Henry Cooper (12 page)

The last round was a simple, intimate toe-to-toe slugfest: Henry’s left versus Folley’s right. Both fighters were a mess. Henry’s left eye was now cut in three places; the manic corner work of Danny Holland, with his faithful adrenalin and Vaseline swabs, had plugged the leaks, but by the time the final three minutes started, the blood was flowing freely from both men.

An astonished Jack Wilson of
Boxing News
reported:

Such was the noise that neither fighter heard the bell. Only when Danny Holland and George Page climbed through the ropes did Folley drop his guard, followed by a cautious and clearly exhausted Henry. Tommy Little did not hesitate; he raised Henry’s arm in victory as the ring was invaded, the crowd led by a delighted Stanley Baker. Folley’s corner men, who come down through history as being quite as unpleasant as their fighter was charming, half-heartedly disputed the decision, but to no avail. The British referee’s view is holy writ, as Henry himself would come to regret many years later. With that decision, Folley’s ambitions to seize the title from Patterson lay in ruins; having lost to Henry, who had not, it must be said, registered much on anyone’s radar screens until that morning of Wednesday 15 October, d’Amato had no valid reason to dodge the match. But dodge it he would.

The
New York Times
, despite its fastidiously lofty and seigneurally dismissive editorial attitude to the noble art, (rather a litmus test of the liberal left) was predictably indignant:

More cheerfully, humble pie was wolfed down along the length of Fleet Street.
The Times
, so dubious about Henry’s prospects before the fight, reported graciously of the final moments: ‘Then came one more great gust of sound as Cooper’s hand was raised in triumph, and we were all left to marvel at what we had seen.’

Despite the fact that Folley had not lived up to his reputation as a ‘classic’ fighter, this was a huge victory for Henry and, only six weeks after stopping Dick Richardson, gave notice that he was well and truly back. But in three separate fights, the fourth, third and now second contenders for Floyd Patterson’s heavyweight crown had been beaten by outsiders – what on earth was going on?

Henry’s target was clearly now the world title – he was aware that making such an authoritative comeback would involve a vast amount of work, but first things first; the third leg of this remarkable recovery would now be to challenge for the British and Empire heavyweight titles. The fight was scheduled for 12 January 1959, the night when Henry Cooper went after Brian London.

The lantern-jawed London was not the swiftest of movers, and could even manage to make himself look flat-footed at times, but he made up much of any deficit of elegance by virtue of his immense strength and courage. This fight was to prove one of the bloodiest spectacles anyone had ever witnessed (or indeed would ever witness) in the UK heavyweight division. So savage was it that even some
seasoned veterans turned away. The fight (perhaps unfairly, with hindsight) was to last the full distance and Henry was later to describe it as the hardest one he ever endured, and with good reason. Even at the distance of over 40 years it is a sobering, even distressing, encounter to watch.

There was still some serious needle here; despite the fact that that Henry had dispatched the Blackpool fighter almost without breaking sweat in 1956, London had given George a severe mauling, which Henry, ever the loyal twin, was determined to avenge, and with interest. The rivalry between the two was an open secret and it made wonderful copy for the scribblers.

Mindful of his first-round humiliation by Henry of two years before, London made a tentative start and, despite accurate and effective jabbing and some well-aimed hooks from Henry, London was able to respond in the second round with a colossal right that connected between Henry’s eyes at that vulnerable junction of capillaries at the very top of the nasal septum. For the rest of the fight the challenger had to put up with a steady stream of blood pouring straight down his throat. This was not just some nosebleed, this was the kind of haemorrhage which had killed grandfather George all those years before.

By round four Henry was also cut below the right eye and London relaunched his attack to score his first (and, as the record reveals, only) winning round. The champion concentrated on the eye and by round seven the referee, Ike Powell, was showing proper concern about the resultant damage. Happily for Henry the cut was below the eye so that restricted vision was not a particular problem, and he simply swallowed the blood from the damage between his
eyes. Shades of Eurydamus the Argonaut. The outcome of the fight and the championship now depended on Henry’s ability to defend the eye as well as inflict meaningful damage on his energized opponent. The middle rounds of the bout were the fulcrum upon which Henry’s championship hopes depended. He had to reach deep, as it transpired…

Round eight was the point of no return. Despite the ferocious assault he had endured, during which London was warned for ‘careless use of the head’, Henry finally managed to unleash the mighty left hook, which simply shook the champion rigid and nearly took him down, but London was a very, very strong man. More of the same followed, with Henry scoring heavily on aggression and accuracy, and London inflicting even more damage on the badly cut eye (but little else) before Henry took final control with complete authority. The last four rounds were a savage blur of jabs and hooks that confused London so badly that he actually raised Henry’s arm at the end of the fourteenth round, effectively conceding victory, although he had to endure another three minutes of the most brutal punishment that an exhausted Henry could mete out. It was for fights like this one that a boxer trains.

As an awed Donald Saunders described to his readers in the
Daily Telegraph
, the fight was ‘…15 of the most bitterly contested rounds I have ever watched…both warriors looked as if they had been fighting with meat axes.’

‘It took more out of me than any other fight in my career,’ says Henry. ‘I felt worse after this, more exhausted and in more pain, than with any other. It took me weeks to recover.’

The loss of blood alone would have dropped most men on
the spot; it dropped Henry only shortly afterwards: ‘We got back home (Farmstead Road) and I remember asking George to run me a hot bath, just to help ease some of the pain away. Well, as soon as I got into it, I just fainted clean away, totally out. George had to drain out the bathwater and lift me out.’

