Gerry Cooney: Life Lessons For Every Age Group, The Dark Side of Boxing That is Business, President Reagan & How Amateur Boxing Changes Lives

Exclusive interview by Jesse “New School” Wright

“Wendell Newton, he’s still alive, he was a great heavyweight, he said ‘Gerry, you’re pretty good, you move pretty fast, don’t stay out too late and mess around,’ and he flipped his finger at me and said ‘Because it’s gonna go just like that.’ I looked at him and laughed, you know? And that was 41 years ago, and guess what? It did.” –Gerry Cooney

Looking back at his career, “Gentleman” Gerry Cooney does not reflect on the glory or the fame. The bright lights that shined on his career are overshadowed by the dark clouds that still linger in his memories of those days. Not to be confused with regret, what Cooney feels now is nothing but gratefulness for every opportunity he had, because he has learned and grown from all of it.

Rather than dwell on the negative, Cooney has taken a pro active approach to educate fighters on how to get the most out of themselves as well as their careers as possible. Still though, He acknowledges everything that went wrong in his career: greedy management, inexperience, inactivity and trusting too much. The silver lining is his willingness and ability to communicate his message with all future generations. Most importantly, now that it’s all said and done, he’s living the life he truly wanted.

JW: Your life after boxing has been a very busy one. What have you been up to these days?

I still do a lot of traveling and I still do a lot of appearances. I’m on the radio Mondays and Friday nights on XM radio with Randy Gordon. The big fights we do on radio on Saturdays. So that’s been a very exciting experience. People tell me I have a radio face. I’ve got a great family; my family is doing well. I’m a golfer. Kid’s are growing up, my son’s 18, my daughter’s are gonna be 15. I’ve got a great wife. I do a boxing program a couple nights a week. I visit kids that have no parents a couple days a week and through boxing, I teach them to get rid of their anger, and to also understand that if you can learn to fight, you can learn to do anything. It’s very exciting, especially coming from a very dysfunctional, abusive family system myself where I didn’t get the answers I needed. Now I get to do an extension of that with young kids from 11 to 17. It’s very exciting and rewarding.

JW: I’m glad you brought that up. I spoke to Al Bernstein from Showtime the other day, and I brought up the subject of Olympic boxing and how it isn’t what it once was. What Al said was that amateur boxing’s sole purpose is to empower kids. Do you feel that amateur boxing gave you the outlet and self-empowerment that you needed?

Well no, I was so angry growing up in a household where I was beat all the time and neglected. So boxing was a way for me to express my anger and then they put my picture in the paper so it made me somebody, and I was pretty good at it. So it fed me and kept me alive; it’s crazy, but that’s what happened. Amateur boxing, it went away for awhile because boxing got off of regular television. Boxing’s only on Showtime and HBO; most kids in most households don’t have that, and so a lot of kids didn’t have the opportunity to follow boxing. Now it’s back. Al Haymon brought it back to regular television: Spike TV, ESPN, NBC, you name it. It’s on regular TV, and kids are watching it again, they’re gonna get excited and the gyms are filling up again.

JW: Do you think putting it on free TV where there’s access to everybody will help to bring boxing back to where it was?

It’s about, believe or not, that we’re poor struggling kids, and we have to find our way out. If you don’t show it, and you don’t give no hope, kids go to the street. I got a lot of kids who need a better outlet to mature, to grow and to feel confident about themselves. Once you learn how to fight, you don’t have to fight anymore in the street, you can take it to the gym and win an amateur championship.

JW: You won two Golden Glove championships in New York City, right?

I did, I won the middleweight championship, I lost in the finals of the light heavyweight, and I won the heavyweight open.

JW: So you were a decorated amateur champion in your city, and from the professional aspect you also had some phenomenal fights. Which one do you look back on in a better light?

There were so many great experiences in the amateurs. I mean I was 16, back then the finals of the Golden Gloves was in the main arena of Madison Square Garden, and there were 21,000 people there. Being in the ring and the lights are all off, and it’s sold out, and they put a spotlight on you at 16 years old, my legs were shaking and I knew I had to fight. That was a great experience for me winning the middleweight championship that year. Then many fights along the road, Animal Lopez I beat easily, Ron Lyle, Jimmy Young, Kenny Norton was a phenomenal knockout and losing to Larry Holmes was powerful.

So listen, I’m excited with the career I had. Could I have done a lot better? Yes. I got distracted from not getting as many fights as I really could’ve used. Because I wasn’t signed with Don King, they kind of kept me out of the picture. That’s in one sense, and the other sense is that my managers wanted a big payday, so I was the guy to get stuck in the backseat, and didn’t get to develop as much as I could before I got the shot at Larry Holmes.

JW: Do you feel like in the case of Larry Holmes, and maybe on other occasions as well, that you were being fed to the wolves too soon?

I never thought I was being fed to the wolves. I knew I had a lot of knockouts. In sparring I knocked a lot of guys out. I needed a lot more experience and to become more durable. In the fight with Larry Holmes, one of the top five in the game, I was trying to go the distance, because everyone said I couldn’t go the distance. That’s lack of experience. What I really needed to do was have 3, 4, 5 more fights, and then just take the fight and go. Not fight from my inexperience, but get a little more experience and take off.

JW: I actually interviewed Larry last week, and he had nothing but good things to say about you. He said everything that happened with that fight as far as how it was promoted was on the shoulders of the promoters and the media. You were only about 26 at the time, were you aware of how the fight was being marketed, or were you just a young guy looking to have a good fight?

You know, I was 25 back then. Listen, Larry came up in the era of Muhammad Ali, so he watched Muhammad, and he was a great guy, and he saw the attention Ali got. When Holmes became champion, he didn’t get the same attention and that made him bitter, and rightly so. He was a great fighter. He fought everybody. So then I come along, I was trying to take his title away and he was angry and that showed. I think that Don King and them, they promoted it. Personally, I didn’t even pay attention to it.

One thing was that in that fight, it was the only one that I ever went in to that I wasn’t nervous before the fight because I was so angry with him. Then in the center of the ring that night, Mills Lane was giving us instructions and Holmes looked at me and said “Let’s have a good fight.” That’s really what Heavyweight Championship boxing is about. Everything was gone, and it was just, let’s have a good fight.

JW: And you realize he’s not a bad guy, but that’s just how it plays out sometimes.

Yeah. Years later on we met a couple times and hit it off together, and realized it had nothing to do with us really, but it just was what it was. He was frustrated and I was angry and it’s just the way it is. You know, you get in the ring and it’s like two gladiators; you’re not gonna be in love with each other, you’re gonna want to kill each other.

JW: Absolutely. One thing Larry said was that he always prayed for all of his opponents. He said we’re all just trying to make money.

I wish he would’ve prayed a little more for me that night that bum!

JW: There was a rumor that President Reagan had a line to your dressing room the night of that fight. Was that true?

That’s right

JW: Why do you think that was?

I don’t know. I’m not even gonna speculate. Maybe he was a fan of mine and maybe he thought I was gonna win. I don’t know. It’s all good, we had a great fight, I don’t know to this day why we didn’t have a rematch. We should’ve had a rematch. That deserved a rematch. We should’ve got in there and fought again.

JW: After that fight there were fewer fights and they were further between. What happened?

You know, I had these two managers that couldn’t stand each other. I was in the middle all the time. I hated it! In the amateurs, you fight the next best guy, then you fight the next best guy, but in the pros you get dicked around! They make you waaaaiitt and this and that, it’s on, it’s off. I was fighting once a year in the prime of my career, when I should’ve been fighting at least three times a year. So that’s what happened to the game. It’s disheartening, disgusting and cruel. Then the press was on my ass, and they had no idea what was going on.

JW: So that whole time, all you wanted to do was fight?

I wanted to win the championship! I wanted to get the experience I needed to win! I mean I was a young kid. I was a sheltered kid. I didn’t really have any good people growing up, and then I ran in to these two crazy managers who didn’t do me any good. They were looking to secure their own finances and make money for themselves. They didn’t look out to develop me as a fighter better.

JW: On the fundamental side of it, you’re naturally a southpaw fighter that fights righty. Where did you first learn that?

I learned that when I first started. The guy who first taught me didn’t know I was left handed so he trained me righty which turned out to be a blessing.

JW: So that wasn’t done intentionally?

Right..

JW: What were the advantages of fighting orthodox?

The hooks, left uppercuts were strong and the jab was like a right hand. My jab was like a right hand: dangerous and powerful every time. You throw a lot more jabs than you do right hands, well I was throwing my jab with my power hand.

JW: Did it ever hurt your footwork or the power in your right hand by fighting that way?

I was doing mostly everything with my left hands. There were a lot of mistakes I made. I’m a great trainer today, but back then life was so fast. I couldn’t hear everything Victor Valle told me, and he was a great teacher.

JW: Your left hook is rated as one of the most powerful in boxing. Would you say that’s a byproduct of that being your power hand?

I was a puncher. You’re either born with it or you’re not. Most of those guys that I fought like Norton, Foreman, all those guys, and I was one of the top punchers in the world. So I just wish I had a little more experience and a little more confidence in myself. I was neglected and abused so I didn’t get a lot of that. I had to fight out of instinct, survival. That’s the luck of the draw. So I work with kids today because I want to bring out the best in them. I let them know everything that’s gonna happen in that ring, and what you gotta do when it happens.

JW: When you retired, you created a well balanced life. You’ve got a good family, you do nonprofit work.

I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I come and go as I please. I have a great wife, three great kids, we play golf, we travel and I help people.

JW: What advice would you give a guy who’s about to retire from boxing, maybe a guy who was very successful, and his career is coming to the end and he’s starting the next chapter?

I would like to talk to him before he retires because you gotta tell him he’s gotta go back to school, find his passion and then follow up on it. Because time goes fast. Time does not wait for anybody. Listen, I was 18 years old, and I was the new guy in the gym and this old guy Wendell Newton, he’s still alive, he was a great heavyweight, he said “Gerry, you’re pretty good, you move pretty fast, don’t stay out too late and mess around,” and he flipped his finger at me and said “Because it’s gonna go just like that.” I looked at him and laughed, you know? And that was 41 years ago and guess what? It did. So I tell kids you got to hold on now, you gotta fight for your life and get as much info as possible now. Don’t put it off until tomorrow. Just like I tell people now, you got to hold on to your money, because the rainy day is coming, and unfortunately you know the game, and 99% of fighters end up broke.

JW: What do you think is the cause of that?

The managers and promoters want them to keep fighting so they can keep on spending their money. They keep saying “There’s gonna be another fight, there’s gonna be another fight,” but as the guy gets older, the manager and the promoter are developing some new kids. So once they don’t make anything from them, they say so long and he’s left alone.

JW: The last question is one I ask every fighter. What do you want your legacy to be?

Listen, I gave it my all, I made mistakes like everyone else, and I survived. I’m a better person because of it.

[si-contact-form form=’2′]