I suppose you could say I knew Bert Cooper fairly well in his final few years.
The former heavyweight contender and I first met in 2011 when I reached out to him for an interview while I was in Philadelphia covering fights, or doing some other boxing-related stuff.
We agreed to meet at a friends’ business in a back office off the High Street in Darby Pennsylvania. Now, I can’t tell you I remember everything about the meeting, but I remember plenty. For instance, Bert showed up in painted overalls and he had been working in the morning, labouring with a paintbrush.
It is always jarring when you see these figures you are so familiar with in huge fights, having to adopt civilian life and very much having to adapt to it. Bert seemed a little nervous at first, maybe apprehensive about permitting an ad hoc interview, but within minutes – or maybe some half an hour – he was in full flow, talking about hookers and drugs, talking about his big nights and I suppose, most of all, his missed opportunities.
Overall, Bert seemed grateful that this travelling writer from the UK was interested in his story and had bothered to take the time to get to meet him and to get to know him a little bit.
We exchanged numbers and did stay in touch – on and off.
However, I saw Bert up at the International Boxing Hall of Fame a couple of times in the years that followed.
Firstly, he was on his own, virtually unrecognised by the masses and not in attendance as an invited guest but to hang around on the peripheries of the boxing world, maybe drinking in the last few drops of crowd adoration.
And there was another induction year when I was on the museum grounds interviewing another heavyweight Eddie Gregg. They locked eyes on one another and then embraced like lost brothers. It’s my understanding they were once sparring partners and they were very happy with their chance reunion. Then Bert saw me and he seemed perhaps not equally happy for a similar reunion but happy nonetheless.
Still, Bert and I stayed in touch on the phone. (Well, I called him, he didn’t call me). This was particularly around the start of my journey as a podcaster and launching the Boxing Life Stories podcast. I wanted to go through the tales of the hookers and the coke and the lavish cars and his expensive taste and how he swept through his “fortune” like a cyclone because, simply put, he had one of the most colourful stories I had ever heard and he was one of the best storytellers with his deadpan, nonchalant, way of describing the most unexpected, dramatic and unbelievable events as though they were perfectly normal.
