The passage of 30 years has a way of obscuring fact, be it real or perceived, from fiction. Unlike Douglas, whose miracle in the Land of the Rising Sun shall forever remain the stuff of legend, Cooper – whose once-shiny potential was tarnished by years of drug abuse and an unrepairable falling-out with his hero, mentor and role model, Joe Frazier – became a lesser footnote in the big book of boxing history. He was just 53 when he passed away at his home in Philadelphia on May 10, 2019, the result of a bout he was doomed to lose with pancreatic cancer. An inductee into the New Jersey (2014) and Pennsylvania (2017) Boxing Halls of Fame, he took his earthly 10-count with a final mark of 38-25, with 31 wins inside the distance but also 16 defeats in similar fashion. He was just 11-17 in his last 28 ring appearances.
“Bert Cooper wasn’t at his best,” a sadly reflective Cooper said in assessing his roller-coaster career during a 2015 interview. “The majority of my career, I wasn’t at my best.”
Upon further reflection, any suggestion that Cooper could or should have dethroned Holyfield that chilly night in Atlanta three decades ago is, at best, speculative. Yeah, the percussive overhand right to the jaw in the third round that put Holyfield squarely in the danger zone was the night’s most dramatic blow, but statistics furnished by CompuBox reveal that the champion was on target with 459 punches, including 275 power shots, while Cooper connected with a total of just 233. At the time of the stoppage Holyfield was well ahead on the scorecards, by margins of 59-53, 59-54 and 58-54, and was seconds away from likely expanding his lead by two more points on each had the bell ending the seventh round sounded. Holyfield even had matched Cooper’s knockdown by dropping the challenger in the first round with a ripping left hook to the ribs.
“He hit me with a good shot, but I feel like I had everything together,” Holyfield said of the opportunity of a lifetime Cooper had momentarily presented himself with in the third round. “My mind was there. But Bert Cooper fought his heart out, and I have to commend him for that. He had that, you know, brute strength. He was aggressive enough to make me fight in a way I didn’t want to fight.”
That pretty much sums up what was discernible to the casual fight fan via the standard eye test. It is on that other level, the one stashed behind the curtain, that shades Holyfield-Cooper with the sort of nuanced perspective that is as much or more a part of the complete picture as that which took place inside the ring.
After he had starched Douglas in three rounds on Oct. 25, 1990, Holyfield defended his titles for the first time with a 12-round unanimous decision over Foreman on April 19, 1991, in Las Vegas. Next up would be former champ Tyson in a megafight set for Nov. 8 of that year, also in Vegas. But Tyson injured his ribs in training and the fight was tentatively postponed until sometime early in 1992, a date which would also go by the wayside when Tyson subsequently was convicted of raping a teenage beauty pageant contestant in Indianapolis, Ind. But Holyfield, who had already put in much work in the gym, was primed and ready to fight
somebody in the fall, so the date and venue were changed to Nov. 23 in Atlanta, with Italy’s Francesco Damiani, the former champion of the then-lightly-regarded WBO, tapped to replace Tyson.
Holyfield-Tyson fell through in 1991. Photo by The Ring/ Getty Images
Damiani, however, also was obliged to withdraw after he sprained an ankle in training on Nov. 14, forcing Holyfield’s promotional company, Main Events, to find a fighter further down the bench who was ready to jump in on one week’s notice. That call went to Cooper, a short, stumpy physical prototype of Tyson as well as of Joe Frazier.
“I guess all the work Evander put in getting ready for Tyson won’t go to waste now,” Holyfield’s lead trainer, George Benton, said when Cooper drew the assignment. “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. Still, it should be an entertaining fight for as long as it lasts.”
Ron Katz, then Top Rank’s East Coast matchmaker, had used Cooper in the past and he was thinking of putting him in with Bruce Seldon in January. Katz said that proposed fight might have meant a $15,000 payday for Cooper, who suddenly found himself with a contract to swap punches with Holyfield for $750,000.
“Talk about something good falling into your lap,” Katz said of Cooper’s unexpected stroke of luck. “God bless him, he’s getting the opportunity of a lifetime. But I would have thought I had a better chance of hitting the lottery than Bert Cooper of getting a shot at the heavyweight title. It’s a sad commentary, really. The TV date was set, though, and I guess the show has to go on.”
The selection of the unranked Cooper to replace Damiani did not meet with widespread approval. Murad Muhammad, the promoter of world-rated Donovan “Razor” Ruddock, described the gig that went to Cooper as “ludicrous. Razor Ruddock has been training for 2½ months. He’d have been honored to fight Evander Holyfield, but no one asked us. Every fighter in the top 10 should be screaming his head off.”
Ivan Cohen, Cooper’s former co-manager, also was among the dissenters. “That’s not a competitive matchup,” Cohen groused. “You got a shot fighter (Cooper) against a robot (Holyfield). It goes two rounds, tops, before the robot wins.”
Detecting the silver lining in the dark clouds so many others were envisioning was Ross Greenburg, the executive producer for HBO Sports. “The most ironic thing about the fight is that whenever anyone was going to fight Tyson in the past, they would call Cooper as a sparring partner because of their similarities. It’s ironic now that Holyfield would end up fighting a Tyson look-alike.
“Before a fight, you can speculate all you want on the abilities of an opponent. A lot of people were speculating on Buster Douglas (before he took down Tyson), and not very favorably, I might add. But look what happened.”
Holyfield on the attack. Photo by The Ring Magazine/ Getty Images