Larry Holmes: "I Still Have It"

By Tom Callahan

The champ's class shows in a punishing win over Gerry Cooney

For once, the hackneyed billing of a fight--"The Pride and the Glory"-fit like 8-oz. gloves. Gerry Cooney turned out to be the pride, Larry Holmes the glory. In fact, Holmes was both; he was everything. Elegant when the fight was not, eloquent when nothing needed to be said, except maybe one thing. "I'm very sorry that I'm not what you expect," said Holmes after it was over. "I'm sorry that I'm not Muhammad Ali... that I'm not Joe Louis." He even apologized for not being Leon Spinks. "I was not born to be them." But he is the Heavyweight Champion of the World. He was born to be that. Holding up the World Boxing Council belt, Holmes paused a long moment late last Friday night and then noted for the record: "I still have it."

Rushed into the top challenger's position after 25 short victories, and rusty from 13 months of inactivity, Cooney fought Holmes more than twelve brave rounds, until he could barely stand up and his trainer, Victor Valle, could stand no more. With fewer than ten seconds remaining in the 13th round, Valle scrambled under the ropes and ran across the ring, folded his arms about his fighter and propped his head on Cooney's chest. He held on dearly. The fighter's left eyelid was sliced, and the bridge of his two-tiered nose was split.

Cooney possesses thunder in his left hand, but he has goose down in his right, and, most unhappily of all, he does not know how to defend himself. He was knocked sprawling in the second round and sent reeling in the sixth. With fairly good body punches, though not his absolute best, Cooney surely won the fourth round and maybe he took two or three others. But that was all. Scandalously, two Nevada state athletic commission judges had him leading at the end by rounds, six to five with one even, and behind on points only because Referee Mills Lane had deducted three for low blows. Las Vegas judges were the only mysteries left by the end of the evening.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the ring announcer bellowed a few minutes after the usual postfight bedlam commenced, "a word from the challenger." Cooney came to the center of the ring to get the microphone, and with his soft voice cracking, he told the 32,000 people exiting the parking-lot stadium at Caesars Palace, "I tried with all my heart. I love you. I'm sorry." Later he pledged to "go back to the gym and try harder," saying, "I have no excuse to make. I want you to know, I didn't fight the fight for the money [perhaps $10 million per man]. I just wanted to win."

Cooney threw a profusion of low blows. The most dizzying one, in the ninth round, made Holmes double over and take 21/2 of the five minutes offered him by the referee for recovering. But they seemed to reflect Cooney's amateurishness rather than viciousness, not to mention a frantic desire to connect with his left hook. "Cooney was tired," said Referee Lane. "He said 'I'm sorry' a couple of times." In the prefight noisiness and nastiness, Cooney Manager Dennis Rappaport, a newcomer to boxing who may be better suited to wrestling, predicted that Holmes would be "thumbing" and raised the specter of retaliatory low blows and a "back-alley brawl." Ray Arcel, the 82-year-old trainer who along with Eddie Futch prepared Holmes, replied gently to Rappaport's tough talk: "I'm ashamed, I really am, that anyone would make such a remark. You know, this is a throwback to the old days when they didn't even wear gloves."

The whole event seemed something of a throwback to a meaner time, particularly all the advance rhetoric about the old black-and-white argument. But afterward, Holmes spoke nicely on the "Great White Hope" subject too. "I didn't fight this fight for the blacks, the whites or the Spanish," Holmes said. "I fought th fight for the people. We're all God's children. I don't see color. I'm not a racist When I look at Gerry Cooney, I just see a man trying to take my head off."

As fight mobs go, the audience Friday night was enthusiastic but unmemorable. The customary quota of celebrities was not met, although Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett had ringside seats and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was blocking someone's view near by. The impression, at least, was that the action in the casino had been brisker at the Ali-Holmes and Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns fights, and the high rollers' wardrobes have certainly been brighter. Holmes was an early 8-5 favorite, but the odds shortened to 7-5 with a surge of late Cooney bets.

