R.I.P. Former Heavyweight Contender “Smokin’” Bert Cooper, Dead at 53

Published

5 years ago

May 11, 2019

“Smokin’” Bert Cooper, the Joe Frazier lookalike who patterned his own boxing style after that of his idol, mentor and former manager, was 53 when he lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on Friday. Best-known for his knockdown of IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield in their title bout in Holyfield’s hometown of Atlanta, Cooper, a 32-to-1 underdog from the Philadelphia suburb of Sharon Hill, Pa., might have pulled off the biggest upset since Buster Douglas’ shocker over Mike Tyson when, in the third round of the Nov. 23, 1991, bout at The Omni, he landed an explosive overhand right to the titlist’s jaw.

Holyfield stumbled backward into the ropes as Cooper rushed forward to follow up with a barrage of punches. A clearly buzzed Holyfield was sent sagging, his right knee brushing the canvas. Referee Mills Lane, having decided that Holyfield was being held up by the ropes, immediately jumped in, signaled a knockdown and gave him a standing-eight count.

“The Real Deal’s” undefeated record (he had come in 26-0 with 21 KOs) and championship reign might well have gone up in, well, smoke were it not for those few seconds of rest. When an overanxious Cooper rushed in again to seal the deal, Holyfield – whose recuperative powers were well-documented – answered with a barrage of his own that carried him to the end of the shakiest round of his professional career to that point.

“My heart started to go boom, boom, boom,” Cooper said when asked for his reaction to the sight of Holyfield in trouble. “I thought I was the heavyweight champion of the world. I said to myself, `Oh, boy, this is it.’”

Except that it wasn’t. With the bell ending the round, the window of opportunity closed for Cooper. Holyfield began to reassert control in the fourth round and, as the seventh round was nearing a close, he landed 25 unanswered punches. Lane wrapped his arms around the bloodied Cooper and waved the fight to a halt after an elapsed time of 2 minutes, 58 seconds. Former heavyweight champion George Foreman, a color analyst for HBO’s telecast, said the fight was “the best I’ve seen,” but he criticized Lane’s actions in both the third and seventh rounds.

“He saved Evander Holyfield (in the third round), yet, when he stopped the fight, he didn’t give the other guy a standing eight-count,” Foreman said. Lane said he couldn’t have given Cooper a standing eight-count in any case; IBF rules, under which the fight was held, did not allow for such. Holyfield was given an eight-count since he had been knocked down.

So, just how close had Holyfield come to relinquishing his titles to a man who was a substitute for a substitute, called off the scrap heap to replace the injured Francesco Damiani just a week before the bout? Damiani, for his part, was a substitute for Mike Tyson, who also had to withdraw with an injury that, coupled with his subsequent conviction for rape, would put him on ice for nearly four years.

It would be easy now for those who never saw Bert Cooper at his grittiest to dismiss him as just another journeyman who got a dream shot he didn’t really deserve, someone who should have counted himself fortunate to simply not to be embarrassed by a vastly superior champion. Cooper’s record would seem to support such an allegation: he retired after a sixth-round stoppage loss to Carl Davis on Sept. 8, 2012, with a 38-25 record, 31 of the victories coming inside the distance. He also lost by KO or TKO 16 times.

But even in his declining phase as a steppingstone, a guy with some residual name value to be added to the resume of champions or near-champions on their way down or young guns on the way up, Cooper always posed a threat to upset the applecart. Although he was just 11-17 in his final 28 fights, the first of which was another near-miss bid for a heavyweight title, in this instance the vacant WBO belt won by Michael Moorer in an Atlantic City slugfest in which each man went down twice, his setbacks at least came against some of the division’s brighter lights. In addition to Moorer, Cooper’s list of conquerors included Mike Weaver, Corrie Sanders, Larry Donald, Jeremy Williams, Alexander Zolkin, Chris Byrd, Samson Po’uha, Derrick Jefferson, Fres Oquendo, Joe Mesi and Luis Ortiz.

That he fought as long as he did, and as reasonably well, while struggling with the dual demons of drug and alcohol addictions makes his journey to the outer fringes of stardom as remarkable as it is sad. It was Cooper’s inability to hide his out-of-the-ring struggles from Joe Frazier that led to their breakup.

“Pop looked upon Bert almost as a member of the family,” Joe’s son, former heavyweight contender Marvis Frazier, recalled in November 1991. “He treated him better than he did me. Well, almost.”

