Gerry Cooney is such an interesting case because there were so many ways (both positive and negative) that you could look at his boxing abilities and his career in general.

On the positive side, you could see someone with such tremendous one-punch knockout power that you could easily sell him as someone that will bring great excitement every time he steps into the ring. On the negative side, he could be seen as a novelty act because he could be seen as one-dimensional and a fighter with a lack of skill (other than the one big punch) and stamina.

When it came to his promotion outside the ring, there is certainly a lot of negativity towards the way he was touted as the “Great White Hope” when he fought for the heavyweight title against Larry Holmes in 1982.

He was, and still is, always quick to point out that it was not his idea to be given that kind of label. But he can’t dispute that the way he and the fight were promoted allowed him to pick up a 10 million dollar payday for that one fight and have the fight be shown in almost 150 countries around the world.

I’ve always felt bad for Cooney because of how he was portrayed as the Great White Hope. Unless he was someone that had a hatred for coloured people and could truly embrace that title, he was never going to be comfortable in his own shoes. He clearly wanted to be known and remembered as a great fighter and not for the colour of his skin.

It would be like me being the Great Brown hope for the Team 1200 since I’m the only coloured person currently on-air with the station. But I don’t look at the other personalities by the fact that they’re all white. It would make me feel extremely uncomfortable to be in that position, so I couldn’t even imagine the pressure that Cooney must have felt with a worldwide audience interested in how he does in the ring.

In watching that fight a couple of times in my life, I thought Cooney had a good performance against maybe the most under-rated fighter of all time in Larry Holmes, but it was just not meant to be. Cooney would become one of many guys throughout the years of boxing that would come agonizingly close to winning the title only to come up that little bit short.

It’s unfortunate though that the idea of race wars between whites and blacks is conjured up every time the name Gerry Cooney is brought up because that’s not the way he would want it to be. I’ll be very interested to hear what he has to say about the fight, his role within the fight and how being known as the “Great White Hope” affected him then and is still affecting him now. I’m sure it allows him to still have that notoriety, but again, at what cost?

All comes back to Positive vs. Negative.