140 pounds 1985-86, Aaron Pryor vs Hector Camacho Sr.

I think based on how Aaron lived his life mixed in with his rampant drug use on top of a boxing style that usually has a short prime that Aaron was completely shot by 1985.
Camacho. Imagine being so fast and elusive that It is rare to get hit hard much less get hurt badly and then all the sudden you get hit and hurt worse then you ever have been( Rosario) and now your perspective about boxing is all the sudden changed and worse you become gun shy because you do not want to revisit that time when you were hurt badly.
On paper this seems like a great match up but in reality I think it would have been an awful match up in that you have one boxer that can't (Pryor) and another that can but won't( Camacho).
I could see Camacho using his speed to score points and tying up Pryor and Pryor trying but not being able to because he is shot.
So I would pick Camacho on points in a very uneven fight.

 

I will tell you a back story that was told to me and its up to you if you believe it or not I am just telling you what was told to me.
For years there has always been the notion that Pryor was ducked by Leonard or that Leonard denied Pryor a fight with him due to Pryor being such a threat.
So back in the day when Leonard was at the height of his popularity he had a sizable entourage of sparring partners,different trainers, etc and I met some of them so of course I always asked questions to them when it was possible and in most cases I would always get a different answer from most of them depending on if that person had had a falling out with Leonard or at least that is how it seemed to me.
However the one question that all of them gave the same exact answer to was the mythical match up between Leonard vs Pryor.
Now when they first sparred everyone said that it was a pretty even contest and they even knocked one another down.
However they said that Leonard, who could box or slug, figured out Pryor and eventually started to dominate the sparring matches to the point the sparring became one sided.
Every single person I asked said that Leonard would hurt Pryor badly with body shots and that the last time they sparred Leonard went to Pryor's hometown to spar with Pryor to help Pryor get ready for a fight and that Leonard dominated the sparring and that most people in Pryors hometown couldn't stand Pryor and that after the sparring match people were going up to Ray thanking him for putting a beating on Pryor.
I asked them why Ray then did not make a bout with Pryor and all of them said it was because Pryor wanted an insane amount of money that prevented the fight from being made.
They also said that Pryor was very abrasive and had a very big mouth and that is why he was not liked around his hometown.

 

Good call.
And I agree 100%.
By 1985 Pryor was only a shell of what he was from 1980-1983,
could be a very easy night for Camacho TBH.

 

I believe this is very possible. Knowing the character of both men.
And I know prime Leonard would've embarrassed prime Pryor.
Pryor would've been almost tailor made for Leonard style
wise, and factor in he was a naturally small man.(Unlike Duran,
who carried the extra weight like a glove, Pryor's frame suggest
he wouldn't have been nearly as effective with the extra weight.)
Leonard would stop Pryor as early as five rds- 6 rds .
It would be a great fight for about two rounds, then suddenly
it wouldn't be.

 

They said Pryor couldn't handle the body shots and like I said don't know if it's true or not just repeating what I was told.
Another story that was told to me,and I thought this was pretty cool, was that when Leonard was interested in making the Hearns rematch he sent a couple of his guys to check Hearns out to see how he looked.
So supposedly Emmanuel Steward got wind of it and told Hearns to look very bad in training and at first Hearns,who was very prideful, wasn't going to do it and Steward who knew how bad Hearns wanted the rematch then told Hearns well I guess you don't want the rematch.
So Hearns ended up doing what Steward asked and supposedly looked so dreadful that the people reported back to Leonard that Hearns looked horrible.
And supposedly Hearns,who was mad that he had to do that, told Steward that he was going to make Leonard pay for him having to do that lol.

 

The drug abuse by 85’ had taken too much out of Pryor by then. Camacho was a smaller guy, but I’d favor him to move up and beat Pryor at 140.

https://vault.si.com/vault/1985/09/09/kod-by-his-demons

Pryor admitted after the Lennox Blackmore fight that he turned down a fight with Leonard over money.

The dumb “Leonard ducked Pryor” myth is from HBO’s Legendary Nights and people who think fights are made at press conference challenges
and not with contracts and lawyers.

SRL was simply better, and also bigger.

 

By 85 Pryor was drowning in drugs so Camacho wins a decision ... Prime for prime it's all Aaron.

 

Yeah I agree, Leonard was too big for Pryor . 140 was the Hawk's ceiling for weight

 

The thing is that Duran was mentored by great trainers that Pryor was not and like a sponge Duran absorbed the teachings so while I believe Pryor in his own right was very talented he didn't have the teachers that Duran had and that is pretty big.
You had to have been around some of those trainers back in the day to really appreciate what they knew and taught.

 

Pryor didnt have Duran's defense to at 5-6 to fight above 140lbs imo. The height and range of the top Welterweights would be a problem for Aaron. I believe he could beat some of them but Leonard isn't a good matchup for him.
Ray might have eventually fought Aaron but they both had issues that stalled things out. Out of the ring issues.

 

Everyone remembers when Hector got hyped and dropped the N-word in his post fight interview? He caught a little flack for that ironically he was asked about Pryor who living in a crackhouse. Camacho gave him nothing but love nothing but encouragement.

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Whitaker and Camacho had some spirited sparring sessions when Hector was a champ and Whiatker still an amateur or a young pro. There's conflicting reports on who got the better of it.