Is Gerry Cooney delusional or does he have a point?

Cooney could have beaten Spinks had he not been a drunkard...holmes...another year experience and the chance of his winning goes from 3 percent to 5...that's it.

 

He may well have, if we attribute his total ineptness vs Spinks to his problems with alcohol..but there's no way that Gerry would have ever beaten either Holmes or Foreman for that matter.

 

Not just alcohol; inactivity and indifference count too.

 

He had no business in the ring then...his past as a fighter would be much more esteemed if he had just retired after Holmes...he didn't have the fire in his gut to be a fighter anyway.

 

Wouldn't disagree; a familiar tale, though.

 

Gerry was even more far gone for Foreman than he was for Michael Spinks, yet he was able to nail George with that big hook in the opening round. Cooney's hook to the body might have been expected to break Michael in half within the opening three minutes, yet it didn't happen.

Cooney may have had a shot at the rusty and misfiring Holmes of Tyson, but I don't believe Gerry could take a punch even as well as Marvis Frazier. (Marvis did beat Broad, Bugner and Bonecrusher. I don't know that Cooney goes 3-0 against that trio at the time in their careers when Marvis prevailed over them.) Holmes didn't drop that many world class opponents with a single punch, but Gerry was among the ranks of Marvis, Evangelista, Weaver and Ocasio in getting floored by one legal shot from Larry. (I don't really count Frank and LeDoux, since Holmes used a thumb to the eye to bring them down.)

Even at 52, Larry was able to repeatedly land his right on Beanfart. He was able to be so selective at landing his right on Cooney that he could specify Gerry's chin as being solid, but that when hit on the temple, "He wobbles like a duck." That would have bode horribly for any rematch with Holmes.

I don't know when Larry said what he said about Gerry being able to beat him in another year, but Holmes certainly craved another identically huge and relatively easy payday after their match. In recent years, they've been on friendly terms, with Larry aiding Cooney's F.I.S.T. initiative, and Holmes could be expected to be charitable and conciliatory towards his legacy challenger. (Even if Larry had consolidated all competing title claims and beaten Coetzee, Dokes, Page, Thomas and Michael Spinks, and had prompt returns with Norton and Witherspoon, I still believe that his legacy fights would have been limited to his title winning effort against Norton, the Cooney defense, and Mercer.)

 

I tend to agree with you on all this Duodenum...in the case of the Foreman fight, poor Gerry had the misfortune of landing his best on the chin of the guy with a Mt. Rushmore chin...probably pissed off George more than anything else and convinced him to end matters quickly and go home early for a cheeseburger or two.

 

All three were **** HWs.

 

?????:huh

 

He had a point concerning Spinks to some degree, but Larry would always handle Gerry.

 

I claim it only after I watched all of their fights against each other and also Spinks' and Holmes' fights against Tyson , and Holmes against Shavers #2.

Holmes fought like crap even in his biggest wins. The reasons for them were either that his opponents were crap , the judges helped him , or both.

 

He is right that the drink and drugs beat him.

Whether or not he could have beaten Holmes, he should have been able to pick up part of the title in that era if he had been focused. He would only have needed to be more focused than one of the beltholders on their off night.

Spinks again should have been doable on paper.

In the end though we will never know.

 

Cooney fell prey to the "great whit hope" syndrome, and as a result his career was not managed very well.

 

See Sandy Ferguson.

 

cooney would have pummelled spinks in his peak but holmes I think would always beat him
but he could have given holmes a better fight even though cooney often connected with hooks and jabs
and I think a peak cooney would give george a fight too just based on his Hand speed