Gentleman Gerry

May 6, 2019
A former heavyweight contender battles personal demons in this mixed bag. Though billed as a memoir, Grady, a drug counselor, relays Cooney’s story in the third person, beginning with his blue-collar upbringing in 1960s Long Island as the son of an abusive alcoholic. Living in fear, Cooney learned to fight and suffered from a low self-esteem that would lead to his own alcohol addiction. Grady takes readers from Cooney’s first professional fight in 1977 (defeating Billy Jackson), through his first heavyweight title fight in 1982 (he lost to Larry Holmes) to his final fight with George Foreman in 1990 (he lost by a knockout). Ultimately, Cooney overcame his addiction and founded the Fighters’ Initiative for Support and Training, which helps find work for retired boxers. Grady rarely quotes Cooney or anyone else in the book, creating a story that feels oddly secondhand, and intersperses the narrative with chapters chronicling the book’s development, titled “The Writing Process,” comprised of such incongruous asides as how he was at his mother’s death bed while texting Cooney. It’s a disjointed narrative, but Cooney’s charms manage to shine through in this uplifting story of recovery.