Floyd Patterson was a charming but complicated man, whose psychological problems earned him the nickname Freudian Floyd. The depths of his haunting self-doubt are best illustrated by the fact that he disguised himself with a beard and dark glasses because he was so ashamed of the first of his two one-round defeats by Sonny Liston, who violently wrenched the world heavyweight title from him.
When he was at ease with himself and boosted by self-belief there were few better-equipped fighters in ring history. Just Henry’s luck that he was brimming with confidence and assurance when they met at Wembley Arena on 20 September 1966.
Jim Wicks admitted worrying through sleepless nights before agreeing that Patterson was the right opponent for Henry’s comeback after his bloody world championship challenge against Ali. ‘We wanted to keep in the world title picture,’ The Bishop said. ‘Patterson had been a good champion, but we thought he was past his best after his defeats by the animal Liston and then he got a hammering from Ali. But we got it wrong.’ Henry was knocked out by what he later described as the greatest punch he never saw, a right to the jaw that travelled with the speed of light and literally knocked our hero sideways.
From the day I watched Patterson win the Olympic middleweight gold medal at the 1952 Olympics, I knew he had fast fists. In fact they were among the fastest in history. If he’d had a stronger chin and more belief in himself, he would have gone down in history as one of the all-time great heavyweight champions.
My plan was to test his jaw with the good old left hook, but he was too shrewd to give me an opening, keeping his right glove covering his chin and countering from behind his famous peek-a-boo guard. Near the end of the third he let loose with a combination, finishing with a left hook, and I was forced to take a brief count.
He had me over again in the fourth round with a flurry of punches that were just a blur. I got myself up inside the ten seconds but was not really in full control of my senses. Next thing I knew I had a crowd of anxious faces peering down at me and Jim was asking, ‘You all right, son?’
I’d been knocked sparko by a cracking right out of the blue that landed so hard I turned over on my way to the canvas. I can only tell you all this because I later saw it on film. At the time I honestly did not know what had hit me. Didn’t see it, didn’t feel it.
Patterson was a wonderful sportsman and was genuinely concerned for me, and I appreciated that. We are all warriors when the bell goes, but there’s no need for nastiness and boasting once a fight is over. You’ll be surprised at the camaraderie of old opponents. There is nothing like boxing for earning respect. Like me, Floyd had converted to Roman Catholicism and was a good and caring man. I might have fought him for the world title back in 1959 but politics got in the way and Brian London got the shot. Floyd knocked him out in eleven one-sided rounds, so he did a pretty good job on us Brits!
It is pointless trying to make excuses because Floyd had beaten me good and proper, but we were concerned about the pain I was continually getting from my left elbow and I had lots of hush-hush specialist treatment to try to sort it out.
Albina and I never talked boxing at home. Once the door was shut we got on with our family life, but for the first time she let on that she was worried sick about me and wanted me to pack it in. Jim got to hear about it and told her a bit too bluntly for Albina’s taste that she should keep out of it. That was a bit of a touchy time.
Anyway, I gave it a few weeks and then after a long chat with Jim I decided to carry on because I still had my eye on a record third Lonsdale Belt and also the European title. And, let’s be honest, there was still good money to be earned. Albina was not best pleased, but she went along with it because it was what I wanted.
Henry made his return to the ring at Leicester on 17 April 1967, and he gave one of his most lethargic performances on the way to an uninspiring ten rounds points victory over unranked American Boston Jacobs. This was planned as a warm-up for his next target: completing the two title defences he needed to win a history-setting third Lonsdale Belt. First up, Jack Bodell.
Billed as ‘the chicken farmer from Swadlincote’, Bodell was one of the most awkward heavyweights ever to step into a British ring. A lumbering, thickset, craggy-jawed southpaw, he relied on bullying brawn over brain to get the better of intimidated opponents.
He had biffed and bashed his way into the No. 1 contender’s role and so Jim Wicks had to reluctantly agree to the defence, providing one of his classic lines in the build-up to the fight: ‘Bodell and all them other southpaws should have been drowned at birth. They are a detergent to the fight game.’
The contest was staged at Molineux, famous home of the Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, on 13 June 1967, and the crowd of 10,000 got excited when their Midlands hero swarmed all over Henry in a wild first round. What his supporters failed to realise is that Henry had deliberately held back in the opening three minutes, letting his cumbersome opponent use up energy as he saved his big guns for the right moment.
