Cooney vs Lyle and Young

Cooney destroyed Lyle with a double left hook to the body in the 1st, the Young fight was more compettive but Cooney busted him up,cut him and shook him with a hook and a few swatting right hands and it was a TKO, both men were past there primes

 

The Young fight was brutal. Jimmy took a beating and was cut up pretty badly.

 

I thought it was Young's last good showing. Young did quite well during the first three rounds, but in the fourth he suffered a very bad cut (caused by a punch) which severely impaired his vision. So instead of using his usual slickness to get out of Cooney's punches, he covered up and took a pretty bad beating. They could've stopped it a bit earlier if it was my call, a bit of a sad fight. Cooney looked pretty sweet though, especially if you consider no one looked good fighting the tough Philadelphian.

Here it is:


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Then there's the Norton fight which was an utter demolition job. Again, a bit sad to see Cooney tee off on an aging Norton like that... but then again, he never fared well against punchers.

 

Cooney was very devastating in all of these fights. It makes you think what could have been if he had a fighting spirit.

 

Cooney to me gets a bad rap. Most all top contenders work their way up the ladder by beating "yesterday's" contenders until they themselves get the title shot (Lyle, Young, Norton etc.)

He gave prime Holmes one of, or the, hardest fights that Larry had.

 

What alpha champs did cooney fight? what top young alpha champs/contenders did cooney beat? did he fight weaver, thomas, tate, coetzee, page, bonecrusher, bruno, witherspoon, berbick, dokes, tucker?

The Size/Power/Talent was there.......but he never proved himself. We could have learned alot more about cooney if he didnt take the holmes loss so personally and had continued fighting to earn a alpha belt.

 

but most of those top contenders beat at least a couple top 10 ranked young contenders at the time........cooney did not beat one top 10 contender

 

good story about Cooney vs ST gordon in one of my books


'Before the fight ST comes up to cooney and says "you white motherbleeper no white boy will ever beat me". Cooney says "you got a big mouth, lets see what happens in the ring". In the 2nd round Cooney hit ST with a left hook, and ST froze in his heals. After that he ran, no way he was going to be hit by cooney again, the referee ended up disqualifying him in the 4th round for refusing to fight. After the fight in the hotel, cooney went up to him and said "you yellow *******, if you didnt want to fight me you shouldn't have gotten in the ring."

 

Really didn't need to.....his Management realized his
complextion was the connection to $$$$$$$$.

 

I thought Holmes handled him superbly. He could have stopped it a lot sooner but chose the route of least danger and put on a very decent clinic. Gerry never had Holmes in any sort of trouble (excepting illegal blows) if memory serves me well. A decent fight tho, Cooney was potentially dangerous with all that incredible power.

 

Agreed, a masterful performance. Holmes played it safe, and why shouldn't he? He didn't want to grant Cooney a chance he didn't have, so to speak.

I disagree with Longhorn's statement that it was one of Holmes' hardest fights, though. I imagine it must been tough mentally with all the racism (though the cheque increased propertionally) and Cooney hurt Holmes with hard body shots at the end of the 5th, but outside of that, Holmes was always in full control. I'd say the Weaver, Witherspoon and Williams fights were much harder.

 

You left off the great Alfredo Evangelista, who duked it out with (a)three heavyweight champions (Ali, Holmes & Spinks), and (b)with fellow Texan Terry Daniels who was managed by my Air Guard Commanding Officer.

 

That was my point for sure, i didn't think Holmes had it hard at all. I'd go so far as to add Snipes, Bonecrusher, even Shavers II. Tho Holmes controlled 95% of their bouts Snipes and Shavers at least had him down and in serious trouble.

 

Young and Norton were ranked 9th or 10th by the magazines and the WBC and WBA when Cooney fought them. They were on the downside, no doubt, but they still counted as marginal contenders.