Gerry Cooney- a little bit underrated

Bottom line, he never beat anybody ranked in the top 10.

He is questioned for good reasons!

 

It's a bit hard for me to keep from underrating Cooney with the spectre of that Michael Spinks beating not resurfacing and reminding me of how utterly helpless....with all his physical advantages at work for him...which meant nothing at all. A disgraceful whipping it was, even more so than the Holmes and Foreman ko losses. There was no excuse for that complete OWNAGE by M. Spinks....none at all.

 

Stop with the Spinks fight already. It has been discussed many times how Cooney was hungover for that fight from alcohol and drugs.

 

Good call.

I always find these overrated / underrated questions a bit obscure. Simply because different people rate different fighters differently. So how are they rated? Depends who you ask.

 

For me yes he is underrated and I don't really think spinks fight when I think of cooney . I think Holmes fight or norton fight and yes I realise Norton was nowhere near prime .

This is where I will probably get shot down but the cooney of the Holmes fight would be a 50/50 fight for wlad

 

Oh, ok..:yep...I guess that would make Gerry a bit stupid as well...to get drunk and hungover for an important fight such as that vs Spinks, eh?

 

I think he was a bit underrated. The heavyweight division was getting thin as he was in his prime in the early 80's. People say Norton, Lyle, and Young were past their prime which is true, but if he knocked out Earnie Shavers or Ossie Ocassio, Mike Weaver, even a comebacking Ali, he wouldn't have gotten much credit either. Also remember he also beat future cruiserweight champ ST Gordon, and fringe contender Dino Dennis.
In his comeback wins, Phil Brown was an undefeated up and coming prospect, George Chaplin a good journeyman heavyweight, and Eddie Gregg who he had to beat in order to fight Michael Spinks, as Gregg was a rated contender.
I really thought he would beat Spinks, but I've heard Cooney was drinking heavily during training. In the 5th round when Spinks unloaded his whole arsenal on him Cooney didn't even seem to remember how to clinch.

 

Cooney drank a bottle of whiskey a day and sobered himself up with cocaine added to that were his poor training habits where in the corner of the gym was a golf net used to drive golf balls. Added to the problems cooney didn't like to jab on the bags or even hit the bags for that matter because of a sore wrist. All he did was to stand in front of the mirror and stare at himself practising short left hooks thrown through the air. Then there was the knee brace that he wore, half the time he couldn't train because of his knee, he even refused to in-fight due to his knee. our game plan was to have him rush in and in-fight with Holmes since we knew that Holmes had a superior reach advantage and a looping right hand behind the jab. Therefore we wanted Gerry to parry Holme's jab then step left short LH to the head followed by short LH to the body finishing with a left upper cut.
Gerry refused to go inside preferring to box than after the fight he said that if he could do it all over again he'd go in there fighting.

 

Wow. You were a trainer for him or otherwise in Cooney's camp?

So he was both often injured + had these substance abuve problems....For most of his career?

Why could he not learn to use the right more & effectively though? Was part of it just laziness & being addicted to his punching habits?

 

I believe by then he was a closet alcoholic.

 

Potentially Cooney could have been a great fighter but you cant rate a fighter on his potential, only on his deeds. He might have been a potential champion but it did not pan out.

Gerry had a lot going for him but his career stalled and lost momentum, proberbly even before the Holmes fight. No real competative rounds fought for real since 1979-80, then fighting Holmes who although older was very active from 1979 until he met Cooney in 1982. It was a huge advantage but by then all the better opponents were aware of the value of the Cooney hype machine and would have priced themselves out. Imagine Joe Louis or Tyson being so inactive before challenging for titles?

At the same point Tyson was at least active. Before Berbick Tyson had no better record than Cooney had going into the Holmes fight but he was at least staying sharp. They kept lining up fringe guys every couple of weeks for Tyson just to maintain momentum because nobody decent wanted to fight Tyson either. Cooney had little to draw upon once the Holmes fight became tough, but he still proved to be a great challenger.

Tyson was able to fulfil his potential but with Cooneys activity he might not have looked so good at championship level or got past Holmes either.

What is worse is that unlike Ray Mancini or other strong chalengers who failed in their first title attempt Cooneys career stalled after one loss. He never really got going again.

You cant rate on potential.

 

Gee whose fault was that:roll: