Word: cooney
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Robinson the first gloves he ever wore at Madison Square Garden; Robinson was moved to tears, until both gloves turned out to be righthanded. "Confusion is a promoter's plight and his ally," says King, who is co-promoting the show with Sam Glass and Tiffany Promotions from Cooney's side. "There's something you should know about boxing: lying is commonplace...
What makes the match so appealing, and makes Cooney the heart of it, is a memory of when heavyweights could hit and boxing matches could end abruptly. Holmes has the more refined ability, the broader experience, the odds going in and the championship; Cooney has the "big bat." Holmes has had 39 professional fights and has won 39, to pitifully small acclaim. The most damning thing that can be said of him is that he took on and defeated all of the "best" of his time: 29 knockouts, ten of eleven in defense of the World Boxing Council title...
...sure," objects Muhammad Ali's old trainer, Angelo Dundee. "I think he may be bum-rapped as a one-arm bandit. He sets you up with the right. I give Cooney a good chance. They say he's clumsy. Well, a banger like that stressing power from the port side ain't going to look like no ballerina. Doesn't everyone know what's going to happen in this fight? Cooney's going to knock Holmes out early, or he's not going to survive the stretch. One way or another, it's going to be a knockout. Period...
Deplorably but inevitably, the Great White Hope, sometimes pronounced Hype, has been made the theme of prizefights between blacks and whites as far back as barges. Cooney's handlers regularly bring up the issue to denounce it. Their slogan: "He's not the white man, he's the right man." Cooney seems to have an authentic aversion to the subject and generally says nothing. The way black Promoter Don King and Holmes talk, Cooney is just the same traditional white emissary who has been sent against the black savage since James J. Jeffries hurried out of retirement...
...responded to the shortage of good white opponents by inventing black white hopes. (Before their fight in Zaïre in 1974, he even tried to pass off George Foreman as a Belgian.) Yet he never sounded as mean spirited, as hateful and hurt, as Holmes does now. "If Cooney wasn't white, he'd be nothing," says Holmes. "I'm going to cut him, hurt him, open his lip, blacken his eye?for justice's sake. They talk about his great left hook. But what am I, a little child? He's two inches taller [maybe three or four...