[BITList] Making a fist of it

[John Feltham]

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Cooper, Sir  Henry  (1934-2011), boxer, was born on 3 May 1934 at the Lying-In Hospital, York Road, Lambeth, London, the elder identical twin and second of three sons of Henry William Cooper, tram conductor, and his wife, Lily, nee Nutkins. At the time of his birth registration the family lived at 22 Daneville Road, Camberwell, soon moving to the Bellingham estate in south-east London, before the brothers were evacuated to Lancing, Sussex, in 1940. They returned to Bellingham in 1941, where Henry attended the Athelney Street school. He excelled at most sports, particularly football, but he also played cricket and, for one season, rowed. With his twin brother, George, he joined the Bellingham Boxing Club at the age of nine, moving to the Eltham and District Amateur Boxing Club under the supervision of influential head trainer George Page at fifteen. He left school in 1949 and had various spells as a labourer before finding settled employment with a local plastering contractor.

Cooper enjoyed a successful amateur career. He won two Amateur Boxing Association (ABA) titles as a light heavyweight, the first in 1952 at the age of seventeen. That year he was also selected to represent Great Britain at the Helsinki Olympics. But he performed poorly, losing to Anatoli Perov of the Soviet Union in his first bout, and was also disappointing at the European championships of 1953 in Warsaw, where he was defeated by another Soviet boxer, Juri Jegorow. He boxed throughout his national service, joining the 4th battalion of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, the so-called Boxers' battalion, shortly after returning from Helsinki. He was permitted to box in ABA contests in London during the week and, with George, managed to return to Bellingham most weekends. He outpointed the Australian Tony Madigan to gain his second ABA title in May 1953, a victory that Cooper later claimed convinced him that he was good enough to become a professional. His amateur record was exceptional, with seventy-three wins recorded in eighty-three senior bouts.

Cooper turned professional, again alongside George (who fought as Jim Cooper, since there was already a well-known boxer named George Cooper), immediately after leaving the army in the summer of 1954. Their manager was Jim 'the Bishop' Wicks, a former greyhound track manager and bookmaker, who had promoted and managed boxers since the 1930s and was well connected with key figures in the post-war boxing industry, particularly in London. Wicks already managed an impressive stable of established boxers, including the British light heavyweight champion Alex Buxton and Joe Lucy, the British lightweight champion. His headquarters was a converted boxing gym located above the Thomas a Beckett pub on the Old Kent Road.

The relationship with Wicks was to define Cooper's career. Wicks's flair for publicity was apparent from the beginning, when he arranged for the twins to sign their professional contracts live on BBC television's Sports view programme. He controlled Cooper's career carefully, steering him away from dangerous opponents, notably the formidable American Sonny Liston, and ensuring that he was not identified too closely with either of the main British promoters of the 1950s and 1960s, Jack Solomons and Harry Levene. Wicks's decision not to take his cut of the Coopers' early career earnings also helped in gaining their trust. Indeed Cooper worked with Wicks for most of his career without an official contract. He later remarked that there was a genuine mutual affection 'quite different to the normal boxer-manager relationship' between the brothers and Wicks: 'We were more like father and sons'  (Cooper, An Autobiography, 50).

Cooper progressed quickly in the professional ranks, winning his first nine fights. A badly cut eye forced his first defeat, against the Italian Uber Bacilieri in April 1955. He lost on points to the Welshman Joe Erskine in a British heavyweight title eliminator later the same year but recovered sufficiently to establish himself as a title contender by 1957. However, he then lost four fights in succession, including encounters with Joe Bygraves, Ingemar Johansson, and Erskine again for the British empire, European, and British titles respectively. The Johansson defeat had highlighted Cooper's relative inexperience. Growing frustrated at a dull and deadlocked fight, he jettisoned a plan to box defensively in the fifth round and was knocked out by a devastating right-hand punch from the Swede. 'The Englishman seemed to have a good left hook but he tensed himself up', Johansson wrote in his autobiography. He added that Cooper was 'one of the most pleasant people I have met' and 'really seems too kind for boxing'  (Johansson, 118).

