Gerry Cooney: What Happened?

"In September 1981 Weaver had decided to fight New York heavyweight Gerry Cooney, the WBA's number-one contenderfor the championship. Under the association's rules a champion must defend against the number-one contender during a specified time period. Arum did not control Cooney. He did control James 'Quick' Tillis, the number-three contender for the title. At a WBA executive meeting Arum argued that Weaver should fight Tillis instead of Cooney. Weaver's lawyer was present at the meeting but was not allowed to speak. The WBA ordered Weaver to fight Tillis or be stripped of his title."

- page 128 & 129 of Stephen Brunt's 'Mean Business'

Arum likely paid off the WBA. I think due to Weaver being a very slow starter there was a good chance Cooney wins that one in the first 3 or 4 rounds. Mike Jones and Victor Valle wanted to fight Holmes and Dennis Rappaport wanted the Weaver fight so there was disagreement in Gerry’s own camp over who was the more ideal opponent. Regardless, Cooney was on the shelf way too long after the Norton fight and did have the shoulder issue in January of 1982 while training for Holmes and ended up having a ridiculously long training camp in Palm Springs before arriving in Las Vegas. There are just so many questions about Cooney’s career the guy is such an enigma but as others have said his problems were mostly self inflicted and having the Wacko Twins as managers didn’t help matters.