Henry Cooper (15 page)

Disapprove as she might, Albina was very good at coping with the results of her husband’s uniquely dangerous career. She was pleased, though, that he healed so quickly.

T
he embarrassing chaos at the top of the US (and therefore the world) heavyweight division was gradually resolving itself. The remorseless Liston had finally achieved a match with Patterson, held on 25 September 1962. Patterson’s acceptance of the bout had led to an emotional split with the nervous Cus d’Amato but the philosopher/manager was still loyally present in the champion’s corner to witness the total humiliation of his protégé. As is traditional before a fight, champions past and present, as well as current contenders, were introduced to the crowd. All the hopefuls were cheered heartily. All, that is, bar one.

Cassius Marcellus Clay, 20, light heavyweight gold medal winner at the 1960 Rome Olympics, was dutifully booed by the press corps as he climbed through the ropes to take a bow. Many of the hacks were literally on the
payroll of Norris’s IBC and Clay’s independence from that organization was awkward, to say the least. He was managed by Angelo Dundee, the brother of Liston’s
one-time
promoter Chris but, more importantly, he was financially supported by an 11-strong group of local worthies from his birthplace, Louisville, Kentucky, each of whom had lobbed in a tax-deductible $3,000 a year to have a stake in their local boy and keep him from the clutches of the Mob’s regiment of obedient shadow managers. Cassius Clay was guaranteed a living, and a good one, until 1966. Each of the Louisville Sponsoring Group, as they called themselves, was probably as wealthy as Norris, so Clay was in good hands. However, his reputation as a loudmouth sat ill with the world of boxing writers; that, they reasoned collectively, was rightfully their job. White to a man (and some of them more redneck than many) they took the view that if Floyd Patterson represented the ‘good’ (cooperative) Negro then Liston was therefore the ‘bad’ (downright dangerous) Negro. Clay, at that stage in his career, was merely the ‘noisy’ (uppity) Negro, quite outside the script of this cynical morality play and reckoned to be a thoroughgoing nuisance of dubious (professionally, at least) fistic quality.

Famously, Liston demolished Patterson in 2 minutes 6 seconds, and if this spectacle gave Clay pause for thought it didn’t show much. This handsome young man (already known as ‘gaseous Cassius’) was, at the time of Liston’s first destruction of Patterson, the victor of 15 professional fights out of 15. His opponents had not been in perhaps the top ranks (with the possible exception of Alonzo Johnson), which is why he was scheduled to fight Archie Moore in
November. This was to be a rite of passage, a normal and even faintly honourable transaction of boxing, that moment when the newcomer beats the established master, to which he looked forward. Moore had also helped to train him before Angelo Dundee had taken over in early 1961 and, despite his persistent disobedience, Moore had a great affection for him. The pair amused themselves by ‘doing the dozens’ in public – demonstrating by verbal sparring that they both had adequate supplies of ‘mother wit’. Clay would knock ‘the old Mongoose’ over in the fourth round. It did not go unnoticed that Moore was approaching 50 but then by some calculations so was Liston.
*

Henry, meanwhile, had recovered well from the defeat by Folley with his pleasing succession of four wins. He had secured his first Lonsdale belt as a result of the Erskine fight and had, it seemed, thoroughly reconciled himself to the burdens of training as against the responsibilities of fatherhood and marriage.

The Clay fight was arranged for Waterloo Day, 18 June 1963. It would go down in history as a most important encounter because the winner would almost certainly face the winner of the Liston/Patterson rematch, a contest scheduled to take place barely a month later, which may have given Jim Wicks some mixed feelings. It was generally
held, correctly as it transpired, that Liston would
steamroller
Patterson once again.

As a sparring partner, Wicks had hired the gifted Alonzo Johnson, who had gone the distance but been narrowly beaten by Clay two years before. Johnson therefore had an agenda of his own, valuable experience and a great talent for aping Clay’s style, which was blindingly quick if somewhat unorthodox. Clay actually moved like a middleweight. For his input, Alonzo Johnson was paid his fare, board, lodging and food, and $500.

