{"id":469514,"date":"2026-03-11T11:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/469514\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T11:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:19:11","slug":"henry-cooper-win-in-rome-echoes-richard-dunn-beating-german","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/469514\/","title":{"rendered":"Henry Cooper win in Rome echoes Richard Dunn beating German"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n  Not only did his opponent have home advantage, but charismatic promoter Rino Tommasi, who had previously been a star tennis player and went on to become an esteemed commentator, had a word of warning.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Of the 24 European title fights he had staged at the famed Palazzo Dello Sport, an Italian had won 23 of them.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The odd one out was Tomasso Galli, who was controversially awarded a draw against Scotsman Walter McGowan despite being thoroughly out-boxed.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  But it took more than that to scare \u2018our \u2018Enry\u2019, who in his own inimitable style, shrugged: \u201cThis Dutch geezer they\u2019ve got as the referee seems fair enough to me.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cI don\u2019t expect no funny business. I reckon I can win on me merits.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Now Cooper may not have been renowned for speaking \u2018proper English\u2019, but he was a proper heavyweight.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  And true to his prediction, he beat Tomasoni on his merits and then some.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  In front of a stunned Rome crowd, Cooper knocked out the home favourite after just five rounds, retaining his crown in style.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  <img   width=\"100%\"\/>Henry Cooper famously knocked down Muhammad Ali during the pair&#8217; iconic bout at Wembley in 1963, but despite his eventual defeat, the Brit remained a force in the ring throughout the decade. (Image: PA)\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  He held the title until his final bout, an entertaining points defeat to Joe Bugner at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk\/sport\/sportbcfc\/playoff_final\/playoff_news\/?ref=au\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Wembley<\/a> in 1971.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Cooper\u2019s stunning knockout of Tomasoni was no doubt in the mind of Bradford favourite Richard Dunn ahead of one of his greatest victories.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Almost exactly seven years after Cooper destroyed home hopes in Rome, Dunn was taking on the popular, good-looking and heavily-fancied German Bernd August for the European Heavyweight crown.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  While the bout took place in London, essentially it was meant to act as homecoming preparation for August.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The winner of this bout was to take on the great Muhammad Ali for the World Heavyweight crown in Munich the following month.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The fact it was scheduled to be held in the famous German city tells you all you need to know: Dunn was supposed to be there only to make August look good.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  But the tall and handsome youngster was dismantled by the hard-nosed West Yorkshire scaffolder.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Dunn showed the best of Britain that night, with August failing to find an answer to his opponent\u2019s flying fists, as he was stopped after just three rounds.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  It was the high point of Dunn\u2019s fine career, as he was stopped by Ali in Munich, before losing his European title that October after being knocked out at Wembley.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  And guess who took that crown off him? None other than Joe Bugner, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not only did his opponent have home advantage, but charismatic promoter Rino Tommasi, who had previously been a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-469514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}