Gerry Cooney - the hardest puncher ever?

I'm sure Cooney's power was devastating, but I don't think that we ever saw him dispatch a truly durable fighter to warrant rating him as the hardest puncher ever.. While he certainly beat Norton and Lyle convincingly, those guys were thoroughly done for and had previously been stopped by lesser fighters.. These fights don't offer much in the way of a berometer.. Now, had he stepped in the ring with someone like Tex Cobb around 1981 and managed to score a knockout or force a stoppage, then we'd have something to work with...

 

That's a bit of a misconception. A right hand was the shot which initially stunned Norton, and another right tore open Young's face, leading directly to the stoppage. Earlier than that, he dug it to the body pretty well.

Valle and Cooney worked very hard to further develop it, and he did execute a few good looking rights to Young's head, although that was about as good as his cross ever got. I think it was a slightly better right than Frazier's, and arguably better than the hook Marciano had prior to Louis. The potential was clearly there for him to develop his right into a consistently deadly weapon.

Where I thought he screwed up was in the failure to utilize his jab far more than he did. That was his power hand, and he had the height and reach necessary to make it highly effective. Holmes said it was a good punch, but I clearly remember him doubling up on it just once during their showdown.

 

In Cooney's novelty match with Goerge Foreman in 1990, one of the commentators who stood alongside Larry Holmes was very impressed with how sharp Cooney looked in the first round.. I remember him saying that Gerry's left looked as good as it always had, and that his right seemed to have even improved.

Even though Gerry got beaten early, I respected the way he approached the fight.. He hired Gil Clancy to train him and despite his age and abscence from the ring, looked more fit and focussed than he had in years.. He was in far better physical and mental shape than in the Spinks fight.. I truly feel that Cooney believed that he could win that fight, and his diligence showed.. Had his chin been sturdier, he might very well have beaten George that evening. Foreman was eating a lot of leather in that first round, and in the beginning of the second. Once Cooney got hurt though, he simply couldn't recover.

 

Gerry had very little physical strength for his size, so there was little question he was going to have to utilize mobility to have any kind of chance at survival, let alone winning. Tantalizing snippets like his atypical display of movement cause me to wonder what he might have done with that kind of training and greater activity against quality opposition immediately following Holmes.

That he couldn't take it on the temple guaranteed that there was a somewhat low ceiling to how high he could climb, but he should have gone considerably further than he did. (People sometimes forget how young he still was. Michael Spinks was his first match after turning 30, over five years after Holmes.)

 

Agreed,

I think too many people unfairly drop him in the category of a pure puncher, when in fact, he was actually a very good boxer as well... We just saw very few showings of these skills. I just wish the guy could have taken a better punch.. Can you imagine what he might have accomplished if he had Tex Cobb's durability?

 

I have read where observers of the day said Cooney actually had a very good Jab when he used it and pretty good hand speed for for about 4 or 5 rounds for such a big guy at the time.

I watched the Holmes fight the other day and Valle was telling him every round to double up on the Jab and Gerry just would not do it. The strategy they had for that fight was just awful. Not that Valle was not a good trainer but I would have liked to have seen what say Gil Clancy could have done with Cooney had he got him from the beginning. I think Valle babied and coddled Cooney too much.

 

Let me get this straight

You are using the Mummy that faced Foreman as a legitimate barometer of Cooney's power?

Cooney hadn't fought for near on 3 years and was over the hill basically from the Holmes fight 8 years prior. He barely fought again and was poleaxed by Spinks 3 years before he faced Foreman without a single fight in between and after goodness knows what drug and alchohol abuse.

We could take many over the hill punchers and downgrade them via this criteria. Also, fighter A axing fighter B where fighter C fails has long been proven to be fallible. Boxing is full of anomolies.

Incidently i agree Shavers was the man. Probably the heaviest puncher ever, tho Cooney was sure no slouch.

 

During the early years of the Forman comeback on the old USA Tuesday night fights. In one of his pre fight interviews they were doing a little question and answer section and I remember Foreman clearly saying that Ronnie Lyle hit so hard Im going to track down the tape in my collection to see exactly what is was he said but im pretty sure it was that Lyle was the hardest puncher he ever faced. On the topic Cooney can totally bang and had very good power. But I feel as though Shavers, Lyle, Tua and Ruddock are a few HEAVYWEIGHTS off the top of my head that had a bigger punch then Cooney.

 

yep, the old foreman was still a good fighter, he ended up knocking out cooney, but anyway the point is that Cooney hit Foreman with a real good left hook and staggered him, but Morrison hit him with many many left hooks and Foreman didn't budge.
Cooney has better power then morrison.

 

I wasn't talking about the Cooney vs Morrison comparison.

 

I think Gerry had top-notch power, but he just stopped a still-somewhat decent Jimmy Young, and a washed-up Ron Lyle and over-the-hill Ken Norton.I would've liked to see that power in effect against a contemporary, like a Greg Page and a Michael Dokes.

 

I think Cooney rates higher as a finisher than for one punch power.

 

i dont know about the hardest puncher ever as he never proved it. What he did prove is that he could certainly hit. Cant remember who exactly said it, but in the ring interview after KOing Norton, one of his cornermen was shouting Bundini-esque that he hit so hard he shouldnt be allowed to fight. Ha!

 

What the ****? :-(