The Heavyweight Championship of the World. It is as big as Primo Camera was big, as simple and, sometimes, as sad. But invariably special and occasionally alluring. Jack Johnson. Jack Dempsey. Joe Louis. Rocky Marciano. Muhammad Ali. Since caves, men have been awed by the enormous stature accompanying this title and attracted to its myth. Which is why in Las Vegas this week a $50,000 casino credit line is helpful in securing a reservation at Caesars Palace. The beautiful people are descending with their beautiful money, and so are the fight mob, the press corps and the crapshooters, all drawn to the enchantment. That too is why, across the U.S., lines are long wherever theaters are showing Rocky III, Sylvester Stallone's latest episode in the movie melodrama that exploits the mystique of the heavyweight championship (see CINEMA). Call it the days of wine and bloody noses, or a week of heavyweights real and imagined, but boxers are on people's minds. An old excitement is back.
It so happens that Larry Holmes is the undefeated heavyweight champion of the known (nonmovie) world, Gerry Cooney is the unbeaten No. 1 contender with an unknown wallop, and they are fighting each other this Friday night in a small ring out behind a large gambling lor for $20 million. Including ancillary payoffs, there may be as much as $50 million involved all around. The eyes of 32,000 people will glisten in the ring lights, and the blood of 2.5 million others will heat up in closed-circuit theaters, and much of the country, and some of the world, will be waiting to find out several things: whether Holmes, 32, was too old or Cooney, 25, too young. Whether the champion turned out to be too much boxer or the challenger did in fact catch him with his celebrated left hook. Mainly, whether Cooney has any ability, whether he is just heavy on personal bravery and promoters' ingenuity, whether he is just heavy, whether he is just white. Holmes is better known, or at least many think they know him; they may underestimate him. In the end both men might be known for this fight.
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 he has held for four years. This is a record that might be associated with a puncher, but Holmes is a boxer. In the opinion of Ray Arcel, 82, the dappled sage in Holmes' corner, "there hasn't been a real puncher since Jersey Joe Walcott, who could hit you on top of the head and knock you out." The heavyweight champions Arcel is ignoring include Rocky Marciano, Ingemar Johansson, Sonny Listen, Joe Frazier and George Foreman. Of recent challengers, Earnie Shavers possessed the closest thing to the big bat. Holmes whipped Shavers twice.