Jose Manuel Urtain - Highlights

You don't need to tell me about Cooper I was there, and for the Mildenberger fight.Cooper had perceptibly slipped as evidenced by his having to go 15rds to points against Bodell ,a fighter he had put away in 2 rds when he was prime. Cooper beat Bodell [2nd fight], and Urtain by out jabbing them .
His left hook was not the fine tuned weapon it had been in his golden days.
Cooper beats half of the top ten of 1970?

When Cooper fought Urtain, at the cavernous Empire Pool , it was 11 days before my 22nd birthday.
The top ten was as follows.
Champ
Frazier
1.Ali
2.Foreman
3.Bonavena
4.Quarry
5.Foster
6.Cooper
7.Chuvalo
8.Liston
9.Urtain
10.Garcia

Which five would you make Cooper favourite to beat?:think


N.B .Bugner did not ko Wepner .Wepner retired with a cut eye.
Of the 6 common opponents up to Jan 1971,[when Bugner beat Cooper]. Foreman had the more impressive results overall.

 

　
You got me, that is a stronger list than I expected. Is that the annual ratings? From that list I would have Cooper beating garcia and Urtain - thats two Henry is favorite over, maybe even Chuvalo who always dropped fights to good boxers. I would give Henry an outside 50-50 chance against either quarry or Ellis around that time (where is ellis?). I half expected to see names like Buster mathis, juergen blin, gregorgio Peralta, manuel Ramos, Dave zyglewich, terry daniels, pedro agosto, wepner.leotis Martin to be knocking around at that time. Cooper beats all those. How good was Mac Foster anyway? Bugner went on to beat him.
　

Yes I saw that fight on you tube. It was a TKO and Bugner really outboxed wepner, he outclassed wepner in a big way. Old Cooper and Bugner were both a level above Wepner.

 

Cooper would never go near Chuvalo, Ungerman tried to make the match a couple of times.Jim Wicks would not wear it.

I don't see Cooper beating Quarry or Ellis , not even if he was prime, which in 1970 he most decidedly was not.

Cooper would not beat Leotis Martin trust me. I saw Martin beat a prime Thad Spencer at the Royal Albert Hall, it was the UK Fight Of The Year.


I would think Mathis ,and Peralta would be toss ups for a prime Cooper . Martin was no4 in 69 and Peralta no 10 .

Foster was no5 in 69,70 and 71, he would be too much for a 36 years old Henry.

 

He certainly didn't school Bugner

 

Chuvalo lost to mathis in that time frame, so why dont you think cooper has a chance with chuvalo when mathis whuped chuvalo? Did you ever get to see Edwardo Corletti beat Chuvalo in London in 1966? what happened there? I know it was a few years later but I watched a tape of Bugner beating coprletti and he was no great shakes. Going by his record corletti was no great shakes when he beat Chuvalo - who also lost to radmacher, erskine and terrell.

Ive seen tapes of spencer vs quarry and he looked good but must have slipped a bit for cooper victim Billy walker to beat spencer.

Look, I know career timing can explain away a few good names on any if not all fighters careers but Cooper's record kind of stands up as well as any decent contender -throughout his career.

How do you think "H" gets on with Daniels, zyglewich, Ramos, Blin, Agosto and wepner?

 

Because Cooper famously ducked Chuvalo.

I dont think Corletti was any better or worse than Urtain.

 

I saw Corletti v Bugner, and Walker , but only on TV.

Career timing is the factor really. it was 6 years between Corletti beating Chuvalo ,and losing to Bugner. Otherwise how would you explain Corletti beating Roger Rischer, who beat a prime Cooper?

Cooper would have beaten Corletti ,probably even a 1970 Cooper, its styles, boxers gave Chuvalo trouble. Spencer began to believe the hype and was not training right when he fought Quarry.

Cooper would have had his hands full with a prime Mathis at any stage of his career ,Mathis was never ranked , but he was a quick handed good boxer.
Cooper lost to several "spoilers", like Rischer,and Amos Johnson , he was never truly top class, imo.

There were fringe heavyweights that would have taken him like Amos Lincon, Henry Clark,maybe Al Blue Lewis. Prime Cooper beats Blin, Ziggy, Ramos,Agosto, Wepner , struggles to beat Daniels imo.

 

You dont have to be world champion to be world class. Cooper was as much world class as all the other contenders who would drop fights to one another and never be world champion. Rischer and johnson were at one time rated contenders themselves. No shame in that.

Cooper also beat contenders and was a genuine 15 round fighter, H was never a world champion but neither were a lot of good contenders who were not in the top ten as long as cooper but are higher regarded.

 

Mathis must have been ranked by the WBC because he fought Frazier in a vacant title fight. Mathis also beat chuvalo at a time where chuvalo must have been ranked.

