Henry Cooper (17 page)

It was an interesting aberration, this meanness, which seemed so untypical of Henry but so routine in other fighters and which surfaced at such inappropriate moments. A professional sparring partner is paid, and paid well, to be knocked over, but the Prescott episode was as much an exhibition as anything else, whereas Henry seemed to be determined to turn it into a full-blown fight, which was unusual behaviour by his standards. It all rather served to make him, unconsciously, a slightly enigmatic figure, despite his popularity.

The Prescott championship fight, promoted by Jack Solomons in partnership with Alex Griffiths, was a rather one-sided affair, the more so after Henry sustained a cut eye. Prescott was warned for ‘dangerous use of the head' but the incident served to make Henry change up a gear, as he had learned to do in response to a bad cut. Basically he did to Prescott in the ring what he had already done to him above the
Thomas à Becket
– he hammered the challenger to the canvas with a left hook in round eight, and twice more in
round ten, at which point Prescott's manager, George Biddles, who also managed another hopeful Midlander, Jack Bodell, threw in the towel. One more defence of the British title and Henry would break the national record of winning and holding no fewer than three Lonsdale belts.

Ex-marine Amos Johnson had fought Cassius Clay as an amateur and, indeed, had defeated him. Henry was scheduled to fight Johnson (no relation to Chip) on 19 October 1965 at Harry Levene's favoured venue, the Wembley Pool. Johnson had started his career as a southpaw and rather unusually ‘converted' to the orthodox style of boxing. It showed a bit, too, as he had clearly not dropped all the habits of his previous approach, nor, indeed, some of the habits of the battlefield or bar-room. He hit Henry low in the first round, which dropped him, and his kidney punches, coupled with another low punch in the sixth, were probably illegal enough to disqualify him, had the referee not been Harry Gibbs, who controversially gave the decision to Johnson after the ten rounds were over.

Almost as if in compensation for that bruising encounter and its highly questionable outcome, emotional rescue was at hand – a classic
deus ex machina
. The Queen issued an invitation to Henry to lunch with her at Buckingham Palace. Jim Wicks, who had received an enquiring call from an equerry some days before, was initially nonplussed until the pasteboard flopped onto Henry's doormat in December; he had assumed that it was a practical joke.

But, of course, it wasn't. The esteem in which Henry was now held was bone-deep in the nation and cut across all levels of society like little else ever had since the days of the nineteenth-century heroes of the ring. But, for Henry, the
knot of tension that emerged in his bowels on that December morning was quite as bad as that before any prizefight, for there was no institution, not even Jim Wicks, for which he had (or has) a more well-developed respect than the monarchy and in particular the Queen. In fact, in 1957 Henry had – semi-seriously – challenged John Grigg, the Tory polemicist, to a boxing bout in response to certain criticisms Grigg had made about the royal family. He meant it, too, and would have knocked him out in order to simply punish him. Wisely, Grigg declined Henry's offer.
*

A month later, on 25 January, clearly energized by the encounter at Buckingham Palace, which had quite charmed him, as well as con firming to him that he was indeed fighting for his country, he took on Hubert Hilton, a truck driver from Long Island, NY. Hilton was at the time ranked well up in the top ten contenders for a crack at Ali and had also achieved something of a reputation as a basketball star. He had also stopped both of George Biddles's great hopes, Bodell and Prescott. He had never even been knocked down, let alone knocked out. Until now.

Henry was quite merciless. The speed with which he dispatched his opponent, by introducing him to the left hook in round two, was quite outside Hilton's experience. As he retreated to his corner, clearly stunned and in the middle of the round, the referee, Bill Williams, simply took one look at him and stopped the fight.

But stopping Hilton was not Henry's fastest career victory; that was actually coming next, and he savoured the prospect of it. The victim was Jefferson Davis, from Mobile, Alabama. Like Hilton, he also had never actually been knocked out in 35 professional fights and had gone the distance with both Karl Mildenberger and Ernie Terrell. He had, more significantly, also beaten George Cooper in seven rounds (another cut) on a previous visit to the UK in October 1963 and Henry was rather tired of his pre-fight pronouncements that he, too, was going for ‘the double.' The word had clearly not gone out that defeating George ‘Jim' Cooper would not necessarily put luck in a boxer's corner if he ever met his brother. Henry went after Davis on a simple search and destroy mission, just as he had with London and Johnson. He found him quickly and dispatched him even faster.

