Henry Cooper by Robert Edwards Page A

there was hardly any actual fighting done at all; Henry and George did not actually hit anyone seriously for some time, but they found the very fact of being fully fit satisfying enough to justify carrying on. They saw in boxing what Robert Hill had hoped they would and the Bellingham trainer, Matt Wells, had, in his time been British lightweight champion, so theywere in good hands. It was not all harmony at Bellingham, though; early on in their time there, one of the junior trainers was asked to leave, for a reason which Henry blandly described to me as being the usual thing’.
    At 15, as soon as they left school, the twins joined the Eltham and District Amateur Boxing Club and were thus now in the care of head trainer George Page, who would act as both their trainer and mentor for the remainder of their civilian amateur careers. If anything, according to Henry, the casualty rate at Eltham was even higher:
    In the early days I was about eight or nine stone, and I was in against this kid of seven and a half stone. He was no, thicker than my little finger and I thought: ‘He’ll do, lovely.’ I went in like a bull in a china shop, but this kid was a schoolboy champion and I had more left hands in my face than I ever thought possible…’ I never landed a glove on him. But George and me were keen and we went back the next week.
    What the amateur ring really taught was an inner core of discipline, the ability to successfully manage anger, a thing that generations of adolescents, then as now, have usually found quite difficult to do. ‘It’s good to have a training routine which provides a discipline quite aside from the obvious physical improvements,’ says Henry. ‘But where boxing is chiefly character building is in the ring, where no kid can afford to lose his temper. If he does, nine times out of ten he’ll be punished more. You go berserk and bonk! – your opponent is just picking you off.’
    The difference between youthful anger and controlledaggression is very large indeed. The discipline needed to bang a left jab into another boy’s face is not the same emotion as wishing to knock him over in the street. The narrow focus of the ring – that was a good punch, that was not – served to bring on a vast respect for the technical aspects of boxing itself, as opposed to a dislike or disrespect for the opponent, and success or failure would stem from there. Indeed, part of the ‘psyching out’ procedures of the professional ring really revolved about making the opponent angry as well as scared.
    Henry enjoyed Eltham; both he and George were working hard at physically arduous jobs and the demands of regular training were even harder, so logically they were supremely fit, but Henry needed an indication of whether he was really temperamentally suited to boxing as a potential living; in 1951 he got it when he beat a PC Trevillion, then the national police champion at his weight (light heavy) in a four-round contest. He won the fight with his left jab, as he would so many, and the audience was appreciative.
    These amateur fights carried prizes with them but, of course, no money. The prizes were typically things of some domestic utility: canteens of cutlery, toasters, coffee percolators and so forth. This was useful as Christmas approached, as the extended family was invited round to share the fruits of the twins’ labours.
    This was fine, but they had to work, too. They had left school in 1949 with a joint sigh of relief in order to earn a living and make a useful contribution to the household economy. Their choice of work was governed by a simple imperative: money. Neither had any particular ambition, save to earn as much as possible in order to make life easierfor Lily as well as carry on their boxing – these two targets rather defined them. Initially they found that they could earn 9d (about 4p) an hour as labourers, stacking sheet metal for a firm called Burnham’s in nearby Sydenham – not very good for the