The challenger arrived in the ring first, hooded in a green silk robe decorated with his customary Irish shamrock proclaiming GERRY, DAD AND MOM. Rappaport wiggled beside him, waving an oversize replica of Holmes' championship belt, except with a clockface drawn over the insignia and the words TICK, TICK written across it. Holmes happens to be 32, Cooney 25. As he had planned for weeks, Cooney bided the time during the referee's instructions by staring at the champion's belly, trying to chill him with the thought of body punches. And Holmes did show considerable respect throughout, jabbing away from a politic distance and flinching from all hooks whether or not they landed. Holmes may not be Ali or Louis, but he is a cunning boxer of surpassing grace and skill, better than just about everyone says.

In the fifth round, Holmes rose up on his toes and began to dance lightly and smile occasionally. His hands gathered speed, and Cooney became especially hittable. By the sixth, Rappaport and co-Manager Mike Jones had to make room in the corner for Cutman Artie Curley, whose patchwork was inspected once by the physician at ringside. In the 90DEG desert heat, aggravated by the television lights, both men sprayed sweat like revolving lawn sprinklers. Holmes, 6 ft. 3 in. and 212 1/2 lbs., and Cooney, 6 ft. 6 in. and 225 1/2 lbs., looked equally fit. Cooney, who lad never before been required to answer a bell for a ninth round, displayed more stamina than even he expected. Afterward he admitted, "When you constantly hear people talking about going the distance, going the distance, you can't help but wonder about it. I learned a lesson: next time I will fight my fight without hat doubt."

The tenth round was more than a pretty good one for Cooney. Momentarily, Holmes seemed fascinated with finding out precisely how hard Cooney really did hit. But by the eleventh, Cooney's fists were drooping steadily, and Holmes danced to the attack again with swift and steady combinations. Then, in the 13th, Cooney was badly stunned, and Holmes began to measure him with the left glove on the shoulder or face (thumb out) and fetch him clouts with the right. Cooney sagged, and by the time Valle made it through the ropes, the challenger had caught a barrage of fierce shots. "I was going to give him a count," said Mills Lane. "His eyes were still clear." Valle said, "The reflexes weren't there. His guard was down. I love Gerry, and I couldn't let him take any more beating."

At the instant the fight ended, officially at 2:52 of the 13th round, blaring patriotic music came on the loudspeaker system, including the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The young men in Cooney's entourage, most of them grade-school buddies from Long Island, pressed together around him in his corner, and some of their eyes were redder than his. The sparrowlike head of Ray Arcel poked through the challenger's huddle, and Holmes' man whispered generously: "Don't get discouraged, Gerry. Keep trying. You're still going to make it."

Arcel has frequently referred to Holmes as "the most underrated heavyweight champion in history. He followed that overpowering salesman Muhammad Ali. Gene Tunney beat Jack Dempsey, but Dempsey was still called champ. Ezzard Charles was never forgiven, even by his own people, for beating Louis. It's just time Larry Holmes was recognized as a true and great champion." After all, he has worn the belt for more than four years.

In that time, Sugar Ray Leonard, the microcosmic Ali, has turned boxing's welterweights into the heavyweights in term of status and publicity, and Holmes by himself is having a hard time changing things back. "Seems every time I go to the stage, I have to prove myself," Holmes said. "I don't have to prove it to you or to the world, just to myself and my family Forty times, I've gone up to the podium." Forty times he has won.

Just as he had been after dismantling Ali in 1980, Holmes was gracious about his opponent. "I want to compliment Gerry Cooney. I think he's a great fighter. I shook Gerry Cooney's hand before the fight and I shook his hand after the fight. No hard feelings." For his part, Cooney said of Holmes, "He's the champion. No bitterness." Cooney finally conceded, "I was a little rusty." A cumulative total of 3 min. 43 sec. in two fights over two years is an insufficient time in the ring. "I didn't have the push I should have had. I will next time."

Several blacks in shouting range of Holmes later called out for him to retire now as the only undefeated black heavy weight champion. He thanked them kindly for the thought but plainly is of a mind to continue. "I feel good," he said. "I achieved something once again." Of course, he is moved by the idea of history. "I think we all want to put a mark on life. I dream, and my dreams always come true. I dreamed I was the heavyweight champion of the world. I am the heavyweight cham pion of the world. " --By Tom Callahan

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