Henry Cooper boxer

Sir Henry Cooper OBE KSG (3 May 1934 – 1 May 2011) was a British heavyweight boxer, best remembered for a 1963 fight with a young Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay), which Cooper, who at times looked on the verge of winning, lost when the fight was called off due to a cut. Cooper was undefeated in British and Commonwealth heavyweight championship contests for twelve years, and held the European heavyweight title for three years. In 1966 he fought Ali, by then world heavyweight champion, a second time and was again stopped due to a cut. Cooper twice was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and after retiring in 1971 following a controversial loss remained a popular public figure. He is the only boxer to have been awarded a knighthood.Cooper was born on 3 May 1934 in Lambeth, London to Henry and Lily Cooper. With identical twin brother, George (1934–2010), and elder brother Bern, he grew up in a council house on Farmstead Road on the Bellingham Estate in South East London. During the Second World War they were evacuated to Lancing on the Sussex coast.Life was tough in the latter years of the Second World War, and London life especially brought many dangers during the blackout. Henry took up many jobs, including a paper round before school and made money out of recycling golf balls to the clubhouse on the Beckenham course. All three of the Cooper brothers excelled in sport, with George and Henry exercising talents particularly in football and also cricket. Cooper started his boxing career in 1949, as an amateur with the Eltham Amateur Boxing Club, and won seventy-three of eighty-four contests. At the age of seventeen, he won the first of two ABA light-heavyweight titles before National Service in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps as Private Service Number 22486464,Cooper represented Great Britain as a light heavyweight boxer at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. His results were: Round of 32-bye, Round of 16-lost to Anatoly Perov (Soviet Union) by decision, 1-2.