Gerrie Coetzee

Terrific right hand, when it was in good shape. His biggest wins were Leon Spinks, a big shock since Leon was coming off his Ali series, and his KO'ing of Dokes to win the title. The Snipes loss was a robbery IMO. He lost several big fights he probably should have won (Tate, Weaver), after building up a lead then falling apart late on. Always seemed a decent guy as well.

I felt he used to get a raw deal for being a South African at the height of Apartheid, when that was hardly his fault. He would get booed at fights because of that. The WBC refused to rate him because he was from South Africa, even though Jose Sulaiman didn't seem to have a problem with his pal Don King promoting fights there.

 

The South Africa thing obviously didn’t hurt him too much: got three titles shots, two on home soil.

 

I've told this story in other threads, but I'll repeat it since it involves Coetzee. I was a fan growing up, but by the time he fought Dokes (when I was 16) for the WBA title I had written him off as a guy who always loses the big ones - versus Tate and Weaver. So I thought there was no way he'd beat Dokes (I didn't know about Dokes' cocaine issues at the time). That is, until I saw the weights in that morning's USA Today newspaper. 215! Of course we didn't have BoxRec in those days to compare weights to previous fights, but I knew that was lighter than any other TV bout I'd seen him in. I took 215 to mean that Coetzee had taken Dokes very seriously and had trained that way. So I (almost) knew Coetzee was going to pull it out that night, which he did. It was a pretty thrilling night to be a Gerrie Coetzee fan.

 

I had the same feeling with Sanders vs Klitschko. Corrie had always missed his big shots, and this was going to be his swansong. I knew what a tremendous boxer he could be when he put his mind to it, and I thought about Wlad "you don't know what is coming your way boytjie". I was super disappointed when Sanders came in looking like Andy Ruiz for Vitali, who was probably the better brother.