Gerry Cooney vs Michael Spinks

Spinks was impressive for this fight. I'm going to be honest, Cooney has nothing but raw power to fight Spinks with, hes' just tall, and hard hitting. spinks has so many more assets to fight cooney with: His angles, speed, power, etc.
What makes you think he should've been able to KO spinks? Because he's bbigger and taller? Nah. IMO cooney came in unprepared and not very well trained to fight a fighter of the caliber of spinks. Spinks was a good fighter and only lost to tyson in his whole career. Cooney didn't do anything but KO a bunch of old men and bums. But he did have a sick knockout punch.
I don't think Spinks would ever be knocked out by cooney. he's just a much better fighter. But you're right. Cooney should've done better given his advantages.

I was more impressed with Spinks then surprised with Cooney. Cooney just showed how one-dimensional he was.

 

I would hesitate to say that any fighter who had drink problems and was neglecting his training should be favoured over the reigning champion.

Taking into acount what we know was happening outside the ring, the outcome of the fight is not a huge upset.

At that level fair enough isn't good enough

 

That was a real bad cut Spinks had. Real bad. If a guy is a finisher, that was a golden opportunity to get him out of there. Polar opposites when it comes to boxing brains and the smart guys sure do have a better record than the guys that fight dumb.

 

Michael Spinks a good fighter? ...No, he was a great fighter and better in every single department than Cooney, who was inactive and under-prepared. The only advantages Cooney had were his power and size, but in hindsight, this has became another under-appreciated victory...much like his first win over Larry Holmes. That's Spinks whole career for you though, we have people describing him as good and threads being made which sound like, "...Why couldn't Cooney beat this Spinks fella".

Spinks beat the **** into Cooney.

 

Well said
I think that Rico might be underrating Spinks and over rating Cooney.. Cooney just has power, and doesn't know how to use his size very well, while Cooney has everything else going for him.
Spinks also defeated a man that Cooney got dominated by, IE, Larry Holmes.
Spinks was better then Cooney period.

 

If a P4P list existed in 1985, Michael Spinks would have been very near the top.

 

Spinks was overrated at heavyweight. Cooney was in no mind to be in the ring that night.

 

He only had 5 bouts at heavy I believe and he won 4/5 of them.
pretty good record, I think he did a fine job at heavy.

 

Michael Spinks and overrated in the same sentence? Spinks was so rated at Heavyweight that he went in as underdog in four of five fights there.

...Smarten up.

 

How did you get this fight ? I did not find it on youtube

 

Lot of people like to say that but thats just not true Cooney was pretty competetive until the late rounds agains a prime Larry Holmes.
Not saying a younger Cooney would have beat Spinks, but let me just say that was a faded Gerry Cooney in against Spinks.

Great win for Spinks though as even a faded Cooney was still dangerous.

 

Simply put, Cooney was no longer a player in the division.. It was quite noticeable that his focus was off, and it didn't help that he had only made 3 appearances in 5 years, with his last fight coming 18 months earlier and only lasting a single round. Take this along with the fact that he had drinking problems and showed up at a career high 238 lbs, and you basically had a shot fighter.. Now, I don't know if the man who charged an aging Ken Norton and beat him in 54 seconds would have KO"d Michael Spinks, but let's just say that it might have been a different affair.

In any event, it was an ugly match.. As Rico already stated, Gerry did not execute any survival tactics, and seemed to be on rubbery legs once he was hurt. I hate to say it, but I'm not even sure if Cooney would have beaten the aged Joe Bugner in 1987.

 

true, but he got knocked down twice, and mostly got smacked around until that stoppage, but Cooney did have his moments, but Holmes just beat Spinks up IMO.

 

...In the first fight? ...No.