Not-so-greai white hope
Socialist Organiser1982 1982-06-10Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 7 →
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Tom ON Friday, Larry Holmes, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, meets Gerry Cooney at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas. Holmes took the title from Ken Norton in 1978 and has defended it against rated opposition with skill and guts.
Cooney has won 25 fights against no-hope opposition in a series of highly publicised, highly lucrative TV mismatches.
Yet they will share about $20 million equally.
How did Cooney achieve this honour?
He is awkward, he telegraphs his punches and he crouches away the few inches of height that should give him his best hope.
The answer lies back in the late 70s. Muhammed Ali was staggering to the seedy end of a fine career. Promoters were faced with the problem of maintaining public interest at high enough levels to keep prime TV network time and international pay-TV coverage.
The search for a white hope was on again. But Jerry Quarry was too old. Duane Bobich has a string of wins against nobodies but failed to finish the first round of his first fight against Ken Norton.
Then late in 1978, while South Africa was pumping millions of Rand into the game in order to promote a couple of animals called Gerrie Coetee and Kallie Knoetze as contenders for the rivai WBA title, a new hero was lound in New York.
Gerry Cooney was launched as a title contender. He was a publicists' dream, a big, polite, Irish boy, good looking with mildly right of centre old fashioned views on everything.
He fights all in green and telis the world he owes everything to his late father.
"He used to make me run at four in the morning, no matter what time I stayed out the previous night. One time I ran a hundred yards or so and fell asleep.
"He came looking for me. He believed that to get something across, you had to be physical so he started hitting me. After that I ran six or seven miles."
Of course this is not the 1920s and Larry Holmes is not Jack Johnson. Too cautious to preach the 'great white hope line openly, Cooney's camp are accusing Holmes of being anti-white.
On Friday Holmes will beat Cooney, but the white no-mark will walk off with $10 million. And he will be followed not by a great up and coming fighter worthy to take the crown off an under-rated champion, but by a series of other white hopes and other publicists creations.