R.I.P Dennis Rappaport

Yesterday, the sad news broke of how promoter and manager Dennis Rappaport passed away, at the age of 81, after a short illness.

One of the more colorful figures in the sport, Rappaport, along with his partner Mike Jones – was best known for working with Gerry Cooney. During his career, Dennis also worked with Tim Witherspoon, Oleg Maskaev, and Howard Davis Junior. Dubbed “The Whacko Twins” by the media, Rappaport and Jones nevertheless made Cooney a very wealthy man. No doubt, Gerry, Tim, and Oleg will be paying tribute to Dennis, having heard of his passing.

Here are some of the interesting recollections from Rappaport, this from when we spoke over the phone some years ago:

On the Time magazine photo shoot with Cooney and Sly Stallone, from 1982:

“How many fighters do you see on the front cover of Time magazine! There’s a funny story about that,” Rappaport said a couple of years back. “Gerry was on the cover with Stallone, and Gerry is 6’5” – Stallone is a whole lot shorter. Anyway, Stallone wanted to keep his image, and he didn’t want to appear so much shorter than Gerry, so they had him standing on this box (laughs). I said it was okay if he wanted to stand on a box, but there was no way we’d allow Stallone to look taller than Gerry! It was great. Neil Leifer, one of the finest boxing photographers ever, he did the shoot.”

On who he wanted Cooney to fight instead of Holmes:

“I wanted Cooney to fight Mike Weaver (for the WBA belt held by Weaver). We flew to California to sign for the Weaver fight. His manager wanted it, but Weaver was offered a fight with James Tillis. We offered step aside money, big money, but Weaver and his people did the stupid thing and turned it down. Weaver had a spiritual advisor, and apparently, she told Weaver that God had told her he should take the Tillis fight. It was crazy. I said God must not have known about the millions of dollars a Cooney fight would have made Weaver!”

On Cooney’s big payday for Holmes:

“We got Gerry the best deal in heavyweight history. I insisted on purse parity, but in the end, he made $2 million more than Holmes. Quite recently, Gerry said to me how he wished he’d had more fights, but that he couldn’t, as he hadn’t gone with Don King. I told him that if he had gone with Don King, he wouldn’t be set for life as he is today, and God knows how it would have ended for him.”

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