Why didn’t Cooney fight any of the other champions at that time? And what if he did?

After taking a beating from Holmes and making ten million dollars to do it, he lost his appetite for the sport. Drinking and screwing were his primary interests after that. For enough money he would have fought anyone as we saw against Spinks and foreman. But after the Holmes fight I don’t think he was the same man and likely would have lost to most or all the alphabet champions. Tony Tubbs around 1985 MIGHT have been a guy he’d have a chance against

 

He signed to fight Weaver but the WBA intervened and said he had to face Quick Tillis as a mandatory instead.

Weaver took it to court and the WBA’s ruling was upheld. Basically I think the court said ‘it’s their championship, if their rules say you have to do this to keep it, you have to do it or give up the belt.’ Either Weaver wasn’t willing to do so or Cooney’s side decided fighting Weaver without a belt held no value.

I’m not sure which other guys held the title during a time Gerry could have challenged (without giving up options to Don King). Gerry also had injury problems here and there (which may have been a cover for the problems he was having in his personal life).

After Holmes, Gerry was a wreck … alcohol and cocaine kept him out of action for quite a while.

 

He did fight Spinks and got annihilated.

 

There was talk about him fighting Page at one point.

 

Everybody else has already pretty much covered why he didn't fight any other potentials, titlists, or basically anybody of note pre and post Holmes, so I guess I'll talk about what would've happened had he fought the other guys.
I feel like he's having bad matchups against just about everybody except Dokes and maybe an early Page? The '82 version of Greg that got his ass whooped by Berbick was a lot less experienced, and much less refined, and I feel like that fight could've gone either way.
We all know how Dokes faired against anybody not named Mike "Slow Start" Weaver, and he probably would've had a decently close fight with Cooney going into the late rounds before getting knocked out, a la Coetzee.
I'll definitely pick just about every other early to mid 80s titlist over him, other than possibly Tate. He had a bad matchup against good left hands, so I think that Cooney probably could've beaten him if he was put in line instead of Weaver or Berbick.