Why so little mention of the fact that Curry quit against Honeygan ..?

Not quite true i'm afraid. Curry was actually slated to fight McCallum and staying at welterweight took him away from that bout, not a bout against Hagler. Was Curry eventually looking to Marvin? Almost certainly yes but he had to get past McCallum in his very next bout and lets be honest - hindsight tells us that was no formality.

Who knows, maybe SRL was covering both bases and fighting the superstar Don down the track might have been on the agenda. No-one thought Don was going to capitulate the way he did staying at Welter.

I do agree he needed to move up earlier but he had a lot of problems going on beside just weight when he fought the Honey trap.

Curry was stopped by Emmett Linton a month after SRL was. He looked terrible. He was never going to get a SRL fight no matter how Ray looked or even if Ray won.

Ironically the backstory of the fight is that Curry managed and trained him in 93 but fell out as Linton wasn't happy with the way Curry was handling his career.

Curry claims Linton gave info to the mom of one of his kids. They fought in the street with guns on them but not utilized.

Curry went to jail for not paying his child support, not exactly a sterling sort of result.

He then wanted to cash in on a fight between them with bad blood as a selling point. Sounds a lot like the SRL situation.

He got flogged and then the excuses came out.

 

Do you think Curry could have beat Leonard at 160?

 

Funny I knew Donald & Emmett Lazer Linton well in Ft Worth Texas & dont remember all this

 

Ask a Texan fight fan what they think of Ray Leonard ?? I refuse to call him Sugar Ray that was Mr Robinson

 

I really dont know but if hey fought at 147 Don would take him out

 

It's well reported. Curry was certainly no angel himself.

"In March 1996, Curry was jailed for failing to pay child support. He won work release soon afterward, but that was revoked after he again failed to make support payments. He served six weeks of a six-month sentence."

"In need of money, Curry returned to boxing. "This comeback is about a lot of things, but the bottom line is money," he said. "I wouldn't do this if I didn't need the money." Curry's first comeback fight was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on February 20, 1997. He knocked out Gary Jones in four rounds.[29]

Curry's next fight was against Emmett Linton, who was one of the boxers Curry trained after he retired from boxing. The Linton fight wasn't just about money: It was personal.

Curry had been Linton's manager and trainer. The two had a falling out in 1993. Linton said he didn't like the way Curry was handling his career. Their feud really erupted when Curry accused Linton of giving information to the mother of one of his children about his finances, which Linton denied. The two got into a fight and guns were drawn but not used. Curry filed charges, but they were later dropped. Shortly afterward, Curry went to jail for failure to pay child support.

When Curry started his comeback, he asked promoter Bob Arum to get him a fight with Linton. Knowing that a good feud can sell a fight, Arum made the match. The fight took place at The Aladdin in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 9, 1997.[30][31]

Curry was no match for Linton. He was dropped in the first round and took a beating over the next six. Referee Richard Steele stopped the fight in the seventh round. "I just didn't have it," Curry said. "I'm finished. I'll never box again." [32]

After the loss, Curry went to Valley Hospital in Las Vegas and learned that he had fought Linton with acute pancreatitis. "That condition pre-existed the fight," said Phil Hamilton, Curry's manager. "We're thinking maybe that explains why Donald felt so weak during the fight, and why maybe he deserves the chance to fight again." [33]

Curry went back to the gym when he was well. "I hope to give a better account of myself," he said, referring to the Linton fight. "I wasn't in shape and wasn't who I thought I was that night." However, Curry never did fight again. He retired with a record of 34-6 with 25 knockouts."

"THERE are aspects of his life story that are all too typical for a professional boxer.
Managerial troubles ... a drug bust ... incarceration ... lack of desire ... a street fight ... the earning of some $5 million in prize money, only to have lost it all.

Yet Donald Curry stands apart from the mainstream problem-child fighter. At least he does today, a year after a short prison stint and eight years since he was last a world champion.

"To me, I've underachieved," he said Monday at the Aladdin Hotel, where he'll fight in Wednesday's main event of a Top Rank boxing card. "That's why I'm back. This time I'm looking for greatness."

Curry is 35 years old and no one knows for sure if he's kidding himself when he says he wants to regain a world title, or if he still retains enough of his pure athletic ability to actually make it happen. He's 34-5 in a pro career that began in 1980 and included two or three years in the mid-1980s when he was the sport's unofficial "pound for pound" champion.

He has fought once since a five-year layoff, defeating journeyman Gary Jones Feb. 20 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

He'll get a good test at the Aladdin when he faces a man 10 years his junior, Emmett Linton, who was also once trained by Curry and who is the protagonist in Curry's current melodrama.

This is actually fight No. 2 in the Curry vs. Linton series. Bout No. 1 was on a street in Fort Worth, Texas, about 18 months ago.

"We did have a street fight, I'm a little embarrassed to say," Curry admitted. "I was immature and he was immature. He let some information out about me that eventually led to me going to prison, and I confronted him about it.

"He hit me and I hit him. Then he and his brother left to get a gun. What does that say about him?"

The Lintons were intercepted before they could return with a weapon. But, in an emotional sense at least, the damage was already done.

"That hurt me," Curry said of his hostilities with Linton. "I had taken Emmett in, like a first-born kid. I had some compassion for him. I gave him money. I gave him energy. I gave him time.

