Gerrie Coetzee versus Michael Dokes WBA World Heavyweight Title Bout in 1983 Remembered
By Robert Brizel, Head RCM Boxing Correspondent
In August 2012, Michael Dynamite Dokes passed away. Like so many boxers before and after him, Dokes allowed drug abuse to ruin his career potential. Cocaine was the culprit which ruined Dokes before his World Boxing Association World Heavyweight title defense against Gerrie Coetzee at Richfield Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio, on September 23, 1982. Dokes admitted after losing to Coetzee he had used Cocaine before his bout with Coetzee, which ended when Coetzee, in control of the bout, knocked him out in the tenth round.
Gerrie Coetzee knocks out Michael Dokes, commentary by Sugar Ray Leonard, 1983
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaRj5M_lT5M
While Larry Holmes had to deal with racial overtones to defense his World Boxing Council title against Irish Gerry Cooney AKA The Great White Hope, Coetzee was not the equivalent ‘Great White Hope’. In fact, Coetzee was opposed to apartheid, a fact not well known in most boxing circles. Coetzee enjoyed the support of both white and black boxing fans in South Africa during his career, and had no problem with giving rival black heavyweights such as Leon Spinks, Mike Weaver, John Tate, Randy Stevens, Tom Prater, and James Mathathothe opportunity to fight him in his native South Africa.
Dokes, defending his world title in his home state of Ohio, had trouble from the onset as Coetzee outboxed him technically. Dokes managed to cut Coetzee above the right eye, but the cut did not bother Coetzee. Dokes, who had lost rounds four through nine against Mike Weaver in their rematch before finding a second wind, had his mouth open heavily in the later rounds against Coetzee. In his third world title attempt, Coetzee, as evidenced by archival footage of the bout, was in far better shape than Dokes. Coetzee never broke a sweat, even when Dokes tried to cut off the ring.
Coetzee’s famed right hand, operated on many times before and after this bout, ultimately came through with vicious effectiveness. He scored a flash knockdown of Dokes in the fifth round with it, and landed two full impact straight rights with Dokes on the ropes to knock him out at 3:08 of round ten, dropped Dokes just before the end of the round to finish him for good. Dokes, who won his next 11 bouts, failed to make it out of the tenth round of his next world title fight against 20-0 Evander Holyfield in 1989 as well. An attempt to regain the WBA title in 1993 ended in failure for Dokes when 32-0 Riddick Bowe stopped him in the first round at Madison Square Garden in 1993.
Coetzee fought a better fight. In my view, Coetzee versus Dokes was the last great performance by both world champions. Coetzee’s jab was consistent, and he was willing to get a bit wild and take risky chances on the inside to land body shots and head power shots on Dokes and masterfully break Dokes down slowly but surely and finish him.
Dokes’ career did not end when Paul Phillips stopped him in the second round in 1997 in Kentucky. Dokes’ career ended when he was arrested in 1998 in Las Vegas after his girlfriend told police he beat her, sexually assaulted her, and held her against her will. She testified Dokes was a good person when he was clean and sober, but drug and alcohol abuse had made him violent. In 2000, Dokes pleaded guilty to attempted murder, second degree kidnapping, and intent to commit sexual assault. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Paroled in 2008, he lived in Las Vegas before returning to his native Akron, Ohio, to live with relatives in 2010. Dokes died in an Akron hospice from liver cancer. His final boxing appearance was a two minute interview on October 31, 2009, discussing his career.
Michael Dokes interview, talks about his boxing career in Las Vegas in 2009 on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5srfU4XMdyM
Coetzee, who broke his right hand in the Dokes bout, was plagued by hand operations. 15 months after beating Dokes, Coetzee was knocked out by Greg Page at 3:48 of the eighth round due to a timekeeper’s error, and the result should have been overturned as this was illegal, but the fight result stood. Aferdecisioning James Quick Tillis and losing to Frank Bruno, Coetzee won three comeback fights between 1993 and 1997, when Iran ‘The Blade’ Barkley stopped Coetzee in the tenth round of his final comeback in California in June 1997. The tenth round, so it seems, was as much a jinx for Coetzee as it was for Dokes.
Coetzee was supposed to unify the heavyweight title against International Boxing Federation World Heavyweight champion Larry Holmes instead of fighting Greg Page. The planned Coetzee versus Holmes WBA-IBF unification bout never took place. On May 30, 2013, After a four year court case which dragged, Coetzee became the first boxer in history to be acquitted of a charge of failing to register himself as a dental technician.
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