To rebuild Cooper's confidence and reputation, Wicks took him to Germany to fight a series of local heavyweights. On his return to the UK, Cooper stopped the rated Welsh fighter Dick Richardson and then, more significantly, beat the American Zora Folley, a leading contender for the heavyweight world championship, on points at Wembley Arena in October 1958. He took Brian London's British and empire heavyweight titles in a bloody encounter at Earl's Court in early 1959, defending both titles against long-standing rival Erskine in November.

On 24 July 1960 Cooper married Albina Genepri (1937-2008), a waitress from Finsbury, and daughter of Giuseppe Genepri. They had met seven years earlier when she worked at Peter Mario's, a restaurant Cooper and Wicks regularly visited in Gerrard Street, Soho. Originally from an Italian farming family from Boccacci, near Parma, she had migrated to London to live with her aunt and uncle in 1948. On marriage Cooper converted to Roman Catholicism. They had two sons, Henry Marco (b. 1960), and John Pietro (b. 1967).

Cooper defended his British and empire titles three times between May 1961 and May 1963 and beat a number of talented American opponents over the same period. Despite some criticism that he was too easy to hit, he had clearly established himself as the top British heavyweight and a leading contender for the world title. Yet the complex politics of the heavyweight division, particularly after the American Floyd Patterson had regained the title in June 1960, meant that Wicks was unable to negotiate a title challenge until 1966. A disastrous second-round knockout by Folley in late 1961 had not helped. It was a fight for which Cooper decided to train while based at his new Wembley home, a mistake that he was not to repeat. He was also hampered by an injury to his left elbow that he had picked up years before while plastering.

Cooper's two bouts against Muhammad Ali-the first at Wembley Stadium in June 1963 when Ali fought under his 'slave name' Cassius Clay, and the second at Arsenal Football Club's Highbury ground in May 1966-were the defining points of his boxing career. The fight in 1963 was Clay's first in England and he was expected to win. As one of Ali's biographers commented, Cooper was considered 'old, slow, well-ranked and, therefore, the perfect match'. Clay dismissed the British champion as 'a tramp, a bum and a cripple, not worth training for', and predicted that he would finish the fight within five rounds  (Torres, 118). But Cooper surprised Clay with a left hook at the end of the fourth round that sent the American sprawling backwards over the ropes. The bell came to Clay's rescue and his trainer Angelo Dundee bought him a few extra seconds (though not the full minute some claimed) by drawing the referee's attention to a small tear in Clay's left glove. The American recovered in the next round, reopening a cut above Cooper's eye with a series of jabs and forcing the referee to stop the fight.

Cooper's second fight with Ali was for the world title the American had won by defeating Sonny Liston in 1964. It was the first world heavyweight title bout staged in Britain since 1908 and took more money at the gate than football's world cup final two months later. In the period between the two fights Cooper had won his first European title by defeating London again, but had been unable to defend it through injury and the European Boxing Union stripped him of it. He had also secured quick knockouts of Chip Johnson and Jefferson Davis, two Americans who had defeated his brother, George, in previous visits to the UK. Cooper boxed well again against Ali and was probably ahead on points in the early rounds. But the speed and accuracy of Ali's punches opened a large gash along Cooper's left eyebrow and ended the fight in the sixth round. It was, Cooper later remarked, 'the disappointment of my life'. He maintained that he had matched Ali in their two encounters but was let down by having 'prominent bones and weak skin tissue round the eyes'  (Cooper, An Autobiography, 122).

Cooper was now thirty-two years old and had probably reached his boxing peak. He was finally matched with Floyd Patterson later in 1966 but was easily beaten by the former world champion. He now focused his attention on British and European opponents. In November 1967 he stopped the young East Ender Billy Walker to win an unprecedented third Lonsdale belt outright (awarded for three successful British title victories at the same weight). The following year he regained the European title when Germany's Karl Mildenberger was disqualified in the eighth round at Wembley Arena and defended it in March 1969 in a rough and controversial fight in Rome against Piero Tomasoni, in which a series of low blows from the challenger turned Cooper's convex protective cup concave.

The courage and professionalism displayed by Cooper in these encounters helped to increase his public profile. He won the BBC's sports personality of the year award in 1967 and again in 1970 and was appointed OBE in 1969. He relinquished his British title in 1968 when the British boxing authorities refused to sanction a proposed title fight with Jimmy Ellis (since Ellis held the World Boxing Association title, while the British Boxing Board of Control was affiliated to the rival World Boxing Council) but regained it in March 1970 with a comprehensive points victory over Derbyshire southpaw Jack Bodell. Cooper was, according to sports writer Hugh McIlvanney, 'still too much for any British heavyweight' but 'he no longer hooks with the deadliness to worry the best in the world'  (McIlvanney, 85). He retired from the ring after controversially losing his British, Commonwealth, and European titles to Joe Bugner on points in March 1971, a decision he remained bitter about for many years.

