Holmes Stops Cooney in the 13th at Caesars Palace in 1982
Larry Holmes kept the WBC heavyweight title against Gerry Cooney on June 11, 1982, in a racially charged $10 million fight that ended when Cooney's trainer stepped in during the 13th round.
On the night of June 11, 1982, Larry Holmes defended the WBC and Ring heavyweight titles against Gerry Cooney in a temporary stadium at Caesars Palace. Each man was guaranteed $10 million, more than 29,000 people paid to watch, and the promotion had leaned openly on race. Holmes won in the thirteenth round when Cooney's trainer, Victor Valle, climbed into the ring to stop it.
A Champion Still Waiting for Respect
Larry Holmes had held the WBC heavyweight title since June 1978, and by the spring of 1982 he had defended it thirteen times. The Ring also listed him as world champion. His record was 39 wins and no losses, 29 of them inside the distance. On paper he was the dominant heavyweight of his time. The public saw it differently. For much of the American press he was a placeholder while the sport looked for its next big attraction.
The International Boxing Federation did not exist yet. Holmes would take its first heavyweight belt in December 1983, so in 1982 the WBC title and the Ring's recognition were the honors on the line.
The Rise of Gerry Cooney
Gerry Cooney was a tall, unbeaten Irish-American with a heavy left hook. He arrived at the title fight 25-0 with 21 knockouts. In 1980 he stopped Jimmy Young, whose fight ended because of cuts, and then knocked out Ron Lyle. His best-known win came in May 1981 at Madison Square Garden, where he flattened former champion Ken Norton in 54 seconds of the first round. Wikipedia's account notes that the time matched the record for the fastest knockout in a Garden main event. The win made Cooney the WBC's number-one contender.
It also left a gap. The Norton fight was Cooney's last before he met Holmes, which meant more than a year without a competitive round. Speaking to Boxing News years later, Cooney said he "needed at least three more fights before that one."
A Promotion Built on Race
The two camps were already hostile a year before the fight. On June 12, 1981, Holmes beat Leon Spinks, and in the ring afterward he went after Cooney during an ABC interview. In the scramble, according to Round By Round Boxing, Holmes accidentally hit broadcaster Howard Cosell.
Promoter Don King and Cooney's manager, Dennis Rappaport, then sold the fight largely as Black against white. Andscape quotes King putting it bluntly: "This is a white and Black fight." Rappaport said in public that he did not respect Holmes as a human being. Cooney was billed as the "Great White Hope," a label the promotion did nothing to discourage. Time magazine put him on its cover beside Sylvester Stallone and likened him to Rocky. Sports Illustrated also gave Cooney the cover and ran Holmes on an inside page.
The money looked the same way. Both fighters were paid $10 million, so the challenger earned as much as a champion with thirteen defenses. Holmes believed Cooney would not have been offered that figure if he had been Black.
Andscape reported that Holmes received death threats serious enough that his family moved away for a time, and that his property was vandalized. Wikipedia says white supremacist groups threatened violence, and police snipers were stationed on the roofs of the major hotels around the venue.
The fight had been set for March 1982 and was moved to June after Cooney was hurt in training. The sources disagree about the injury. Wikipedia says it was his back. Round By Round Boxing says he tore muscle fibers in his left shoulder.
Fight Night at Caesars Palace
The fight was held outdoors in a stadium built in the Caesars Palace parking lot. Wikipedia gives the paid attendance as 29,214 and the gate as $6,239,050, a Nevada record at the time. Closed-circuit and pay-per-view broadcasts carried it around the world. Wikipedia's article on Cooney says more than 150 countries took the feed. HBO showed it a week later, and ABC aired it after that.
The guests at ringside included Stallone and Frank Sinatra. According to Andscape, a telephone line was put into Cooney's dressing room so President Ronald Reagan could call, and none was put into Holmes's. The ring introductions also broke custom. The champion is normally announced last, but Holmes went first and Cooney got the final introduction. Holmes later told Andscape the order was "very disrespectful" and said he decided then to take it out on Cooney.
The referee was Mills Lane. Cooney remembered the evening as fiercely hot.
Thirteen Rounds Under Mills Lane
Holmes took control early. In the second round he landed a right hand, which some accounts describe as part of a one-two, and dropped Cooney. Cooney got up and kept pressing. By the fourth he was landing hard left hooks to the body, the punch his reputation was built on, and the middle rounds were a real fight, with both men landing heavy shots.
Holmes's jab did steady damage. Andscape reports cuts on Cooney's left eyelid and the bridge of his nose. Round By Round Boxing says a cut over the left eye opened in the seventh round and that Cooney was bleeding from the nose by the eighth.
The other problem was low punches. As Cooney tired, his left hooks drifted below the belt, and Lane penalized him three points in total. Most accounts say the first deduction was two points for a hook to the groin that came right after a warning, and that he lost one more point in the eleventh round. The sources do not agree on when the first deduction came. Round By Round Boxing puts a low-blow penalty in the eighth round, Larry Holmes's Wikipedia page says the ninth, and the fight's own Wikipedia page says the trouble began around the tenth.
The tenth through twelfth rounds were hard, two-way exchanges. In the thirteenth Cooney was worn out. Holmes forced him to the ropes and kept landing clean right hands. The accounts describe the end in slightly different ways. Wikipedia says Holmes dropped Cooney again and then landed a cross flush on his left cheek. Other reports describe a run of rights with Cooney trapped on the ropes. They agree on the ending. Victor Valle stepped through the ropes to stop it, and the result went in as a technical knockout. Round By Round Boxing gives the time as 2:52 of the thirteenth round.
What the Scorecards Showed
Holmes led on all three cards when the fight was stopped. Jerry Roth had him ahead 115-109, and Duane Ford and Dave Moretti both had him ahead 113-111. Without the three penalty points, two of the three judges would have had Cooney ahead after twelve rounds. That fact has kept the fight argued over ever since, though by the thirteenth Cooney was no longer in a position to win it.
From Bitter Rivals to Close Friends
Holmes went to 40-0 and kept his title. He stayed champion until September 1985, when Michael Spinks beat him. That fight was one win short of Rocky Marciano's 49-0 record.
Cooney was 25 when he lost, and his career never recovered its pace. He had only three official fights over the next five years. In 1987 he challenged Michael Spinks and was stopped in the fifth round. His last fight came in 1990, a second-round knockout loss to George Foreman.
The bitterness of the promotion did not last. Andscape reports that about eight months after the fight the two men met in Las Vegas, and Holmes told Cooney to forget the people who had stirred things up because they had had a great fight. They became close friends. Cooney founded FIST, the Fighters' Initiative for Support and Training, to help retired boxers, and Holmes supported it. The two appeared together at memorabilia shows, and Cooney was invited to cookouts at Holmes's home near Easton, Pennsylvania. "We were able to separate the ugliness of ignorant people," Cooney told Andscape.
Sources
- Larry Holmes vs. Gerry Cooney, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
- Gerry Cooney, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
- Larry Holmes, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
- Larry Holmes, Gerry Cooney forever connected 40 years after 1982 championship bout that pitted Black against white, Branson Wright, Andscape, June 10, 2022
- On this day: Larry Holmes tops Gerry Cooney in Las Vegas super fight, James Slater, Boxing News, June 11, 2019
- Flashback Friday: Larry Holmes vs. Gerry Cooney, Tony Calcara, Round By Round Boxing, February 20, 2015
