Gerry Cooney: What Happened?

D'Amato was only good with short guys who played that game as children. Same way Steward was only real good with tall guys who play chess.

 

I don’t think Cooney’s limited success had anything to do with who trained him. Victor Valle was a good and competent trainer. The problem was all with Gerry himself. He didn’t like boxing and didn’t have the drive to push himself harder persevere. After the Holmes fight made him a millionaire he essentially stopped being a professional, only taking an easy fight here and there for a paycheck. All the while indulging in the good life and bad lifestyle habits.

 

Cooney had a love/hate relationship with his Father and thus with boxing- the only way he ever got any positive attention from him. He also had a love/hate relationship with the press as he craved recognition in a childlike way (The Sports Illustrated article where he shyly complained that he couldn't tell whether the writer "liked him or not yet" and the writer was shocked at such a direct appeal for approval) but was also afraid of being exposed as not being "the hero" that mainstream America wanted him to be and would've expected him to be. Cooney had already started abusing alcohol and cocaine by this point.

I think Cooney was fine as a fighter. I also think his "dumb fight strategy" was a great one in light of these conflicts. If he had won, Cooney would've been under more pressure and more scrutiny than maybe any other athlete in history and he knew that would be unbearable and so he decided to "go the distance" instead of bum-rushing Holmes and trying to break him in half. Accomplished two goals- he got credit for being a noble and worthy challenger and also subtly put the cuffs on himself. Then he waited it out with sporadic fights here and there until the attention died down and sort of faded away until his Foreman era comeback when he had cleaned up and wanted one more shot.

Didn't it ever make you wonder why he chose such a restrained fight plan when his shot (and a good one) was to come out blazing early and strong? I can't explain it any other way. Maybe someone else can.

 

http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/blog/?p=25135

Here's a Gerry Cooney interview on the subject.

 

cool read! Thanks for sharing

 

He had alot of pressure on him in the Holmes fight and he did ok, but he pretty much was outclassed. He showed a lot of heart, but he never showed confidence again.

 

He was overhyped that's all.
After the defeat to Holmes I guess him and his careful managers were scared to put him in the ring against anyone good and risk a second defeat, so they continued to cherry-pick, or he would pull out of fights 'sick' or 'injured', so then his confidence decreased even more.

Honestly, I don't think he took a punch well at all.

 

Gerry Cooney, quite naturally, would destroy Tyson and Jones in an exhibition match. He was a sparring king. With headgear he is DempseySullivanSharkeyT,FrazierMarcianoFletcher and Sonny all rolled into one. His problem was no bravery w/out the headgear and controlled environment.

 

R

 

@The Morlocks good to see you back.

Cooney’s a complex one to unravel. People say he was overprotected, and that may be so, but that managerial approach earned him a title shot at Holmes with a payday he’d have never received if he had taken two or three losses along the way — and there’s no guarantees that getting thrown in the deeper end of the pool would have actually made him better ... because Gerry was very fragile confidence-wise and getting beaten by a better class of opponent on the way up may have shattered that.

There’s also the inactivity. I was around and remember it well — Cooney would have a fight lined up or be rumored to be signing to fight a bigger name and suddenly he’s sidelined with ‘an injury.’ My belief is that his Whacko Twins managers and Victor Valle (look at his resume, fine trainer) knew a lot about what was going on with Gerry as far as abusing alcohol and drugs, so he’d go on a bender and they knew he wouldn’t be in any kind of mental or physical shape to compete so better to pull him out and hope at some point he would be able to overcome those demons and become the fighter they believed he could be.

It’s easy to say he fought Holmes wrong — if he had bum-rushed Larry and gotten sparked out early or run completely out of gas mid-fight people would say he should have bided his time and waited for openings against such a skilled, cagey and experienced champ. Remember, every time Larry hit him clean he wobbled or fell down — what happened in the second round might have happened earlier or be fight-ending had he gone in with reckless abandon.

His team’s hope was to get him a WBA belt by fighting Tillis or maybe Weaver (dangerous fight for Gerry) or a Berbick or someone like that so they could set up a champ-versus-champ showdown with Larry and claim a bigger share of a bigger pie. Not a bad strategy but it never quite worked out.

 

Thank you Pat. Good to see you.

 

I'm curious why he couldn't get a shot at Weaver's belt when he was ranked #1?

 

Yeah he was a bit overhyped, although I do believe some of the hype was real. Cooney-Weaver would've been a true and tried test.

By the way, take that thumbnail down and replace it with something else. You don't deserve to have Mike Tyson in your profile pic...

 

This sort of explains it. Or tries to:

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/25/sports/weaver-appears-about-to-lose-title.html

TL/DR version: Shenanigans.