It was the realization of Cooper’s drug use that was partly responsible for Joe Frazier quitting as his protégé’s manager after Cooper was stopped in seven rounds by Carl “The Truth” Williams for the vacant USBA heavyweight title on June 21, 1987, in Atlantic City. The 5-foot-11 Cooper, who previously had competed as a cruiserweight, claimed he had been forced to move up to heavyweight by Frazier, who had mandated the change because he wanted to relive his championship glory through Cooper.

“I realized (after the Williams fight) I’m not a heavyweight,” Cooper said. “I put on a lot of phony weight just eating sloppy stuff, junk food. Joe wanted me to be a heavyweight, just like he did with Marvis. Joe wants someone with a world title belt just like he had.”

To go public with a statement like that, Marvis said, committed a betrayal of trust in Joe’s eyes. Those in the inner circle knew better than to air dirty laundry in the media. And so, days after Cooper’s loss to Williams, Joe informed him that he no longer could serve as his manager. Joe’s daughter, Jacqui Frazier-Lyde, said the best thing Cooper could do for her father would be to drop the “Smokin’” nickname.

What might Cooper have become had he not fallen under the sway of drugs and booze? Or alienated himself from the man he so deeply admired and whose life story he so desperately wanted to replicate? Cooper was just 12 years old when he decided what he was going to be when he grew up: he would become a boxer, a world champion, the toughest of the tough.

So Cooper started making daily trips from his Sharon Hill home to North Philadelphia, where his hero and role model, Joe Frazier, was operating a gym. It was there that he would learn – about life, about the fight game – at the foot of the master. But Joe Frazier, who lived clean and fought hard, was a proponent of tough love. Those who accepted his affection would also have to accept his discipline, and there were rules Joe had set down that could never be broached. Cross the line and violators ran the risk of alienation.

When Damiani fell out shortly after Tyson, promoter Dan Duva did not have to go rummaging at the bottom of the proverbial barrel for someone to fight Holyfield. At 5-11 and a taut 211 pounds, Cooper not only was a physical prototype of Joe Frazier, but of Tyson, whom Holyfield had trained for in the first place.

“I guess all the work Evander put in getting ready for Tyson won’t go to waste now,” said George Benton, Holyfield’s trainer. “Fighting Cooper is a lot like fighting Tyson. They’re both short, strong guys who come straight at you and try to rough you up. They both have that kill-or-be-killed attitude.

“I don’t know if Cooper is the closest thing to Tyson, although he’s pretty damn close in some ways. But let’s be honest. In other ways they don’t really compare at all. Cooper doesn’t punch as fast or as hard as Tyson, and he doesn’t take a shot nearly as well. Tyson does a lot of smart things for a slugger. Cooper basically is a brawler. Tyson is the real thing. Cooper is not on the same level.”

But Cooper came ever so close to doing to Holyfield what Tyson – who, to be fair, was not at his snarling best following his incarceration – could not do in their two fights. It’s possible that Bert Cooper might have found the inner conviction he needed to pull himself together, had he won beaten Holyfield, and gone on to a Hall of Fame career more prestigious than his 2017 induction into the Pennsylvania Boxing HOF. It is also possible he would have flamed out in exactly the same manner than he eventually did. It is one of those questions that will always be left open to speculation.

Cooper entered the ring against Holyfield wearing a satin jacket with “The Smoke is No Joke” stitched across the back. At least that much is true. For all the intrigue and insults he so readily attracted, for a precious moment in time there was absolutely no one that was laughing at the supposedly no-chance challenger from just outside of Philadelphia.

Bernard Fernandez is the retired boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. He is a five-term former president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, an inductee into the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Atlantic City Boxing Halls of Fame and the recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism and the Barney Nagler Award for Long and Meritorious Service to Boxing.

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In a Massive Upset, Dakota Linger TKOs Kurt Scoby on a Friday Night in Atlanta

Published

6 hours ago

April 19, 2024

Arne K. Lang

In-a-Massive-Upset-Dakota-Linger-TKOs-Kurt-Scoby-on-a-Friday-Night-in-Atlanta

Although it was an 8-rounder on a show with two “tens,” Kurt Scoby’s match with Dakota Linger was accorded main event status on tonight’s card at the Overtime Elite Arena in Atlanta. This had everything to do with Scoby (pronounced Scooby), a former record-setting college running back who was considered one of the brightest prospects in the 140-pound weight class. “[Scoby] works harder than almost anyone I’ve ever seen,” said veteran New York promoter Lou DIBella in a conversation with Keith Idec. “But he’s literally getting better after every fight and he’s got the hammer of Thor, man. He can punch through walls.”

