HENRY COOPER:HENRY COOPER, who has died aged 76, was a heavyweight boxer beloved of Britain's postwar generation as none before him.
His warmth and indomitable personality, together with his rise from humble roots, gave him a popularity far beyond his sport’s normal boundaries. He was never world champion, but his good spirits seemed to hold a gift for everyone, even for his most notable conqueror, Muhammad Ali.
At Wembley stadium, on June 18th, 1963, Cooper landed Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, on his pants with a punch that made boxing history – a left hook to the American’s jaw. The world came to know it as “Enry’s ’Ammer”, and it felled Ali as never before. However, in front of 55,000 people, Ali was “saved by the bell” amid unique controversy.
Ali, then 21, came to London to fight Cooper, the experienced 29-year-old British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion, over 10 rounds. With a multimillion-dollar syndicate behind Ali’s ambition, and Cooper in his prime, it was a fight attracting worldwide interest.
Already, the Kentucky fighter’s braggadocio (“I am the prettiest . . . I am the greatest”) had brought him the moniker of the “Louisville Lip”. But, after Cooper’s hammer blow, Ali’s corner got up to various tricks before the Englishman fell victim to a cut eye in the fifth round.
In later years, Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, admitted interfering with the loose stitching of his fighter’s right glove, stretching the formal minute-long interval by six seconds. “For a fit man,” Cooper said later, “seconds are a lifetime. When you are really trained up, you need only 20 seconds and you are back to your old self.”
Cooper was again to meet Ali – by then, his name had been formally changed after his conversion to Islam – for a world title fight at Arsenal’s Highbury stadium on May 21st, 1966. Again the fight had to be stopped for a cut eye. The gash was deeper and longer than any of Cooper’s career. “It was a physical thing that let me down,” Cooper said. “Prominent bones and weak tissue around the eyes.” This was a problem which also blighted the boxing career of his twin brother, George, who fought as Jim Cooper.
For years afterwards, Ali would pay tribute to Cooper. British boxing writers visiting him in the US would be told: “Give my regards to Henry.”
Cooper’s record was unmatched by any British fighter of his or any other time – winner of 40 of his 55 contests, 27 by knockout, one drawn, in a 17-year career from 1954 to 1971; winner of three Lonsdale belts for three successive British heavyweight title victories, and holder of European and Commonwealth/Empire titles for sustained periods. Many thought him unlucky to lose his last fight, and all three titles, to Joe Bugner, at Wembley, on March 16th, 1971.
Cooper could also be swift with the spoken word. In a 1970 TV debate, Lady (Edith) Summerskill, an opponent of boxing, inquired: “Mr Cooper, have you looked in the mirror and seen the state of your nose?” Quickly, he replied: “Well, have you? Boxing is my excuse – what’s yours?”
Cooper’s career coincided with the dawn of the black-and-white TV era, and he was soon to stand with Lester Piggott and Bobby Charlton as a national sporting hero. In his case, too, it extended to a long semi-retirement in which charity and public entertainment played a significant part. He was knighted in 2000 as much for public services as for his boxing skill and courage.
Born in Southwark, southeast London, Cooper saw himself as from the Elephant and Castle area, earlier famous for horse-trading. There his half-Irish grandfather had bought and sold horses.
A natural left-hander, Cooper started to box as a normal right-hander, not a “southpaw”, when a neighbour, Bob Hill, a local fireman, took the brothers along to Bellingham Boxing Club. As an amateur with Eltham Boxing Club, Cooper won 73 of 84 contests, including the ABA light-heavyweight championship in 1952.
In a 1969 European title defence at the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome, against Italian Piero Tomasoni, Cooper suffered the lowest blow of his career – a dent seven inches below his navel in the aluminium cup covering his genitals. He fell to the canvas, only for the referee to carry on counting. He recovered to win on a fifth-round knockout, but kept the cup as a souvenir. There were three dents in it.
The world heavyweight fight in which Ali wounded Cooper’s eye was the only one watched by his Italian-born wife, Albina. They had met while Albina, born in an Apennine village, was a 16-year-old serving in an Italian restaurant in Soho, central London. They married in 1960 and had two sons, Henry Marco and John Pietro.
Appointed OBE in 1969, Cooper was voted BBC sports personality of the year in 1967 and 1970. He made no great fortune out of boxing. His decision to retire was already established before his last fight, against Bugner, in July 1971. Modestly comfortable, he still needed to auction off his Lonsdale belts after the collapse of a Lloyd’s of London syndicate cost him a huge proportion of his savings. The auction made only £40,000, where £100,000 was expected.
An obscure heart condition developed in latter years which restricted both his golf and his charity work. His fighting spirit kept him going throughout, however.
Albina’s death from a sudden heart attack in 2008 was a profound blow to the family. George died in 2010, and Cooper is survived by his sons.
Henry Cooper: born May 3rd, 1934; died May 1st, 2011