How good was McCallum-Curry 1? And how good was Curry until he got sparked?

I remember watching the replay on my tape year ago and they showed a different angle after the fight was over where you could see Gorman in the corner and when Curry is knocked out he hardly moves from before the knockout to after it. If any of you have seen this, it is interesting.

 

What Curry and McCallum proved is that Curry did have great skills, but not the consistent skill level of Mike McCallum. Mike set up Curry for the knockout. Donald was backing up and had his hands down and McCallum saw that he was doing this previous to the knockout. For McCallum to figure this out relatively early in the fight shows that he was a thinker and a heck of a fighter, regardless of Curry being diminished by Honeyghan. I do remember Curry had two fights at 154 after Honeyghan and they were both headbutt disqualification fights with Tony Montgomery and Santos. At the time people thought both guys were trying to avoid being knocked out, but also Curry did have that style of leaning in and rubbing his head, and that could have contributed to those fights. Regardless, his power did go down moving up in weight.

 

Curry's complete lack of awareness was the issue in him getting knocked out.Not that he backed up striaght per se, though that imo was obviously done because he was relaxing when he shouldn't be.

Herol Graham went the whole fight with McCallum putting himself in ridiculous defensive positions and pulling away from exchanges, and was made to pay at times, but never went out like that because he maintained awareness while doing it.

 

Nice post. I agree. Something in Curry was not fully focused mentally.