Cooper benefited from, and enhanced, his popularity in retirement. He published an autobiography (assisted by Guardian journalist John Samuel) in 1972, and other books on boxing, and commentated regularly for BBC radio. He became known to a wider audience as a result of his television work, as a team captain on BBC's A Question of Sport panel show, a television presenter and regular chat show guest, and a promoter of commercial products such as Brut aftershave, Shredded Wheat, and a government flu vaccine campaign. A keen golfer, he was also heavily involved in charity work, mainly through his connections with the Variety Club of Great Britain, the Water Rats, and the Lord's Taverners. It was his charitable activities that earned him the papal knighthood of St Gregory in 1978.

Public affection for Cooper seemed to increase with time. There was considerable sympathy for him when he was forced to sell his Lonsdale belts in 1993 as a result of losses incurred as a Lloyd's 'name'. Affectionately dubbed 'Our 'Enery' by the press, he was also the first British boxer to be knighted, although he had to wait until 2000. By then, his limitations as a top rank heavyweight-he cut too easily and was widely considered too small to beat the very best Americans-mattered less than his perceived personal qualities as a modest and decent gentleman. He had become a typically English-style sporting hero: 'a good boxer, but an outstanding man' according to one journalist  (The Guardian, 3 May 2011).

The sudden death of his wife, Albina, of a heart attack in 2008, and then of his twin brother, George, in 2010, affected Cooper greatly. His health deteriorated and he died of cardiac failure at his son Henry's home, Bourne House, Uvedale Road, Oxted, Surrey, on 1 May 2011. His funeral was at Corpus Christi Church in Tonbridge, Kent, on 18 May 2011. He was survived by both sons.

Matthew Taylor 

Sources  I. Johansson, Seconds out of the ring (1961) + J. Torres, Sting like a bee: the Muhammad Ali story (1971) + H. Cooper, An autobiography (1972) + H. Cooper, Henry Cooper's book of boxing (1982) + R. Gutteridge, The big punchers (1983) + H. Cooper, H for 'Enry: more than just an autobiography (1984) + J. Harding, Lonsdale's belt: the story of boxing's greatest prize (1994) + R. Gutteridge, Reg Gutteridge: king of commentary (1998) + D. Remnick, King of the world: Muhammad Ali and the rise of an American hero (1998) + M. Duff and B. Mee, Twenty and out (1999) + H. McIlvanney, McIlvanney on boxing, 1st edn, 1996 (2011) + The Times (2 May 2011); (5 May 2011); (9 May 2011); (13 May 2011) + Daily Telegraph (2 May 2011); (3 May 2011); (4 May 2011); (19 May 2011); (28 Dec 2011) + The Guardian (2 May 2011); (3 May 2011) + The Independent (2 May 2011); (4 May 2011) + N. Giller, Henry Cooper: a hero for all time (2012) + R. Edwards, Henry Cooper, 1934-2011: the authorised biography (2012) + Burke, Peerage + WW (2011) + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert.
Likenesses  photographs, 1952-2009, Getty Images, London · photographs, 1952-2010, Rex Features, London · photographs, 1955-2010, PA Photos, London · R. Coleman, film negative, 1959, NPG, London · D. Farson, glossy bromide print, 1960, NPG, London · photographs, 1963-2009, Photoshot, London · P. Akehurst, photograph, 1966, Mary Evans Picture Library, London · T.P.J. Anson, archival inkjet print, 1966, NPG, London · J. Gray, photograph, 1966, Getty Images, London [see illus.] · obituary photographs · photographs, repro. in obits · photographs, Camera Press, London · photographs, Science and Society Picture Library, London · portrait, repro. in Edwards, Henry Cooper · portrait, repro. in Giller, Henry Cooper · portrait, repro. in Cooper, An Autobiography
Wealth at death  £747,098: probate, 14 Dec 2011, CGPLA Eng. & Wales




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