Larry Holmes vs. Gerry Cooney
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| Date | June 11, 1982 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Venue | Caesars Palace in Paradise, Nevada | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Title(s) on the line | WBC Heavyweight Championship | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Tale of the tape | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Boxer |
 Larry Holmes |
Gerry Cooney |
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| Nickname | "The Easton Assassin" | "Gentleman" | |
| Hometown | Easton, Pennsylvania, US | Huntington, New York, US | |
| Pre-fight record | 39–0 | 25–0 | |
| Recognition | WBC Heavyweight Champion |
Larry Holmes vs. Gerry Cooney was a boxing fight that took place on June 11, 1982. It was one of the most highly anticipated fights of the early 1980s.
Larry Holmes had been the WBC heavyweight champion since 1978, when he beat Ken Norton by a fifteen round split decision at the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Over the course of his illustrious career, on the way to almost tying the great Rocky Marciano's record of 49-0, losing in the 49th fight, a controversial decision to the "Jinx" Michael Spinks, fought such fighters as Ossie Ocasio, Mike Weaver, Trevor Berbick, Leon Spinks and, most notably, Muhammad Ali.
Gerry Cooney, on the other hand, had been a professional fighter since 1977, and he was able to beat boxers such as Jimmy Young and others. The turning point of his career came when he beat Ken Norton, in May 1981, by knockout in round one at the Madison Square Garden in New York.
Anticipation over a Holmes-Cooney confrontation began to take shape in early 1981, but the fight took over a year to happen, partly because 1981 in particular was a very busy year for boxing with many other big fights, partly because Holmes was obliged to defend against Berbick, Spinks and Renaldo Snipes in that order. Cooney only had one fight in 1981, against Norton. Holmes-Cooney was originally scheduled for March 1982, but was postponed until June when Cooney injured his back in training.
By 1982, promoter Don King and manager Dennis Rappaport began one of the most massive and racially toned campaigns in boxing history to raise public interest for a fight between Holmes and Cooney. After they were both signed to fight, an intense promotional tour followed. Holmes and Cooney attended press conferences at several United States cities, Cooney was shown on the cover of Time magazine, Hollywood stars took an interest in the fight (Sylvester Stallone in particular hung out with Gerry Cooney, others, such as Woody Allen, attended the fight live) and Cooney was cast as "The Great White Hope". There had not been a White world Heavyweight champion in 22 years, and Cooney would try to change that. White supremacist groups had announced they would have "agents" ready to shoot at Holmes the moment he entered the ring, and Black groups retaliated by answering that they would also have armed people on hand in case Holmes was attacked. Because of this, there were police snipers on the roofs of every major hotel surrounding the fight's venue, once again, the Caesars Palace hotel and casino. Snipers were used because the fight was held at the hotel's parking lot; any attacker could have been easily shot by police snipers.
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