clarinews@clarinet.com (LISA HARRIS, UPI Sports Writer) (01/12/90)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (UPI) -- To make a successful comeback Monday night, George Foreman should put aside his most recent victories and Gerry Cooney must forget his last defeat. The aging heavyweights face each other in a 10-round bout featuring Foreman, 19 fights into his second professional stint, and Cooney in his first appearance since June, 1987. The 40-year-old Foreman cracks the best jokes himself about his 19-0 record that includes 18 knockouts. ``I'll fight at the Hitching Post in Springfield, Missouri,'' Foreman said at their final news conference Thursday, on the ring at Caesars. ``You can't start at the top, you have to start at the bottom. ``A lot of critics say I haven't been tested -- they only say it because it's true. I'm hoping Gerry Cooney will not test me -- my patience especially.'' Cooney, 28-2 with 24 knockouts, has no victories even to poke fun at since May, 1986. In a career always plagued by inactivity, his only fight since then was his last; the pathetic showing in a fifth-round knockout loss to Michael Spinks that sent Cooney from the ring in June, 1987, although he never officially retired. His reappearance in the public eye came about a year later, as a promoter. The new, relaxed Cooney claims the losses to Spinks and a 13th-round knockout loss to Larry Holmes for the title in 1982 no longer cause regrets, pressures or haunting memories. Cooney no longer drinks alcohol and while he won't say he is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous -- ''anonymous, that's what A.A. stands for,'' he says -- he constantly sounds the program's philosophies, particularly on putting behind previous mistakes. His camp says he regularly attends meetings of an organization that has helped his two-year recovery from alcoholism. ``I made mistakes,'' Cooney said. ``I put a lot of unnecessary pressures onto my back, basically Gerry feeling sorry for Gerry. I've learned to live life one day at a time,'' he said, quoting Alcoholics Anonymous' creed. ``When I was 25, I wish I knew what I know now but you can't.'' Cooney jokes about his gray hair -- ''better gray than none at all,'' in a dig at Foreman's shaved head -- and denies that his previous lifestyle took its toll on his body. ``I don't think I really abused my body all that bad. I just made some mistakes,'' he said. And of the layoff, he said, ``I always ran, as long as you take care of that engine...'' It remains to be seen whether the bad times in the ring can be as easily forgotten. Cooney didn't even realize that when he spoke of the fight Monday night, instead of Jan. 15, he said ``June 15.'' Whether Freudian slip or coincidence, that was the date of the Spinks fight 2 1/2 years ago. Later, he said ``that was a pretty sick, terrible fight I put on that night. ``I spent 2 1/2 years in training camp for a fight that was on one day, off one day,'' he said, overstating his preparation but not the delay between the conception and the signing of the Spinks fight. Cooney's trainer, Gil Clancy, said in the four months of training for this fight, Cooney ``trained as hard as any fighter I've ever had. ``He told me he had changed his lifestyle and wanted to fight; that's always been the key to Gerry Cooney,'' Clancy said. ``Michael Spinks, he looked like the flame had burned out. The flame has been rekindled.'' Each fighter's purse is $1 million. On the undercard World Boxing Organization middleweight Doug DeWitt fights former International Boxing Federation champion Matthew Hilton, who did not show up for the news conference, and Olympic heavyweight gold medalist Ray Mercer meets Wesley Watson.