Muhammad Ali: The Hardest Punch I Ever Took? Henry Cooper!

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Associated Press
Henry Cooper, a popular British heavyweight with a murderous left hook that, in his most famous fight, knocked a brash, future world champion then known as Cassius Clay on his backside, died Sunday in Oxted, Surrey, south of London. He was 76.

Henry Cooper fought Muhammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, in a 1963 bout, which Cooper lost despite landing a blow that Ali said three years later was “the hardest punch I have ever taken.”

The British Boxing Board of Control confirmed the death to The Associated Press, saying Cooper died after an unspecified extended illness.

Cooper, among the best known and most successful British fighters since World War II, held the British heavyweight title for a dozen years — except for a self-imposed exile of 10 months — and was also, for a time, the European champion.

He did not win either of his fights against Clay, who, by the time of their second encounter, in London in 1966, was the heavyweight champion known as Muhammad Ali. He whipped Cooper in a six-round technical knockout, opening a cut over Cooper’s left eye and taking advantage of his penchant for copious bleeding.

A flatfooted puncher and, at about 190 pounds, small for a heavyweight, he was outweighed and outmaneuvered by Ali, and the outcome surprised no one.

But their first bout, at Wembley Stadium in London in June 1963, was fraught with drama. At the time, Cooper was the champion not just of England but also of the entire Commonwealth. At 29 he was an elder statesman who had been fighting professionally for nearly a decade, a sporting figure known as “our ’Enry,” beloved for his working-class cockney roots and modest manner. Clay, just 21, had yet to seize the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston, and he had arrived in England with his trademark braggadocio in full efflorescence.

“Henry Cooper will think he’s Gordon Cooper when I put him in orbit,” Clay declared. “I’m going to hit that bum so fast and so regular, he’ll think he’s surrounded.”

Clay predicted he would win in five rounds. As the fight proceeded he seemed to be toying with Cooper as he waited for Round 5 to arrive. In the meantime he used his superior speed and size — 207 pounds to Cooper’s 183 — to torment Cooper with savage jabs and to dodge his potent left hook, a punch nicknamed “ ’Enry’s ’Ammer.” It nearly ended in disaster for Clay when, just before the bell to end Round 4, Cooper connected with a swift, thudding blow that sent Clay backward through the ropes.

“It was the hardest punch I have ever taken,” Ali would say, three years later, as he prepared for their second bout.

An extended pause between rounds because of a split in one of Clay’s gloves — some say made purposely by Clay’s trainer, Angelo Dundee — helped Clay recover, and in Round 5 he fulfilled his prediction, quickly reducing Cooper’s face to a bloody mask.

“In 2 minutes 15 seconds, he nearly tore Cooper’s head off his shoulders,” The New York Times reported. “Few men have absorbed such a beating in so short a time.”

 

 

Photo by Raymond L. Tharaldson

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Henry Cooper and his twin brother, George — who also boxed for a time — were born in London on May 3, 1934. Their father was a soldier and a boxing enthusiast, but he was gone during the World War II years; it was a neighbor who first took the brothers to a boxing gym.

A successful amateur, Henry Cooper fought for England in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki before turning professional in 1954. He won the British crown in 1959 and did not lose it until 1971, when he was beaten in a close bout by Joe Bugner and then retired. Cooper had a string of victories against title contenders, including Zora Folley, Karl Mildenberger and Brian London, though his second fight with Ali was his only world championship fight.

Cooper fought — and lost to — two other men who had been or would become champions. In 1957 he was knocked out by Ingemar Johansson, who would defeat Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight title in 1959. (Patterson regained the crown in a rematch.) In 1966 he lost to Patterson. His overall professional record was 40-14-1.

After his retirement, Cooper stayed in the public eye as a spokesman for Brut aftershave and other products, and he appeared on a television quiz show, “A Question of Sport.” He published an autobiography in 1972, and he became a familiar presence in English public service announcements and at charity events. He was knighted in 2000.

Cooper’s survivors include two sons and two grandchildren. His wife, Albina, whom he married in 1960, was a waitress in his favorite Italian restaurant when they met. She died in 2008. George Cooper died last year.

Ali, who maintained a warm friendship with Cooper over the years and visited with him in London in 2009, issued a statement calling Cooper “a great fighter and a gentleman,” but otherwise confessing that the news rendered him uncharacteristically speechless.

“I am at a loss for words over the death of my friend, Henry Cooper,” Ali said.

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