 

Mathis was ranked by the WBA, WBC, Ring magazine and New York State (whose rankings still mattered in the late sixties and early seventies).

To put Urtain in perspective: In June of 1970 he fought a life and death battle with Juergin Blin. Urtain was dropped, bloodied, and taken the distance for the first time in his career. At the time Blin was 20-7-6 with only four KOs (against very week opposition and they even lied at the time saying Blin had 7 KOs). After the fight it was pretty unanimous that Urtain a protected fighter who had basically been a creation of careful matchmaking and promotion. Whats funny is that immediately after the fight Urtain called out Joe Frazier.

For further proof that Urtain was recieving undue amounts of press in the United States in order to sell magazines internationally in the same issue of Ring Magazine which detailed his most dissappointing fight to date they also ran a feature story on him, a puff piece by spanish writer Jose Alvarez titled: Urtain, No Yokel, Likes Fast Cars and Enjoys Life.

 

The" vacant title" Mathis and Frazier fought for, was the NYSAC title,the NY State title ,also recognized by 4 other states no boxing body recognized it ,not the WBC which had only been in existence for 6 years. When referring to ratings ,I am talking about the Ring's independent rankings, not the alphabet boys.

Chuvalo was the only rated fighter that Mathis beat.
Mathis was never ranked by The Ring.To illustrate the difference,The WBC's Heavyweight Champion is Vitali Klitschko.

Don't get me wrong about Cooper,I liked him and saw him often at The R.A.H ,and Wembley when he was commentating for the BBBC,Cooper was allways courteous to everyone and, he was a genuinely nice guy. Henry was what we call in the UK, a real gentleman, he was greatly beloved in the GB.
However, Cooper generally lost when he fought at top level, he was kod by both Ingo , Patterson, Folley,decisioned by Johnson, Rischer ,and these were when he was prime.
He beat fringe contenders,Hilton, Harris,a chubby Mildenberger who was sliding,and an overconfident Folley[once], but top class he truly was not.


Mathis v Chuvalo rd 1 courtesy of Raging Bull , who I can recommend for fights.

http://www.rtbot.net/buster_mathis

 

I can't find any ranking of Mathis in the Ring.The fight with Frazier was advertised and billed as the NYSAC Title, if it was for the WBA,and WBC titles it would have been promoted as so.I am too lazy to go through my BI, and Ring mags , but I believe I am right.
I remember it was a double header with Griffith ,and Benvenuti having the last fight of their trilogy

 

Mathis was most certainly rated by the Ring. Both before and after the Frazier. Im not sure why you cant find him being rated as you can crack any magazine from the late sixties to early 70s and see his name.

The only explanation I can come up with is that you are looking at the Ring's ANNUAL ratings, which is generally what is found online, and which doesnt give the true picture of the day to day, month to month ratings.

Furthermore, title shots in that era were not dictated by Ring rankings any more than they are today. The whole point is that Ring was rating and publicizing fighters who didnt deserve those ratings simply to sell magazines.

I just grabbed two magazines off the shelf as an example:

The Ring
June 1968 Mathis rated 10
April 1969 Mathis rated 6

 

50-50 at top level? Whats wrong with that? nobody is saying cooper was anything more than a good contender. There are contenders out there that did as much that are thought of higher than henry.

Bonnevna, doug jones and eddie machen also won and lost against zorra folley. why shouldnt cooper be as highly regarded as those?

Aside from zora folley here is a list of ring magazine top ten rated contenders cooper beat.

dick richardson (euro champ, beat ezzard charles and bob baker)
joe bygraves (comonwealth champ)
brian london (beat pastrano, radmacher, roger rischer and zora foley)
joe erskine (beat chuvalo & pastrano)
alex miteff (beat nino valdes)
roy harris (world title chalenger)
wayne bethea (beat ezzard charles & ernie terrel sd against folley)
karl mildenburger (world title chalenger & euro champ)
hubert hilton (rated in top ten 1966)
jose urtain (beat 4 euro champions, ring magazine fighter of the month)

*heinz neuhaus (draw in germany)

heinz was a euro champ who beat rex layne and dan bucceroni

throw in that most people think Cooper beat Bugner in his last fight and it is a prety good record. Euro heavys were good value in Henrys day.

I had an old magazine from 1959 all about the euro invasion. I remember reading an article that said within a short spell ingo beat patterson, cooper beat Folley and London beat Pastrano - that was the elite heavyweights at that time.

thanks, intresting.:good

 

I think its about the time scale of when the bouts happened.

Names on a resume can't really provide the definitive estimation of a fighter, it's about when you fought them ,isn't it?
For example, from the middle of 1955 onwards a second rater could have the scalp of a former heavyeight champ on his belt, namely Ezzard Charles, but what would it really mean?