"Then he wants to pull a gun on me?"

It was also Linton's tip to the authorities that at least indirectly led to Curry receiving a six-month prison sentence for failing to pay child support. He served two weeks behind bars and another four weeks in a work-release situation in which he had to return to the prison every night.

"January 15, 1996, was the day I went into jail and I've been focused on fighting Emmett ever since," Curry said. "I've been fixated with fighting him since that day. I started working toward this Wednesday fight with him since that first day in jail.

"I've always felt that once I get him in the ring, he's going to have some problems."

One thing leads to another in the Curry-Linton saga, as Curry's wife divorced him after she learned he had a child out of wedlock with another woman. As it presently stands, Curry is now paying child support to two women -- Gladys Mack and Valerie Cooper -- for the three children he has fathered.

"That's why I'm fighting," he said. "To support my kids."

Intermingled with the delinquent child-support payments that landed him in jail in Texas, Curry was also held on a drug-conspiracy charge in Detroit. He was later acquitted, saying now "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. I didn't have a drug problem."

 

That Linton fight was bad. Curry looked considerably worse than he did for Jacquot even. Some guys lose their reflexes after a bad loss or 2 and this is a guy whose reflexes fell off the cliff. that's what he got by on---those great reflexes. And his boxing radar which used to be among the finest in the sport was gone.

But if you closely watch his last welterweight fights, you can see his legs going then. Too many amateur fights and another guy that just was not good at all in the attrition/wear and tear department.

 

God some people just either can't get it or refuse to acknowledge it.
Here's the thing; Curry vs Hagler before Don lost was a HUGE fight.
At the time they both were rated pound for pound by every boxing publication- basically number 1 and 2.
Leonard had been out of the picture for YEARS.
Hagler hadn't lost in years and Don had just crushed Milton on HBO.
So at that moment Curry and Hagler were 2 of the best fighters in the world.
Leonard wanted to fight Hagler but their was growing interest in Curry vs Hagler.
So to remove a potential roadblock Trainer did give Curry bad advice to stay at welter.
BUT that was all Curry's fault as Gorman argued against it but Curry wouldn't hear it.
Jesus you can see right off the bat Curry wasn't right vs Honeyghan. He looked half dead.
Yes Curry did quit in his corner.
It's like Camacho bragging he stopped Leonard even though everyone knows Leonard was shot. Same thing with Curry.
So yes in a way Leonard screwed Curry BUT the fault lies with Curry for ignoring those closest to him-Gorman and Reyes who had been with him since CHILDHOOD. Curry shouldn't have even hired Trainer for Gorman was doing a great job guiding Curry.
But Curry got a big head and thought he could do even better and he paid for it with his career.

 

Here are the details about Donald Curry as I recall from back in the day:

The McCallum fight was actually first scheduled in June of 1986, but it was cancelled when Curry changed management to Akbar Muhammad. Later he received some bad advice (reportedly from SRL) to stay at welterweight. The rest, as they say, is history. I do not intend to take anything away from Honeyghan’s victory, but that fight never should have happened to begin with.

I always wondered might have happened if in the wake of his late 1985 victory over McCrory, Curry had followed his managements advice to permanently move up to JMW. Potentially, I can see a tune-up at 154 (against Sean Mannion?) ahead of the showdown with McCallum. As for the fight itself, if Curry had carried over his prime skills from 84 and 85 into a fight with McCallum in 86 - and was not facing distractions in terms of changing management, struggling with weight, etc - would we have seen a different outcome?

Perhaps McCallum is simply better than Curry and would always have his number (or eventually crack his chin). That said, McCallum had a tendency to struggle against slick boxers, noting his first loss to Sumbu Kalambay and in the fight that actually happed in 87 was behind on all three judges scorecards before landing the big punch in the fifth round.

So if a prime Curry managed to pull off the victory in 86 - I am thinking close UD along the lines of 9-6 or 8-6-1 - what happens next? At the very least Curry’s name is entered into the Marvin Hagler sweepstakes, but any fight with Hagler won’t be taking place until 10 months later. So what does Curry do in the meantime? I can see him fighting at least twice, defending the JMW title (Carlos Santos?) and then moving up for a tune-up at 160 (Robbie Sims?).

Providing Curry pulls off victories in both, what does Hagler do in response? Does he take on the former undefeated welterweight champion who bested a highly regarded undefeated junior middleweight champion prior to moving up to middleweight. Or does he face the fighter that had fought only once the past five years and in that contest had to get off the canvas to defeat what amounts a journeyman.

More than likely Hagler chooses the big money to go against the latter, but it would make things interesting if he chose the former instead. I would like to have seen Hagler go with Curry and tell SRL to scheduled a tune-up at middleweight, and once he is ranked he can contest for the middleweight title, providing Hagler bests Curry, which per another thread most here believe he would.

However, if Hagler chooses SRL and if the same script is followed, SLR wins and both fighters retire, what happens to Curry? Possibly he returns to JMW, but the champions at that weight – Duane Thomas and Buster Drayton – are not exactly household names. Fights against the as noted Kalambay, Herol Graham or rematch with McCallum would obviously generate more acclaim but would they also bring a title to Curry at 160?