Bodell came charging out for the second round in his bull-in-a-china-shop style and this time, instead of retreating and defending, Henry stood his ground and caught him with a full-blooded left hook that knocked the suddenly stupefied Derbyshire giant back on to the ropes. The referee came to Bodell’s rescue as a follow-up attack knocked him through the ropes, his senses completely scattered. Henry’s hook had lost none of its raw power and potency. It had once been measured by scientists to travel at thirty miles per hour over a distance of six inches, landing with the acceleration equal to sixty times the force of gravity. At the climax of the fight, Jack Bodell was in no shape to do the maths.
Henry and Albina’s second son, John Pietro, arrived on 5 August 1967 to complete the happy Cooper family, and no sooner had Henry Marco got used to having a little brother than their dad was off again training for his next fight. Waiting in the opposite corner at Wembley Arena on 7 November 1967 was the Blond Bomber from West Ham, Billy Walker.
Billy was, to use an East Endism, ‘as game as a bagel’. Those many mimics who did me the honour of impersonating me always used my old line, ‘He’s a good strong boy.’ That really summed up Billy, who never minded taking two, three or four punches to get one in of his own. He fought a bit too much with his face for my taste, but there is no denying that his biff-bang-wallop style won him many fans.
They dubbed him the ‘Golden Boy’ of British boxing and there was nobody to touch him as a ticket-seller. His name on the bill almost guaranteed a sell-out at any London venue. He was brilliantly guided by his brother George, a former light-heavyweight title challenger who invested all the money they earned with such vision that he became a high-powered City tycoon with his fingers in worldwide business ventures.
Along with everybody else, I liked Billy. He was a smashing bloke with tons of charisma. Advertisers also liked him and he had a glamorous image that brought him endorsement contracts for things like clothes and hairdressing cream. I asked Jim if he could get me a sponsor for the polishing of bald heads. Jim had a lovely bald dome, while my hair was receding so quickly I couldn’t even do a Bobby Charlton comb-over.
Though I couldn’t compete with Billy in the barnet department, I frankly didn’t think he was in my league as a fighter and I was convinced I would have the beating of him in a fight that was billed as: ‘Who’s the King of the Cockneys?’
Billy and I got on fine in the build-up to the fight, managing to stay reasonably pleasant for two blokes about to try to knock each other’s block off. But The Bishop and George Walker disliked each other on sight. They kept sniping at each other, George seeming to think he could wind me up by getting at old Jim, who was by then well into his seventies. Jim had seen it all and done it all, and gave better than he received in the verbal exchanges, and they were still going at it just before the bell rang to start the real fight.
My plan was to soften Billy up with left jabs for the first half of the fifteen-rounder and then open up with my heaviest artillery from about the seventh round. I had used similar tactics against Johnny Prescott with good effect. Walker and Prescott had knocked hell out of each other in two back-to-back battles in 1963 and I don’t think either of them was ever quite the same force after they had severely punished each other. Johnny was the better boxer, but Billy was the more dangerous puncher and could really take a whack on the jaw.
I knew it was pointless trying to knock Billy out early doors. I just might have banged up my hands trying to finish him, so I concentrated on boxing him and making sure I didn’t get caught by one of his famous haymakers. The trouble for Billy was you could see his big right-hand punch coming a mile away. He used to telegraph it and it was easy to step inside or block it, and to counter with a left to his unguarded head. He might just as well have announced over the ring microphone, ‘I’m about to throw my right hand.’
Everything went perfectly to plan. I kept pumping out the old trombone left and Billy kept eating it up. His defence was all over the place and every time he set himself for one of his roundhouse rights, I just knocked him off balance with a left lead.
A lot of the newspaper experts had predicted that Billy would cut me up with his rough, tough tactics, but ironically it was the East Ender whose flesh was weak. I opened an inch-long slit over his eye and in the eighth round I landed a stream of left jabs on the injury. I was making the eye the target. I know that sounds terrible, but boxing’s not a game, it’s a business – a bloody hard business often with the law of the jungle. I was doing exactly what Ali had done to me in our two fights and the referee stopped it in the eighth, with Billy in a right old state.
It was a victory that gave me huge satisfaction because I was now the proud owner of a record three Lonsdale Belts.
Henry now reigned supreme over British heavyweights and had seen off the cream of the crop (Hungarian-born Joe Bugner had just left school). Jim Wicks said: ‘There’s nobody left in Britain for us to beat. Time for us to go back into Europe, Enery.’
Another European adventure was about to start. ‘Yeah,’ agreed Henry. ‘Let’s go for it.’ All right, it wasn’t exactly Napoleonesque, but Our Enery was much more of a Wellington.
And a certain German champion was about to meet his Waterloo.