Spinks vs Cooney. Spinks outweighed by 30Lbs. And he destroys Cooney in 5 rounds.

Cooney gave a fading Holmes a decent fight but he was very carefully managed. He never really learned the basics, his head was up in the air like a lantern. His complexion got him where it did . Great left hook which he demonstrated against barely warm, former contenders, and nobodies.

Spinks was a great LHVY who was steered well clear of the iron in the heavyweight division ,until the $$$ were worth the risk.

Spinks got Holmes at the right time.

Butch Lewis did a good job with him. A great heavyweight he certainly was not , the heavies he was put in ,with prior to Tyson showed what his management really thought of his abilities.

 

Both Cooney and Willard were inactive for years and well past their best, Cooney an alcoholic, Willard 37 and out of the ring for 3years

 

Very well put southpaw. If the majority of posters on here worshipped spinks the way they do with the likes of Langford, Dempsey etc this win would have incredible magnitude and it's a real shame this wasn't the case.

 

Im not going to go as far as saying Spinks and Cooney suck

However Spinks chose Cooney and (Tangstad?) because they were safer opponents than Tyson and Tucker. Cooney was very rusty when he fought Spinks, he was coming off a long lay off.

Spinks, a nice guy etc, but he was in the wrong realm when he decided to fight Tyson.

Believe it or not, there was a time, when Spinks was thought of as the peoples champion, Ring had him as their champ and Tyson was seen as just a paper champ. People actually believed Tyson was ducking Spinks (Due to Butch Lewis's (RIP) gob)

 

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me talk smart one day...

Cooney was a dangerous entity pre-Holmes. But he climbed a mountain of Bolivian and swam an ocean of whiskey but the time of Spinks. He was used-up and mentally fragile. Easy pickings for Spinks.

 

Big money low risk fight for Spinks. Butch Lewis knew that unlike his great reign in the Light Heavies,Michael's time at the top of the Heavy tree was limited.

 

The reason for those things is because Spinks beat Holmes.

No other reason was ever needed.

 

Cooney was no longer a serious fighter when he fought Spinks .. he took the fight thinking it would be an easy payday and a shortcut to the title .. he was proven wrong ... Spinks was very impressive in that fight and has been underestimated as a heavyweight .. running into an absolutely prime Mike Tyson can do that to a career ...

 

I guess I'm one of the few that gives Cooney some props here as a really dangerous heavyweight up to the Holmes fight. Yes, he was guided to make money rather than to build skills and resume, and that's fine. One thing some boxing fans forget is that these guys don't OWE us legendary, peerless careers with the endgame prize of being on some goof's top ten pound-for-pound list twenty or thirty years later. They have families to feed. Sometimes, if only for themselves, that's enough. And that's all it needs to be.