You’re assuming he beats Weaver/Dokes/Coetzee. If he gets KTFO, does he fold up or does it make him better? We’ll never know. And, btw, he did sign to fight Weaver for the title, but Weaver was WBA champ and mandated he fight James Tillis instead of be stripped. Tillis filed a lawsuit and the ruling went in his favor. Weaver had to fight Tillis. Weaver also tried to sue to stop Holmes-Cooney saying he had a contract to fight Gerry, but did not prevail — I think the ruling was that his contract with Cooney expired because (ironically) he fought Tillis.
i think it boiled down to a few things inactivity before the title shot led to inactivity after the fight substance abuse and celebrity status, hard to train in that situation, the movie chuck did a good job of creating that atmosphere mentality, he seemed to lack self belief and was very nervous ahead of the young and norton win but managed to win unscathed but got brought back to reality vs holmes on a big scale' maybe a bit of the bobby fisher effect, got a lot of money, was a celebrity, lost to holmes but fought admirably and could dine out on the fame and maybe was afraid to risk losing to someone else and becoming yesterdays news...speculative of course
He’d either be dead (Page, Dokes, etc.) or begging on the streets for lunch money if he had signed with King. Yes, he could have gotten the fights King effectively blocked by having most of the division tied up contractually, but he’d also have gotten a manager named Carl King (Don’s son) and retired penniless. No thanks.
Yeah, a good read this, especially about Gerry's drink problems, rather than his bad back may have been the cause of some of his cancelled fights pre-Larry (e.g. Shavers, Bugner). I didn't realise it was a problem that soon.
Come to think of it,I do recall now,thanks to your post,that Gerry was originally slated to fight Weaver. Shame that never came off as it would have been a pretty good fight.
Cooney vs Weaver could go two ways either Cooney blows him away early Weaver could be caught cold or Weaver stops Cooney in 2nd half of the fight.
I think he was one of those fighers who really did not want to be a fighter. He said he was pushed by his father and always wanted to do other things. I think he got into the sport, stayed for the money but his heart was never truly in it in the first place.
I missed this post originally John & just read it now as Clinton has quoted it on Page 3 of this thread. It's not often, after reading an older post that someone else is quoting, I go out of my way to find the original just so I can like it, but such is the excellence of your post here, that I've done just that and given I went to the trouble of doing so, I thought it worth making this post at the same time.
Thanks Greg, i appreciate it mate. You know you've done something right when someone of your quality likes and comments on a post!
