Love Quote by Gerry Cooney

Ali is framed here less as an athlete than as an event: polarizing, unavoidable, and engineered for attention. Gerry Cooney’s “you either loved or hated” isn’t a shrug at public division; it’s a recognition that Ali turned boxing into appointment television by forcing audiences to take a side. Even his detractors became part of the spectacle, paying to boo, and that friction powered the sport’s visibility. “But you wanted to see him” is the tell. The real commodity isn’t consensus, it’s compulsion.

Coming from Cooney, a heavyweight who fought in an era still living in Ali’s shadow, the line also reads as a professional admission of influence. “Brought boxing to another level” gestures at technique, sure, but it’s really about Ali’s total package: the performative bravado, the verbal jabs that softened the violence without denying it, the ability to narrate his own myth in real time. Cooney’s “always made you laugh” highlights the disarming strategy. Ali’s humor wasn’t decoration; it was control. He could set the emotional temperature of a room, bait opponents into rage, charm the press, and make the audience feel like co-conspirators.

“I happen to really love him” lands as a small but meaningful pledge of allegiance. In a sport built on intimidation, affection is a radical metric. Cooney is crediting Ali for expanding what a fighter was allowed to be: not just dangerous, but magnetic, funny, and culturally legible far beyond the ring.