that afterward he swore he’d never fight a big man again.

Cooney is 6-7 and 225 pounds and was a legit puncher. No light heavyweight ever troubled him.

If you’re not trolling, address these points.

 

I have posted before that Gerry Cooney needed to have a team that would have developed him, instead of having a blood sucking greedy team that only used him for a cash cow by putting him in there with the Over The Hill Gang which consisted of Ron Lyle, Ken Norton, and Jimmy Young to avoid real peak contenders like Terrible Tim Witherspoon, Pinklon Thomas, and Michael Dokes. His management team was not interested in his development or prestige as a fighter, just the almighty green.

 

It’s a lot more complicated IMO.

For one, Young is exactly the kind of guy he should have been in with — apart from Shavers, Young had never been stopped (and was only stopped on a cut this time) — same as Michael Dokes and a bunch of other rising heavyweights used him to get experience with a durable and cagey vet.

He was also supposed to have fought Earnie Shavers on the Hearns-Cuevas undercard but was injured in training (so they said) and Tex Cobb ended up fighting Earnie in his place. Now maybe Gerry blasts out the Acorn like he did Norton but Earnie was still viable as a puncher at this point.

They also made the fight to put him in with Mike Weaver for the WBA title, but the WBA (even though Cooney was the No. 1 contender) ordered that Weaver had to defend instead against Quick Tillis or be stripped.

Cooney had some other fights that he pulled out of due to injuries.

Now we know somewhere along the line Gerry developed some bad drinking and drugging habits. It’s very possible that his management actually saved him by pulling out of fights and claiming injuries because he was in no shape to fight.

As far as money vs. experience: Cooney made a mint. If his management put him in with Witherspoon, Thomas and Dokes, guess that that entails — signing with Don King, which they were adamant they weren’t going to do (go ask Tim and Dokes how that worked out for them). I think his management was protecting him in not putting him in a situation that would have required fighting for King.

But let’s say there were alternatives to fight other guys (or those guys) without signing with King. Let’s say Gerry gets experience, but loses 2-3 fights. Now maybe he’s more prepared later to fight for a title … or maybe his confidence is shot by those losses and he never fights for the title, or he gets beat by lesser guys because of it and be becomes another pug who never made significant money. Or maybe he loses to those guys and doesn’t improve enough that he wins the title if he ever gets to fight for it. Just fighting better fighters doesn’t make you better in every case (else Bigfoot Martin would be an ATG, look at who he fought).

Those are all viable outcomes to the ‘throw him in the deeper end of the pool’ management strategy — at least as likely as him cruising through those guys and fighting Holmes and making as much or more money and beating Larry. Or he loses a few of those and makes $2-3M instead of $20M and loses to Larry anyway.

It’s a house of cards that can fall apart. They got him in position to fight for the heavyweight title for the biggest challenger purse of all time. That’s not terrible management — if it was that easy, everyone would do it. Each approach has upside and pitfalls, and how it would have turned out is a complete unknown if they’d taken the different path.

Me, I’ll take the money.

 

Foster was a better fighter but his chin at heavyweight would fail him against Cooney