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Standing 6 ft. 6 in., Cooney is a great big amiable man with a tiny little engaging voice. He is a huge hitter with small hands, hatchet-faced but handsome. Bent noses can be very becoming on fighters. Although Cooney could reasonably shave every four hours, either he is too busy for that now or he does not trust himself at the moment around razors. His chin is heavily wooded with black stubble, making his eyes stand out browner and seem softer, less baleful. "This young man has the greatest left hook I have ever felt—and that includes Frazier's," says Joe Bugner, Cooney's most distinguished sparring partner. "He takes a good shot, Gerry does. He also delivers a bloody harder one. He wants to put it right through you."
Since turning professional five years ago, after an apprenticeship in club "smokers" on his native Long Island, Cooney has had difficulty keeping sparring partners in supply. One of the departees, Roger Troupe, took to strapping bath towels about his midsection in a protective cummerbund. Cooney likes to go to the body. He has done so ever since witnessing an alley fight in which his older brother Tom tendered only one punch to his opponent's gizzard. The grimace on the poor fellow's face, says Cooney, "stayed with me."
In all the time since May 25, 1980, when he dispatched elderly Jimmy Young in four rounds, Cooney has spent a total of 3 min. 43 sec. in rings, pensioning off other oldtimers Ron Lyle, 40, and Ken Norton, 36. His most recent fight, against Norton more than a year ago, lasted 54 sec. "I came over with a straight right to Norton's jaw, then dropped inside and hit him two hooks to the body, and I thought I hurt him a little," Cooney recalls. "I came in with another punch to the body, and I heard him gasp. Then I went upstairs. I don't know how many punches I threw, but it came over me that he was unconscious sitting there on the rope and I was still hitting him." The referee stopped it.
The dispassionate and detached way Cooney can look at this is an advantage of youth and a definition of innocence. It isn't that Cooney likes hurting people, just that he doesn't mind it. Twenty years ago, avenging a loss and a slur, former Welterweight and Middleweight Champion Emile Griffith fatally injured Benny ("Kid") Paret. Griffith continued to be a fine boxer for quite a while, but he was never much of a fighter after that, certainly not much of a finisher. In this area, inexperience is an asset. Cooney has come out of his 25 fights (22 knockouts) with no losses yet and no misgivings yet, just a bad left shoulder.
Because of a partial tearing of his bulky muscle fibers, this week's fight was postponed from March 15. Says Holmes' man Arcel: "In 1937, Barney Ross fractured a thumb right before getting in with Ceferino Garcia for the welterweight title. Barney just said, 'Hell, I can beat this guy one-handed,' and did." Cooney might have been willing to try Holmes one-handed, except the left happens to be his one hand.