The Duarte, California product who has relocated to Brooklyn and trains at Gleason’s Gym, was undefeated (13-0) heading in and was expected to make Linger his ninth straight knockout victim. But Linger, a 29-year-old Buckhannon, West Virginia policemen whose first ring engagements were in Toughman competitions, wasn’t intimidated by Scoby’s press clippings or by Scoby’s bodybuilder physique.

Linger, who improved to 14-6-3 with his tenth win inside the distance, took the fight right to Scoby and repeatedly found a home for his overhand right. In the sixth round, after Linger strafed the ever-retreating Scoby with a barrage of punches, referee Malik Walid determined that he had seen enough and waived it off. The decision seemed a tad premature, but neither Scoby nor his cornermen offered anything in the way of a protest.

Tournament results

In the first installment of an 8-man super welterweight tournament, Brandon Adams returned to boxing after his second three-year layoff and showed no ring rust whatsoever. Adams, a 34-year-old family-man who grew up in the Watts district of LA, dismissed Ismael Villareal with a wicked punch to the liver in the waning seconds of round three. The official time was 2:59.

A former wold title challenger, Adams who improved to 23-3 (16 KOs), has become the king of boxing tournaments. He first attracted notice in 2018 when he won the fifth edition of “The Contender” series, scoring a wide 10-round decision over Shane Mosley Jr in the championship round.

Villareal, a second-generation prizefighter from the Bronx whose dad fought the likes of Hector Camacho, declined to 13-3.

Adams next opponent will be Francisco Veron who will bring a record of 14-0-1 (10).

In an energetic 10-rounder, Veron, a Florida-based Argentine with a strong amateur pedigree, scored a unanimous decision over Mexico-born, LA southpaw Angel Ruiz (18-3-1). The judges had it 100-90, 99-91, and 96-94.

Ruiz certainly had his moments, but Veron launched and landed many more punches despite fighting the last six rounds with a damaged eye.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 281: The Devin Haney and Ryan Garcia Show

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-281-The-Devin-Haney-and-Ryan-Garcia-Show

Over the years bouts between old foes such as Devin Haney and Ryan Garcia tend to be surprising.

Yes, both are only 25 but have known each other for many years.

When undisputed super lightweight champion Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) steps into the prize ring at Barclays Center to meet challenger Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) on Saturday, April 20, fans will be witnessing the continuation of a feud that began more than a decade ago.

And though the champion is a heavy favorite, familiarity is Garcia’s best weapon heading into their fight on the Golden Boy Promotions card that will be shown on PPV.COM with Jim Lampley and friends. DAZN pay-per-view is also streaming the card.

In many ways Haney and Garcia have ventured down the same path. From amateur sensations to fighting in Mexico while teens to asking for the biggest challenges available.

“Whichever version of Ryan shows up on April 20, I will be ready for him. Ryan Garcia is just another opponent to me,” said Haney who holds the WBC super lightweight title after his win over Regis Prograis.

The first time I saw Haney as a pro he battled the dangerous Mexican contender Juan Carlos Burgos at Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula. It was an impressive performance against a fighter who fought three times for a world title.

Haney was 19 at the time.

My first look at Garcia as a pro was in his first bout in the U.S. when he met Puerto Rico’s Jonathan Cruz at the Exchange in downtown Los Angeles. The Boricua looked at Garcia and tried intimidating him with stares, taunts and the usual patter. During the fight both swung and missed until the second round when Garcia zeroed in and took him out.

Garcia had just turned 18, the legal age to fight in California.

Both fighters did not have the Olympics credentials that lead to fame. But their talent has allowed them to fight through the dense smoke that is professional boxing.

Haney has defeated numerous world champions such as Prograis, Vasyl Lomachenko and George Kambosos Jr., while Garcia has stopped champions Javier Fortuna and Luke Campbell.

As amateurs, Garcia and Haney battled six times with each winning three.

“They know each other very well,” said Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions. “Ryan is going to beat Devin Haney.”