So the new British heavyweight champion was not in any condition to enjoy his laurels; the 3lbs of congealed blood that he had ingested, a giant
blutwurst
really, also took some time to remove itself ‘I was so swollen up and sore, I couldn’t even wear trousers for over a week.’

But more pleasingly, this second defeat of Brian London, and indeed the terrible nature of it, served to mend the fences between the two men. Donald Saunders was clearly grasping for something nice to say about the truly ghastly spectacle he had witnessed: ‘…These one-time enemies clasped each others’ shoulders and let everyone know that as far as they were concerned, honour had been well and truly satisfied.’ On Henry’s terms, of course.

No one was in any doubt that he had earned this rather Pyrrhic victory, as well as casting the pecking order in stone. He was back, and it had been a remarkable turnaround from the previous disappointments of only a year before. Apart from the pleasures of being champion with a seat at the top table of British sport, the boost of confidence that came with it allowed him to relax a little. In quick succession he had beaten three worthy opponents, won the British and Empire title and suddenly entered the world rankings. ‘To think,’ a bemused Henry had said to Saunders after the Folley fight, ‘I am the number one contender for the world title!’

He had every reason to think that the fight with Patterson for that world title was now a given, but if he did, he reckoned without d’Amato; astonishingly (or perhaps not) Floyd Patterson’s manager accepted a fight with Brian London, only so recently beaten by Henry, but would not countenance a bout with Henry himself. While that may have been something of a compliment, it was also hugely frustrating. D’Amato was in the process of attempting to create a counter-monopoly, in order to defend himself and his champion against the forces of evil as he saw them: the IBC.

D’Amato was in danger of devaluing Patterson, in fact, by taking the path previously trodden by Joe Louis in 1940-41, the well-honoured tradition of the ‘bum of the month’, whereby Louis defended his world heavyweight title no fewer than 14 times without breaking serious sweat in any of them. Brian London was no bum, of course, far from it, but the implication from the d’Amato headquarters was clear – he would be his own matchmaker, thank you, and he was justifiably nervous of exposing his boy’s weak jaw to Henry’s left hook. Behind all the obfuscation and delay, though, was something even bigger: a genuine fear of Charles Liston.

Patterson knocked out a surprisingly durable Brian London in the eleventh round on 1 May 1959. But even then, if Henry thought he could now step forward, he was still mistaken. D’Amato selected Ingemar Johansson as the next fighter to be served up to Patterson, and Johansson knocked him down seven times in three rounds before the astonished referee stopped the fight. Naturally, a rematch was part of the contract, which put Henry to the back of the
queue. Despite this frustration his equilibrium was back. It had taken two years and a vast amount of hard work, leavened with equal dollops of dangerous self-doubt. To be sure, there were still opponents of whom he was right to be nervous (particularly his nemesis Joe Erskine), but seven months after the bloody encounter with Brian London he demonstrated that South African Gawie de Klerk was not necessarily one of them. This was to be another cruel fight.

The plucky policeman from Pretoria challenged Henry for the Empire title at the dire and dismal Coney Beach Arena, Porthcawl (the site of Henry’s previous defeat of Dick Richardson) on 26 August 1959. Ten thousand people turned up to watch. Initially, Henry appeared ‘ring rusty’ as one commentator had it, which he rather showed by allowing himself to be clobbered early on by a wild, unorthodox over-arm right, and for two rounds he was less than impressive, behind on points and with a bad cut under his left eye. One of the dangers of fighting inexperienced opponents (the SP on de Klerk was a pessimistic 5–1) is that because they are unpredictable, they can be occasionally lucky, particularly if they deliver the unortho dox, which de Klerk certainly did.

It was a fight somewhat characterized by clinches, during which some fairly rough ‘inside work’ was done by both men but, as Henry started to unlimber the left hook, the balance started to shift in his favour. He had much catching up to do, and finally scored his first round, the fourth. There was little hint of what was to come, and Ingemar Johansson (who was in the audience again) may not have been particularly impressed (not that he would need to worry overmuch, in fact) but after a minute of the
fifth round de Klerk was unwise enough to drop his guard as the pair disengaged from a clinch, and Henry let rip with the hammer.

The blinding, perfectly timed left hook that he released detonated under the challenger’s jaw and the rib-bending right hook to the liver that followed it dropped an agonised de Klerk for a count of nine. But the South African was brave: he rose, and Henry went in to finish the job, assaulting his opponent as before and dropping him again before referee Eugene Henderson finally stepped in and stopped the fight. De Klerk, rugged and extraordinarily courageous, had nothing left. After the fight, it was discovered that his jaw had been broken in two places. Most observers felt that the fight should have been stopped earlier or even that there was a technical knockout the first time; the count had perhaps been a little slow.

The
Boxing News
was appreciative: ‘Cooper needed no advice from manager Wicks as to what to do. He stalked across and belted the open mouthed and
glassy-eyed
Springbok with all he had…’ The non-specialist press, however, was rather more mixed. A red-blooded reviewer of the fight in the
Western Mail
, Alan Wood, was deeply impressed:

The reporter on
The Times
was less enthusiastic, if somewhat toadyish in another direction: ‘I turned to Ingemar Johansson, the world heavyweight champion, who was sitting in the third row of the press seats, and he remarked “Impressive.” True enough, but Johansson could have finished the job four rounds earlier.’ There really is no pleasing some people.

Mischievously, or perhaps in response to this rather softball questioning, Johansson remarked enigmatically to the
Daily Mail
, ‘I’d rather meet Cooper than Erskine.’