The fight lasted exactly 100 seconds and was very similar in nature to the Johnson fight. After a minute and a half the Alabama fighter was unwise enough to leave a gap in his defence and Henry as ever did not need prompting; he lashed out with the left and Davis slumped to the canvas for a full count.

While these minor but pleasing defeats of a succession of American fighters had been going on, Wicks had been in negotiation with Arthur Grafton, the attorney in Louisville who took care of contracts for the syndicate who still supported Ali. The management and promotional contracts they had with their fighter actually expired at the end of the year and they knew that he would fall into the clutches of the Nation of Islam, which was something they were keen to avoid. They had all enjoyed a huge return on their
tax-deductible
$3,000 per annum and, it must be said, they had enjoyed the experience, however much they were suspicious about the motivations of Elijah Muhammad. They were also fond of their boy, despite his frequently odd behaviour, which was often the result of Elijah's son Herbert whispering in Ali's ear.

Wicks had already put out some feelers to the non-boxing community, which rather suggests that he had ambitions to stage this one himself, independent from either Levene or Solomons. He certainly approached Leslie Grade, who quite saw the commercial value in a Brit fighting for the world title on his home territory, but Grade was clearly a man who knew his limitations, and he passed.

As he often did, Wicks handled the purse negotiations himself. He had always preferred to act as his own matchmaker rather than use Harry Levene's own man, Mickey Duff. The two men had developed a profound dislike of each other, on Duff's part because there was no aspect of the business of boxing where his knowledge outstripped that of Wicks, and on Wicks's part because Duff did not necessarily always seem to understand that fact. To Wicks, Duff may have merely appeared to be just another flashy bagman for the promotion industry. Very few men ever managed to put one over on Jim Wicks and he was not about to let Mickey Duff even try.

But the negotiations, when they took place, brought the full weight of Harry Levene's extended organization into play and it became clear that for Henry this would be a very big payday indeed. The fight was scheduled for 21 May 1966 and would take place not at Levene's favoured locale at Wembley but at Highbury Stadium, home of Arsenal
football ground. It was the biggest event Levene had ever handled. He was, for events of this type, in partnership with
Viewsport
, the company created by Jarvis Astaire in order to exploit both satellite and closed circuit coverage. The arrangement enabled Levene to offer realistic guarantees to both the fighters and the hosts, Arsenal, who had cheerfully undercut the price of
£
25,000 offered by Wembley. Henry's guarantee was
£
50,000, Ali's
£
100,000, reflecting the fact that the last world heavyweight championship bout held in Britain had been in 1908. The last Brit to actually win it had been Bob Fitzsimmons, in 1897, so the significance of this event was lost on no one.

Naturally, this was something of a media frenzy, assisted by every ounce of spin the promoters and Wicks could muster. There was, it was felt, a serious chance that Henry might pull it off; he was clearly at the top of his form, as he had demonstrated against the four Americans he had beaten in the previous calendar year. The hook that had dropped Ali in 1963 was clearly as strong, or even stronger, three years on.

The popularity of this fight was such that the cash value of the ticket sales actually outstripped those for the Wembley World Cup Final of 30 July of that year. Arsenal's stadium would be filled to its 55,000 capacity and even Albina consented, somewhat reluctantly, to attend. It would be the first and last fight she ever saw. But even she conceded that her husband deserved her support – this was, after all, the world heavyweight championship.

The distance Henry had travelled since those days spent sparring with rolled football socks on the Bellingham Estate was vast, almost immeasurable; after two serious career
dips, which had triggered such serious self-doubts, here he was, about to fight for what was, despite the widespread moral opposition to it, the greatest prize in individual sport. Even boxing's most ardent opponents, apart from Summerskill, found themselves well able to put aside their moral scruples as they settled down to hear it on the radio, for it would only be screened in certain selected cinemas. This single fact caused a small but fairly public debate: was it fair that such an important fight should be only available to those who could afford it? The government was keen to be seen to promote the interests of ‘the ordinary viewer' and a token round-table conference was held, hosted by Anthony Wedgwood Berm, to which all interested commercial parties were invited. Levene and Astaire pointed out that without factoring in the cash value of all the various ancillary rights, the title fight could simply not take place in Britain at all. After a protest for the record, the government turned its attention to other things, notably the World Cup Final.