Haney has a buttery-smooth style with one of the best jabs in boxing. He’s very adept at keeping distance and not allowing anyone to fight him inside. His reflexes are outstanding, yet he seldom fights inside. That’s his weakness.

Garcia fights tall and has superb hand speed and a lightning quick left hook. Though his defense lacks tightness his ability to rip off three-punch combinations in a blink of an eye pauses opponents from bullying their way inside.

“These guys always just look at me and look at me like I don’t know how to box,” said Garcia on social media. “Why was I one of the best fighters in the amateurs. Why was I a 15-time National champion…why did I beat everyone I came across.”

Haney is a strong favorite by oddsmakers to defeat Garcia. But you can never tell when it comes to fighters that know each other well and are athletically gifted.

When Sergio Mora challenged Vernon Forrest he was a big underdog. When Tim Bradley fought Manny Pacquiao the first time, he was also the underdog. And when Andy Ruiz met Anthony Joshua few gave him a chance.

Haney and Garcia have history in the ring. It should be an interesting battle.

PPV.COM

Jim Lampley will be leading the broadcast on PPV.COM for the Haney-Garcia card at Barclays and texting with fans on the card live. He will be accompanied by journalists Lance Pugmire, Dan Conobbio and former champion Chris Algieri.

The PPV.COM broadcast begins at 5 p.m. PT. and is available in Canada and the USA.

Other News

MMA stars Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal will be holding a media day event on Friday, April 19, at NOVO at L.A. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Diaz and Masvidal will be boxing against each other in a grudge match on June 1 at the KIA Forum in Inglewood, Calif. The two MMA stars met five years at UFC 244 with Masvidal winning by TKO over Diaz due to cuts.

This is a grudge match, but under boxing rules.

Fight card in Commerce, Calif.

360 Promotions returns to Commerce Casino on Saturday April 20 with undefeated super lightweight Cain Sandoval leading the charge.

Sandoval (12-0) faces Angel Rebollar (8-3) in the main event that will be shown live on UFC Fight Pass. Also on the card are two female events including hot prospect Lupe Medina (5-0) versus Sabrina Persona (3-1) in a minimumweight clash.

Doors open at 4 p.m.

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Boxing Odds and Ends: The Heavyweight Merry-Go-Round

Published

3 days ago

April 16, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Boxing Odds and Ends: The Heavyweight Merry-Go-Round

There were few surprises when co-promoters Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren and their benefactor HE Turki Alalshikh held a press conference in London this past Monday to unveil the undercard for the Beterbiev-Bivol show at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on June 1. Most of the match-ups had already been leaked.

For die-hard boxing fans, Beterbiev-Bivol is such an enticing fight that it really doesn’t need an attractive undercard. Two undefeated light heavyweights will meet with all four relevant belts on the line in a contest where the oddsmakers straddled the fence. It’s a genuine “pick-‘em” fight based on the only barometer that matters, the prevailing odds.

But Beterbiev-Bivol has been noosed to a splendid undercard, a striking contrast to Saturday’s Haney-Garcia $69.99 (U.S.) pay-per-view in Brooklyn, an event where the undercard, in the words of pseudonymous boxing writer Chris Williams, is an absolute dumpster fire.

The two heavyweight fights that will bleed into Beterbiev-Bivol, Hrgovic vs. Dubois and Wilder vs. Zhang, would have been stand-alone main events before the incursion of Saudi money.

Hrgovic-Dubois

Filip Hrgovic (17-0, 13 KOs) and Daniel Dubois (20-2, 19 KOs) fought on the same card in Riyadh this past December. Hrgovic, the Croatian, was fed a softie in the form of Australia’s Mark De Mori who he dismissed in the opening round. Dubois, a Londoner, rebounded from his loss to Oleksandr Usyk with a 10^th-round stoppage of corpulent Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller.

There’s an outside chance that Hrgovic vs. Dubois may be sanctioned by the IBF for the world heavyweight title.

The May 18 showdown between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury has a rematch clause. The IBF is next in line in the rotation system for a unified heavyweight champion and the organization has made it plain that the winner of Usyk-Fury must fulfill his IBF mandatory before an intervening bout.

The best guess is that the Usyk-Fury winner will relinquish the IBF belt. If so, Hrgovic and Dubois may fight for the vacant title although a more likely scenario is that the organization will keep the title vacant so that the winner can fight Anthony Joshua.

