This forum should give you a clue. He was much bigger, and some people simply couldn't see past that!
He was bigger, and he could punch. And, going into the Holmes fight, Cooney was a monster. There is no shame in going 13 with Larry Holmes and losing. Cooney just might have gone back to being a monster. I watched that fight at a Mexican restaurant, sitting with Alberto Sandoval and his father. My memory is do shot that I don't remember if Richard Sandoval was there or not. I do remember that my friend was being trained by Sandoval at the time and he was afraid to drink beer. He was a heavyweight but he was scared that Sandoval would get Superfly on his ass.
I was one of those who thought Cooney ought to go at him and blow him out of his shoes, I hadn't realized how far he'd slipped, when he fought Foreman I predicted an early KO, learned my lesson
cooney is one of those cats that gets thrashed by revisionist .. it's easy to go oh he was a bum ..after the fact .. but when you're destroying people and you go 13 with holmes and handle yourself better then a lot of others .. it gives you a staked claim
It was a good fight to gamble on. Hardly any surprise to any long time gamblers====but the general public and casual observers just love the heavyweight hitters. So you end up with lopsided--to me anyway---odds on hitter vs boxer bouts. And one guy was smart and active and the opponent was stale and had not beat top contenders in years. One guy was undefeated and a long time champion. The other was a "if only" fighter. But boxing fans always seem to give potential far more credit than the reality of a guy's career. That swings the odds. No matter. If say Cooney was smart and worked his jab and worsened that cut, he wins by tko. Lots of other heavies in that position would have stopped Spinks with that cut. Even w/ a victory, Cooney would not have seen the 3rd round against the new sheriff in town Mike Tyson.
I take it that going in you thought Spinks was going to win? I personally, based on everything I'd seen from both guys up to that point and not knowing about Cooney's substance abuse problems, thought that Cooney would get Spinks out of there early, like Tyson did a year later. Or are you asking if it's a "True Fact" that Cooney was an 8-5 favorite against Spinks?
I thought Cooney was in with a great chance... I was that much of a sucker, I thought the 'two geezers at Caesars' was Pick'em too!
Me too. We didn't know how good second career Foreman was yet. We thought he was an old man who had no business being in the ring at his age. To put the age thing in perspective, Cooney was labeled as a "geezer" at something like age 33.