Since the retirement of Stirling Moss in 1962 Henry had probably become the country's most well-respected sporting figure (although Jim Clark, of course, had come up fast) and it was a status all agreed he had earned. He was probably as important to sports fans in Britain as the entire England football team and as such a popular hero he had his political uses; the issue over his fans' access to the fight was a clear opportunity to generate some useful brownie points with the electorate.

Training for his promising encounter with Muhammad Ali was no different from any other preparation Henry had
made before. The team stayed at the
Duchess of Edinburgh
in Welling, in Kent, where Henry, accompanied by George, did his early morning roadwork, whereupon, after a shower and a rest, they drove up the Old Kent Road, through Grandfather George's old stamping ground, to the
Thomas à Becket
for midday sparring.

Henry had always eaten a high protein diet, albeit in rather more agreeable circumstances than many. The culinary rituals established by Wicks did not change particularly, partly for reasons of familiarity, partly for reasons of publicity. It was important to maintain a high public profile, which in turn demonstrated a higher level of confidence. So a regular intake of medium-rare grilled steaks, potatoes and green salad (no onions, they can cause burping) washed down with half a bottle of Fleurie were the order of the day at Simpson's,
osso bucco
or veal escalope at Peter Mario's, or some predictably exotic piscine confection at Sheekey's, with the traditional Krug to go with it. Only in the last week did the diet become spartan; any sensible boxer, like any sensible racing driver, does his stuff on an empty stomach, for obvious physiological reasons. ‘It was important to be totally cleaned out,' recalls Henry now.

He had learned this painful lesson very early in his amateur career, when he had innocently downed a huge portion of Lily's bread pudding before a fight, with predictably disastrous results. ‘You can't fight on an empty stomach,' she'd advised. Since that early fiasco he had learned that you have to do exactly that, and not just for speed, either. A full stomach is easily damaged.

Despite the importance of this fight, the rituals of training were unaltered. For a man who enjoyed his creature
comforts as much as many and more than most, it was the usual grind; he was only able to talk to his wife on the phone. ‘Obviously, if there was anything wrong at home, or a kiddie was sick, I couldn't tell him anything about it, it would only make him worry, she recalls. ‘If Henry Marco had whooping cough or something else, I'd just have to cope with it.'

Henry's experience was very different of course: ‘Training camps are supposed to make you mean, by keeping you away from your wife. It's not to do with the sex or anything like that, that never did anyone any harm, it's just that away from the wife and family, you get mean.'

Wicks's deliberate policy, honed to perfection over the years, of dropping deliberately irritating remarks that were purely designed to nark, was another method of raising the volatile temperature, as Henry remembers only too well: ‘They would prod me on one or two little things to see me snap and lose my temper. Then they knew I was coming to my peak. I'm a very easy-going guy normally, but after four or five weeks of training Jim didn't have to say much, just be a little argumentative, perhaps, and I'd bite his head off.'

The opposing camp was much less vociferous than they had been three years before. The Muhammad Ali he was about to face was no longer the comical but likeable braggart – by contrast Ali was now a rather serious and tense young man (although still very handsome). Thanks to the attentions and priorities of the Nation of Islam he had, lost much of the bounce that had previously made him such a tolerated figure of fun. Under its tenets, he was supposed to behave himself. Of course, he had proved much – two defeats of Liston, despite the controversy of the second one,
had made him a hero – but much of that glory had been offset by a truly brutal and unnecessary humiliation (entirely at the behest of the Nation) of Floyd Patterson the previous November, which had done much to drop his popularity quite off the chart. Patterson, who was widely liked by the establishment, had been unwise enough to ridicule his name change and Ali had punished him cruelly for it, torturing the insecure veteran (but without knocking him out) for 12 rounds, until the scandalized referee finally stopped the fight. It was a stunt Muhammad Ali would pull again within the year against Ernie Terrell, again under instructions from his new church. Ali, against a black opponent, could call upon vast reserves of subliminal malice via the Nation of Islam, but against Henry Cooper, Catholic nice guy, this was worth less than dust. Despite the fact that Ali was accompanied almost everywhere by a coterie of
sinister-looking
Black Muslims, the movement held little credibility in London.