Floored by our ‘Enery: Clay v Cooper, 1963

British fighter nearly caused a sensation but Wembley saw the right result in 1963

Epic fight: Cooper put Clay to the test but the American’s ability shone through in the endREX

In his youth, Muhammad Ali was so afraid of flying that he once traversed the US from San Francisco to Louisville by bus rather than board a plane, and travelling to Italy for the Rome Olympics of 1960 had been an ordeal. But whatever residual anxieties about a transatlantic journey he retained three years later when he signed up for a London fight with Henry Cooper, the British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion, were not likely to be compounded by concerns over the assignment awaiting him.

Cooper was such a light-framed heavyweight, so liable to register an undaunting poundage on the

The Times