Donald Curry

i know very little about curry but i like what i saw

he was athletically gift, technically superb and was lightening fast with above average power. the mccrory fight is the one to watch in my opinion. that was curry at his best and his entrance onto the world stage

he was an arguable #1 p4p for a brief time and even after the honeyghan knockout, gave a VERY good account of himself against some of the very best. the mccallum fight for instance he was dominating the round until the knockout

the big fight of the day was curry vs hagler. he was to move up 2 divisions and fight for the middleweight championship. that's possibly the fight i wish happened most cause it would have been a classic and very winnable for curry. unfortunately, he elected to take one more defense at welter, drained himself to oblivion and got destroyed by honeyghan

a wonderful fighter to watch imo

 

Most of Curry's fights were similarly excellent. He fought good fighters and made some very good fighters look ordinary. His prime is up until 1986. Anything past the Honeyghan fight is post prime IMO. Any of his performances before Honeyghan are top quality. He was giving a very good account of himself against Mike McCallum until being KO'd brutally. His reflexes slowed just a little bit above 147 and that, coupled with his habit of leaning in with his head caused him to get butted a lot at 154. I completely disregard the Norris fight when assessing Curry, as he was way past prime.
I would highly recommend getting a Curry career set. I'd describe him as a great technician, and in fact, a great fighter for a relatively short prime.

 

p.s. Curry - Starling II is a clinic on technical infighting.

 

Donald's best looking performance was against Jones imo.Albeit Colin's methodical textbook, one powershot at a time style was made for him.

McCrory was massively overrated at the time and really choked in their superfight.LaRocca was a similar story.

 

I agree with Lora that the Colin Jones performance was a great effort. I'm personally partial to Starling II. Starling was a tougher styles matchup than Jones I think. The McCrory fight was awesome. McCrory had some chinques (eastside deems like a racial slur, lol) in his armor but Curry was razor sharp. Larocca was overrated but it's pretty cool just to see him come apart due to Curry's precision.
I'd personally be interested in your view of his fight with James "Hard Rock" Green if it's in the set. I don't think I've seen that one. The fight was at Junior Middleweight and Green fought a lot of fights at Middleweight, so a good effort by Curry could lend some credence to the theory that he ruined himself by staying at 147 too long.

 

He is a beautiful technician.

I wish he'd gotten more comfortable years out of 147 - he could have gone down as really, really great.

 

Been many a year since i've watched it, but i remember it as a very sharp performance.Not like the post Honeyghan 154 fights at all.

It ended with Green turning away after a thumb/headclash or something.Definitely wasn't a satisfactory conclusion, though to be honest i can barely remember what actually happened.

 

Dammit I always hear that yet I haven't seen it. I feel like an only child when all the adults go out and play lol. I'm definitely going to try to get Curry's set in the next year.

 

Curry was a good fighter who has beautiful counterpunches. Speed and counterpunching were his strengths. His window of being good was only 2-3 years. Somehow he was so refined that his sharp sharp skills lasted for that short time until small changes opened him up to losing. A little change in his weight contributed to his first loss to Honeyghan. The weight problems contributed to his first loss and that affected him so much it made him 80 percent probably of what he was before, and with each following loss he was not as good. In one year he went from being one of the best fighters in the world to having lost by knockout to both Honeyghan and McCallum. I would have been interesting to see how he would have done with McCallum had he moved up to 154 without having lost to Lloyd.
One of the things which I think contributed to his short prime was his foot positioning. If a fight got tough he could not get on his toes and box and extend the fight and regroup. If he started to get beat up he kept getting beaten up, unlike a Hearns who could box and fight another style, which helped Hearns longevity.

 

Unfortunately I know Don Curry's career in microscopic detail due to years of arguing with a particular individual.

Technically a great fighter and a Ring P4P No.1. The Honeygan loss was devastating but the excuse is Don was a dead man walking that night after killing himself making weight.

With McCallum he was doing well until he got hit by a peach of a punch. Another excuse put forward for Curry is that he stopped putting the effort in when he realised he could take guys out with one punch. He wouldn't be the first or last fighter to fall into that way of thinking.

As was said above he burned fast and bright but faded very quickly, when it all went wrong he got involved in bad activities and ended up in jail. Curry had something like 400 amateur fights and this is often sited when explaining why his period at the top was not as long as it could have been.

The Starling wins were the best for me. Hell of punch that stopped McCrory.

 

When he fought Baez and Green in '85 as a first foray into the 154 class, it was hard to draw many conclusions. The Green fight ended strangely, with a perceived thumb in round two. He was underwhelming against Baez too, which made me question how he'd be against bigger guys.

I was right, but for the wrong reason. Had he simply moved up for good then and naturally found the rhythm at 154 he might have been okay, but we all know the story.

Then he moved up after that and fought Montgomery and Santos, and while both of those fights ended strangely too, I couldn't help but see that he simply wasn't as strong, and his punches just didn't have as much snap at the higher weight. The Montgomery and Santos fights are easy enough to explain in hindsight, of course. The mixture of weight draining and confidence draining had everything to do with it, but that wasn't fully known then.

 

Go watch his legs in those welter bouts. Easy to see the deterioration and when he moved up to 154 it was even worse.

His bout at 154 against Jacquot was horrible to watch. He should've had a picnic with a guy like that. Lucky for him he wasn't in there with Mugabi who was gunning for him. Or Julian Jackson would not have been an optimal opponent choice either.

Even that Rosi win was an example of just how far he'd slipped. That Linton comeback fight was just a disaster too & I still don't know why he thought he had any of those old skills left for a comeback.

 

curry was as said really good to watch and was a very good 147lb champ and his career set would be good to get .but i feel a little sorry for honeyghan , honeyghan was a very good fighter who was really at his best style wise for the curry fight weight weakened or not honeyghan was quicker than curry if you also throw in that curry probably took lloyd lightly even a top game curry would find honeyghan perhaps his hardest fight at 147lb