As for Clay, who arrived in Britain three weeks before the fight, he worked out at White City, at the Territorial Army gym. For publicity purposes he was chauffeured every morning at 5.a.m. to do his roadwork up and down Pall Mall. It made for a good picture – a bowler-hatted Cassius metaphorically knocking on the door of that ‘swell pad’, Buckingham Palace. He would take this regal imagery even further later on.

Cassius Clay had a lot of ground to make up, in fact. His previous encounter, with Doug Jones, had not been an impressive affair, at least from Clay’s point of view. He had both outreached and outweighed Jones but the more experienced man, actually a light heavyweight, was consistently able to sneak inside Clay’s huge reach and counterpunch him very effectively. For his part, Clay certainly didn’t hurt Jones and the crowd were unappreciative of the points verdict in Clay’s favour, so much so that they bombarded the ring with any piece of rubbish that came to hand. They were not happy.

For a fighter with an agenda like Clay’s, this was disconcerting, to say the least, but any shortcomings he was
exhibiting in the ring (and he was) were in large measure offset by his pre-fight antics. In Las Vegas Clay had encountered a professional wrestler, George Wagner. Wagner was 46 and had carved out an interesting niche for himself as ‘Gorgeous George’. He was the first wrestler to address himself entirely to the opportunities offered by the media. His long blond hair and narcissistic manner – he has been memorably described as ‘a Liberace in tights’ – were balanced out by a bloodcurdling litany of pre-match threats. A fairly typical offering would be something like: ‘I’ll tear his arms off! If this bum beats me I’ll crawl across the ring and cut all my hair off! But that ain’t gonna happen, because I’m the greatest wrestler in the world!’

Cassius loved it as much as the little blue-rinsed old ladies who made up the bulk of George’s fan club did. He had first come across Wagner when the pair shared a radio show and, given that he had been coming up with this nonsense for years, and had clearly prospered from it, Cassius listened to him.

‘A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth,’ he is alleged to have counselled told Cassius, ‘so keep on bragging, keep on sassing, and always be outrageous.’

That the stadium was full, that the capacity crowd could witness the destruction of this middle-aged mediocrity, was lost on no one, least of all the impressionable Cassius.

Sledging the opponent is as old as boxing, of course; as far back as 1748 a fighter called Ned Hunt had advised his prospective opponent, William Cutts to ‘bring his coffin with him’, when he turned up to fight in some
unremembered field, but Cassius Clay brought the art to new heights, in boxing terms at least. His training sessions were actually rather popular and as he would spar up to five rounds he would turn to the audience and say: ‘This is the magic round. This is the round of the annihilation of Henry Cooper.’ Obediently, the spectators lapped it up. It was observed that Clay’s sparring was somewhat
one-sided
. He had three sparring partners, one of whom, Don Warner, he slugged quite happily and the other two, his brother Rudolph and their friend Jimmy Ellis, he simply dodged. This was, to say the least a little hard on Warner, who was scheduled to fight George Cooper on the same billing at Wembley.

In conversations with journalists, Clay showed himself to be a
faux
angry clown. On paper his remarks about his latest opponent were astonishingly rude. In reality they were delivered with an impish charm (or as impish as someone who weighed in at 14 stone 12lbs could be), which quite captivated some and left others, who did not necessarily appreciate the verbal legacy of George Wagner, totally cold. ‘Henry Cooper is a bum and a tramp,’ he announced with a twinkle in his eye on the eve of the fight. ‘He has no right to be in the same ring with me.’

For British observers this was something rather new, although the tabloids lapped it up; 40 years on we are quite used to such prattle from boxers but in Clay’s case it was as light-hearted as it was rude. Partly, perhaps, such clowning served to bleed off inevitable tensions as well as carrying on the contest at a different, if experimental,
cod-psychological
level. For on the day before the fight he changed his prediction of victory from five rounds to three
or even to one. It rather depended on whom he was talking to, as well as whether he could manage to find a rhyme, for he had taken to extending Wagner’s repertoire somewhat, to versifying – of a kind. He also affected to be offended by the fact that the British media had not wholly embraced him and his truly dreadful doggerel, complete with dodgy scansion:

Pure ‘Gorgeous George’. Well, he was only 21, but this was possibly the most excruciating verse in English since the days of William McGonagall. Holding court over dinner in a Soho restaurant, Clay, surrounded by his entourage, announced: ‘I’m real mad, the way I’ve been received. I stick to all I’ve said about Cooper.’

