Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 7, 1993 TAG: 9306070039
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Brian DeVido
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He's in a bind. Morrison loses even if he wins.
But Morrison will cross that bridge when he comes to it. The past year and a half has held plenty of adversity for the 24-year-old fighter from Kansas City.
There have been some unfair comparisons to another white heavyweight contender.
"That Morrison, he's nothing but the second coming of G..."
Don't say it.
Not the G-word. Please.
Let's get this straight, Tommy Morrison is no Gerry Cooney. Not even close.
Yes, there are obvious similarities. Both are white heavyweights. Both have wrecking-ball left hooks. And both were knocked out in their first major tests as professionals; Cooney by Larry Holmes, Morrison by Ray Mercer.
Morrison is a bit different.
Unlike Cooney, he didn't go into hiding after his brutal loss to Mercer in October 1991.
Morrison looked great for three rounds, then he tired and was hit with 17 unanswered blows before the fight was stopped. Morrison, unconscious on the ropes, slumped to the floor face first.
It was a frightening scene. The kind many boxers never recover from.
Morrison recovered, though. He was back in the gym training by the end of the year. He started back slowly and with a plan: Fight a better opponent each time out and learn something new with each fight. He returned to the ring four months after the Mercer loss. It took Cooney more than two years to fight again after his loss to Holmes.
Tommy Morrison is no Gerry Cooney.
There have been two tough gut checks for Morrison on his long road back. Last June, fringe contender Joe Hipp was the obstacle. Morrison dominated early but tired. By the middle rounds, his right hand and jaw broken, Morrison appeared to be finished.
He battled back, though, and knocked out Hipp in the ninth round. Unlike Cooney, he learned that he could overcome physical adversity in the ring.
Morrison had to do it again in January, when he battled aging veteran Carl "The Truth" Williams. Once again, Morrison dominated early, dropping Williams in the first and third rounds. Again, he tired, and Williams took control, dropping Morrison twice in the fifth round. The fight was almost over.
But Morrison came back. He unloaded on Williams late in the fight and won with an eighth-round knockout.
He's no Gerry Cooney.
If Cooney made it to the gym two days in a row without getting hurt, it made headlines. He was more fragile than Grandma's best set of china.
Morrison fought seven rounds against Hipp with a broken jaw. Not tough enough? In an interview with KO magazine two years ago, Morrison recalled how, as a teen-ager, he tested his jaw strength.
He got his older brother, Tim, to take a wooden baseball bat and whack it against his chin. Morrison's chin passed with flying colors, but he couldn't eat for a week.
Crazy? Probably. But spare him the Cooney comparisons.
Whether he wins tonight or not, Morrison can hold his head high. He hasn't traveled the long road back the easy way, fooling himself by fighting inferior opponents.
He's fought some pretty tough customers. He's shaken off a broken hand and a broken jaw and has come back to win. It may not have been the easiest path, but it's the right one if he ever wants to land a world title shot.
Spare Tommy Morrison the G-word. He deserves that much for his efforts, at least.
Brian DeVido covers sports for the Roanoke Times & World-News' New River Valley Bureau. He has followed Tommy Morrison's boxing career since 1990. He also has boxed at the amateur level for the past three years.
by CNB