Wilder-Zhang

The match between Deontay Wilder (43-3-1, 42 KOs) and Zhilei Zhang (26-2-1, 21 KOs) is a true crossroads fight as both Wilder, 38, and Zhang, who turns 41 in May, are nearing the end of the road and the loser (unless it’s a close and entertaining fight) will be relegated to the rank of a has-been. In fact, Wilder has hinted that this may be his final rodeo.

Both are coming off a loss to Joseph Parker.

Wilder last fought on the card that included Hrgovic and Dubois and was roundly out-pointed by a man he was expected to beat. It’s a quick turnaround for Zhang who opposed Parker on March 8 and lost a majority decision.

Other Fights

Either of two other fights may steal the show on the June 1 event.

Raymond Ford (15-0-1, 8 KOs) meets Nick Ball (19-0-1, 11 KOs) in a 12-round featherweight contest. New Jersey’s Ford will be defending the WBA world title he won with a come-from-behind, 12th-round stoppage of Otabek Kholmatov in an early contender for Fight of the Year. Liverpool’s “Wrecking” Ball, a relentless five-foot-two sparkplug, had to settle for a draw in his title fight with Rey Vargas despite winning the late rounds and scoring two knockdowns.

Hamzah Sheeraz (19-0, 15 KOs) meets fellow unbeaten Austin “Ammo” Williams (16-0, 11 KOs) in a 12-round middleweight match. East London’s Sheeraz, the son of a former professional cricket player, is unknown in the U.S. although he trained for his recent fights at the Ten Goose Boxing Gym in California. Riding a skein of 13 straight knockouts, he has a date with WBO title-holder Janibek Alimkhanuly if he can get over this hurdle.

The Forgotten Heavyweight

“Unbeaten for seven years, the man nobody wants to fight,” intoned ring announcer Michael Buffer by way of introduction. Buffer was referencing Michael Hunter who stood across the ring from his opponent Artem Suslenkov.

This scene played out this past Saturday in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It was Hunter’s second fight in three weeks. On March 23, he scored a fifth-round stoppage of a 46-year-old meatball at a show in Zapopan, Mexico.

The second-generation “Bounty Hunter,” whose only defeat prior to last weekend came in a 12-rounder with Oleksandr Usyk, has been spinning his wheels since TKOing the otherwise undefeated Martin Bakole on the road in London in 2018. Two fights against hapless opponents on low-budget cards in Mexico and a couple of one-round bouts for the Las Vegas Hustle, an entry in the fledgling and largely invisible Professional Combat League, are the sum total of his activity, aside from sparring, in the last two-and-a-half years.

Hunter’s chances of getting another big-money fight took a tumble in Tashkent where he lost a unanimous decision in a dull affair to the unexceptional Suslenkov who was appearing in his first 10-round fight. The scores of the judges were not announced.

You won’t find this fight listed on boxrec. As Jake Donovan notes, the popular website will not recognize a fight conducted under the auspices of a rogue commission. (Another fight you won’t find on boxrec for the same reason is Nico Ali Walsh’s 6-round split decision over the 9-2-1 Frenchman, Noel Lafargue, in the African nation of Guinea on Dec. 16, 2023. You can find it on YouTube, but according to boxrec, boxing’s official record-keeper, it never happened.)

Anderson-Merhy Redux

The only thing missing from this past Saturday’s match in Corpus Christi, Texas, between Jared Anderson and Ryad Merhy was the ghost of Robert Valsberg.

Valsberg, aka Roger Vaisburg, was the French referee who disqualified Ingemar Johansson for not trying in his match with LA’s Ed Sanders in the finals of the heavyweight competition at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. Valsberg tossed Johansson out of the ring after two rounds and Johansson was denied the silver medal. The Swede redeemed himself after turning pro, needless to say, when he demolished Floyd Patterson in the first of their three meetings.

Merhy was credited with throwing only 144 punches, landing 34, over the course of the 10 rounds. Those dismal figures yet struck many onlookers as too high. (This reporter has always insisted that the widely-quoted CompuBox numbers should be considered approximations.)

Whatever the true number, it was a disgraceful performance by Merhy who actually showed himself to have very fast hands on the few occasions when he did throw a punch. With apologies to Delfine Persoon, a spunky lightweight, U.S. boxing promoters should think twice before inviting another Belgian boxer to our shores.

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