Smokin' Bert Cooper

The man Joe Frazier once called a 'pure hitting machine'. How far could he have gone without being a crack head for over half his career? It's kind of sad to think of the talent he wasted, because Coop had some good raw ability.

I'll never forget his fight with Evander Holyfield, which ranks as one of my favourite heavyweight fights. Coop came in as a substitute for a substitiute, Damiani, who was supposed to replace Tyson, the original opponent.
Anyway, suffice to say Cooper was given short notice, while Evander had been preparing for months and was damned if all that effort in the gym was going to be wasted. He was fighting someone, and Cooper would do.

Of course, Bert was given less chance than the proverbial snowball in hell, despite winning his last 4 fights. He was seen as a quitter, a crack head, and a nice, easy opponent for Commander 'Vander.
For one and a half rounds, Coop played by the rules. He went down from a body shot in the first, and it looked only a matter of time until he was overwhelmed.
Then, towards the end of round two, Cooper landed a right hand. It was a good shot, but it didn't budge Evander. However, it was only a taste of the hell Evander would endure in the next round.

In the third, Coop caught Evander with a hard, short right hand. Suddenly, Evander's legs turned to jelly and he tried vainly to grab Cooper and hold on. "Holyfield is hurt! Holyfield is hurt!" screamed Michael Marley at ringside.
Indeed, Evander was hurt. Badly.
Cooper followed up with a barrage of thudding punches, and Holyfield sagged lifelessly into the ropes.
Mills Lane, the vastly experienced ref, suddenly made a highly contentious call. He gave Evander a standing eight count, and denied Cooper the chance to finish off the fight.
The reasoning was that Holy was only being held up by the ropes. However, there was no standing 8 count allowed under the rules of the fight.
Had that been a Mike Tyson, a Lennox Lewis or a Riddick Bowe, Lady Luck may have smiled on them and Lane would not have stepped in. But heavyweight champions are not meant to be some squat, gnomish-faced fighter with a history of drug abuse. Heavyweight champions are not called Bertram Cooper.

So Coop's window of chance was gone. Evander waded into Cooper like a man possessed. Coop's head swiveled up, left and right in it's mother socket. Punches rained down on him. But he fought back and landed his own clubbing blows. Suddenly,he looked every bit a heavyweight challenger. Not some 3rd string substitite, but a real, legitimate threat. For an entire round, he was more than equal to the Real Deal.

In the 4th and 5th rounds, the fight resembled more a mugging, as Holyfield, now fully recovered, made Cooper pay for his earlier petulance. Cooper's head resembled a cork caught in a violent sea storm as it was repeatedly snapped back by vicious uppercuts.
His face seemed to be made of putty as it slowly began to change shape.
But would he fall? Hell, no!
He smiled impishly on occasion, wiping blood and sweat away. He stood there and took everything the world's best heavyweight had to give, and then spat back sporadic punches of his own.
He could not win, but he could show the world that the smoke was no joke. He defied Evander by merely staying on his feet.

At the end of the fifth, Holyfield was exhausted. He had hit Coop with every punch he could muster, but he could not knock Cooper down. His short, squat tormentor was still there, smiling thinly behind a curtain of lumps and bumps.
Not for the first time Evander was given a repreive, this time in the shape of a cut glove. It took ages for them to replace it, and by the time they did, Holyfield had recovered.

He ended up stopping (not knocking out) Bert in the 7th. In the end, the racehorse had triumphed over the trial horse. Rocky wins only in the movies.
But nobody, save for maybe Riddick Bowe, can claim to have hurt Evander more. Not Lennox Lewis. Not Mike Tyson. Not George Foreman. Not Michael Moorer. None of them did to Holy what Cooper did in that third round.
He was but a punch or maybe two of becoming the heavyweight champion of the whole wide world. Nobody can take that away from him.
People talk of the heart of Rocky Marciano, of Evander Holyfield. Few gush over Coop's heart. Yet, in that fight, Cooper showed more heart than any man has a right to.
Heart is not just about taking punches in the ring, but taking punches outside of it too. It seems so easy when you're winning. But it takes heart to get up and train your heart out, knowing that in all likelihood you will lose anyway.
It takes heart to stand in your corner and know your the fodder for the evening and not want to run.
Lastly, it takes heart to take everything the best fighter in the world has to offer, yet fight back. Yes, it takes a whole lot of heart.

His later brawl with up-and-coming Michael Moorer was just as dramatic. You could even agrue that it was the best heavyweight slugfest since Foreman-Lyle.
Cooper bashed Moorer. Moorer got up. Moorer bashed Cooper. Cooper got up. Rinse and repeat. It was a heavyweight classic, one that sadly is rarely talked about today. In the end, poor Coop once again fell just short of the mark. But once again, a talented heavyweight walked away with a new respect for the man they called Smokin'.

I could also include Ray Mercer in that category. In that fight, Coop once again proved what a stubborn, resilient fighter he was. Sure, he lost, but he made Ray work damn hard for the win.

I'd like to believe Cooper could have been a champion, maybe at cruiserweight. Hell, he was not really even a heavyweight. He was a little man fighting in a big man's world.
Few believed in Bert Cooper. I wonder sometimes if Coop even believed in himself. Even his one-time mentor, Joe Frazier, evetually distanced himself from Bert. Those pesky drug habits are hard to break. It eventually derailed Coop's career. His weight fluctuated by 30, 40 pounds sometimes. A svelt 215 against Evander, he'd weigh 240 or more against the likes of Corrie sanders and George Foreman. By then, Cooper was done.

Guys, as much as we (righly) applaud the skills and heart of the greats of the game, the heart and soul of boxing resides in the Bert Coopers of this world. Only so many can become the elite. It's the hard luck stories like Cooper's that shape boxing and give it life. It's the 'woulda, coulda, shoulda' fighters like Coop that give boxing it's unique flavour and character.

Wherever you are in the world Bert, may God bless you.

 

Yeah, good call. DeWitt was unbeaten if I rememeber, and people were saying he's one to watch. Suddenly, he runs into a Cooper right hand and that's that.

Thanks for the replies so far guys.

 

Yeah, he whipped minor prospect Joe Hipp but good.

Talking of Bert giving up, that's the contradiction that was Cooper. He could be hell when motivated, or he'd just quit, plain and simple. Funny to think how much punishment he'd take in some fights, yet in other fights he'd take half the abuse but just give up.

 

Hey, glad you liked it.