Yes oddly enough I fancy a prime Donald Currys chances though on paper Hearns is faster and hits harder. Curry wouldve been a certain Olympic Gold medalist despite 400 amateur fights and becoming undisputed welterweight champion its possible we were deprived of Currys prime as after the Mcrory fight he started partying hard and got into drugs. People forget he looked awful v Rodriguez only months after his big win. He was finished at 25. Than 2 bizzare fights at 154 where he was headbutted again and again in blatant billy goat fashion. My thinking is Curry was a very precise fighter. If any fighter may outbox Hearns its Curry . He has the reflexes and skill to crowd Hearns get in his chest and pick him apart. A shot Curry was doing that to Nunn for 6 rounds. A shot Curry rocked and was outboxing a McCallum. He ragdolled Rosi a tough durable sort and Curry looked very physically strong vs hard rock green and Starling. The prime Curry showed durability to take some punishment. But in my book he had no problem standing in the pocket with not inconsiderable punchers Colin Jones and Mcrory or Nunn. I give him a shot with Tommy.
By the time of the McCallum fight Curry had been headbutted blatantly and repeatedly in 3 consecutive fights. He had had his forehead battered his nose broken and eyes cut and lip cut by these transgressions. He will remain a enigma forever. In the modern era with the discipline of a Mayweather and Crawford there's no telling what he could have done. Crack cocaine was rife in the 1980s and Don fell prey to it in 1986 and was never the same.
Cuevas was a harder puncher THEN BOTH HEARNS AND CURRY. The man literally broke bones in multiple opponents.
Hearns was a huge welter, he was a weight bully, Cuevas and Tommy both had one punch KO power, Curry could bang but not consistantly, he was just a solid puncher on average.
Tommy wasn't a weight bully. 12 hours before the fight, he weighed what his opponent weighed. If he was naturally much larger and had had to lose a huge amount of weight, I imagine that would have weakened him considerably. I'd rather be the guy who hadn't had to spend weeks starving myself if I was planning to be at my athletic best.
He was tall, long and ripped, just his legs were thin, he was a natural middle or super middle with the power to knock out light-heavies.
A natural middle or supermiddle who had had to starve himself to lose 20lbs? Not seeing how he gets the great advantage. Like I say, 12 hours before the fight, he was a 147 welter. If you're 20lbs below your natural weight, 12 hours is no time to recover the strength you've foregone to make weight. If he had the power to knock out light heavies that's his punching ability which carried him through at welter when he was fighting in a weight weakened state.
Curry was actually pretty strong and could hit hard. He out muscled Starling in the rematch pretty easily and Starling was known to be pretty strong on the inside. He was visibly hurting and backing up Colin Jones and Jones is one tough boxer. He nearly decapitated MCcroy and up until then I don't think Milton had ever been knocked down. And he visibly staggered MCcallum who had a great chin.
The story goes is that Curry was having massive problems making welterweight as far back as the Jones bout and Gorman,his manager at the time, thought it was taking too much out of Curry. So after Curry unified Gorman wanted Curry to move up to jr.middle but supposedly Curry was taking advice from Ray Leonard's people(Mike Trainer) and they told him to stay at welterweight for whatever reason. Now I don't know if this is true but I know some people who were very close with Leonard and they said that Curry was given bad advice because at the time they were trying to drum up Leonard vs Hagler and they wanted to remove any potential roadblocks and believe it or not Curry at that time was considered pound for pound the best and if not one definitely number two. So many people were expecting a Hagler vs Curry show down.