Henry, on the other hand, was calm, philosophical. He said to Jack Wood of the
Daily Mail
, also on the eve of the fight: ‘I appreciate what Clay’s done for the box office, but tomorrow night at 9.30 we’ll be equals. Before the night is much older I expect to prove that the Lip is a better talker than a fighter.’

He meant it, too. Because, even at this distance, the fight that put Henry Cooper on the path towards the state of grace he would achieve so far as Britain was concerned was characterized by an astonishing and quite untypical display of early aggression from him. If Clay had been seeking to rattle Henry’s cage, then he may very well have succeeded, but he would wince at the outcome of this strategy, which
came very close to changing boxing history. Donald Saunders pointed out, cautioning Clay:

Saunders was entirely correct; he, like many others in the sport, had spotted the same deficit of aggression, the lack of overweening ego that seemed to power so many sportsmen (and particularly fighters) but that seemed so entirely absent in Henry. When he became cross he was formidable, but, as Wicks had experienced, and Ingemar Johansson and Max Baer had already both observed (long before this fight), Henry was clearly slow to rile. As Piero Tomasoni would discover later, when its owner became angry, the Cooper punch assumed a life of its own. Getting Henry to a proper level of focused aggression was a long and frustrating process and it often actually took a fight to do it. This aspect
of his character could make him a slow starter in a fight but it would also ensure him a reputation outside the sport which would endear him to millions.

The psychological banter extended to the weigh-in at the London Palladium, where Clay’s weight advantage, 207lbs versus Henry’s 183½, was clear. Cassius had managed to excavate a theatrical crown from the back reaches of the props department when he went exploring and, needless to say, he would wear it into the ring. As well as serving to maintain the royal
leitmotif
, which had rather characterized his PR campaign, it also made him look even taller – and he was quite big enough already. The legend on his gown read modestly: CASSIUS THE GREATEST. The most famous fight in British boxing history – up to this point – began at 9.30 p.m.

Wicks had realized that the exceptional training that Henry had done for this fight had fined his weight down to, observably, well below 180lbs. He reasoned that two can play at this game and he cleverly inserted two 2½lb lead plates into Henry’s boxing boots, and also slipped him a lump of lead to conceal in each hand. Only in this way did Henry even manage to register the weight that he did. It was a harmless ruse but, Wicks and Henry felt, probably a necessary one.

But the tenacity and aggression that Henry would show in this fight had its roots in more than Clay’s banter. Henry was facing an opponent who enjoyed a 2 inch reach advantage, an inch in height and, if the real truth were known, over a stone in weight. Clay was not noted as a big puncher but his hard twisting jab was formidable. Above all, his speed was extraordinary. Not even his sparring
partner Alonzo Johnson’s imitation of the Clay style had served to prepare him for the sheer pace of his opponent. Henry knew that he needed every ounce of his resources to make up the difference, so, he rather uncharacteristically ‘went for it’.

Straight out of the corner, Henry attacked as he had seldom done before, catching Clay with two powerful lefts to the head, which clearly shook him. Close work by Henry in the clinches was very near the knuckle and elicited howls of protests from Cassius, if not his corner. Clay was simply not used to this style of fighting – also, a few seconds of protest buys valuable time if you have just received two massive blows to the head. The referee, Tommy Little, airily gave a general warning to both fighters but, as Henry confessed later: ‘When I caught him off the ropes and we went into a clinch he just held me, waiting until the referee said break. I tried to be as rough as I could inside. I really roughed him up. I belted him to the body, tried to uppercut him on the inside, pushed him, anything almost, except using the elbows.’