[Rocco Del Sesto]

2-1/2 months after disposing of Giannino Luise, Henry meets up with another pretty fair English heayweight, Peter Bates. Bates is 21-6-1 at the time but is coming off a tough 10 round decision loss to German Heinz Neuhaus. On September 7th 1956 Cooper and Bates meet up in Manchester, England for a scheduled 10 rounder. The fight goes only half of that as it's stopped in the 5th round and declared a TKO victory for Bates with Henry suffering from a "badly gashed eyebrow.

Peter Bates England Rating 3
Heavyweight 1953-63
31 wins / 15 losses / 4 draws / 19 KO

Hometown: Shirebrook, England
Birthplace; Salisbury, Wiltshire
Manager: Jimmy Lumb/Bruce Woodcock

Rating by: Rocco Del Sesto

Bates packed a decent punch while showing to have a apparent good chin as shown by the 19/3 KO to times stopped Ratio.

Bates fought a lot of guys who's names you'll recognize. He beat Cliff Purnell three times, Hugh Ferns, Simon Templar twice, Paddy Slavin, Fred Powell, Ron Harman, Gerhard Hecht, Henry Cooper, Frankie Daniels and Ron Gray. He fought draws with Fred Powell, Ray Shiel and Johnny Prescott.

Lost a good number of fights though, especially to the better competition including Joe Crickmar, Joe Bygraves Twice, Joe Erskine Twice, Dick Richardson, Heinz Neuhaus, Ingemar Johansson, Brian London, Gawie de Klerk, Ray Shiel twice and finally to finish his career, Billy Walker.

His biggest win was probably the one over Henry Cooper which was stopped in the 5th round because of a badly gashed eyebrow on Cooper.

There's one more new fighter will be looking at scanning the career of Sir Enry. Though Cooper has 38 more fights in his career after the loss to Bates, we've seen all of those opponents into the game originally or by others except for one last one. We'll be looking at Boston Jacobs up next whom Cooper fights in April 1967.