Marlon Starling

I remember that fight fairly well, for not having seen it in 20 years, and I agree. Lloyd Honeyghan was still a very formidable opponent at the time, and a lot of people had doubts about Starling beating him.. Marlon as you say, utilized a peak "O" boo style defense that was a signature part of his style, and was quite often very effective. He didn't posses much in the way of power, but his accuracy was better than most. At times, I thought Starling's workrate could have been a little bit better as he periodically tended to get lazy . He also loved to clown a bit, and if memory serves, even stuck is tounge out at Honeyghan once or twice in that match...

Nevertheless, I have always considered the welterweight seen of the 1980's to be one of the very best and most competitive eras in boxing. Men like Marlon Starling, Lloyd Honeghan, Simon Brown, Mark Breland, Donald Curry, etc.. Have seemingly been forgotten as time roles on. My guess is that those men just had the misfortune of coming along immediately after Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns had vacated the division.. Big shoes to fill in other words.....

 

I haven't seen the Curry fights either. A win over a streaking Donald Curry anytime between 1983 to 1986 would have looked good on just about anyone's resume frankly.. As for how it may have changed the course of Starling's career, well its very difficult to say. You had a ton of talent in that division with top fighters beating on each other all the time..

 

Today I think Starling would be a handful for anyone. Only Mosley would I give a very good chance of beating him, but then again Mosley struggled to land much on Winky (albeit at the higher weight) so Starling's good defence would probably see him through again.

A seriously underrated fighter IMO. He made Honeyghan look awful, although most say Honeyghan came in with the wrong gameplan, I feel he was well established into his 'Curry style' at the time of this fight.

 

Starling would certainly be a force to be reckoned with in almost any era.. Let's not sell today's welters short though. The division is once again flooded with talent, and should make for interesting things to come..

 

That's what I'm saying. Starling MADE Honeyghan look clueless, and of course DID render him clueless. That's how good he was.

 

Great performance by Starling but Honeyghan had pretty much discarded his boxing skills at that point in his career and was trying to blow his opponents out, early wins over Bumphus, Hatcher and Vaca where he won by basically walking through his opponenet had given him an inflated opinion of his power IMHO.

In a lot of interviews with Honeyghan around that time see him mentioning wanting to be the welterweight Tyson. I think stylewise Starling was always going to give Honey trouble but the decent boxing that had got Honeyghan his title shot would have enabled him to fare better than the wild swinging 1989 version did.

 

I think he was a top Welter, a throwback if you like. Very underrated, for me he gives just about any welter in history a good argument. The Curry fights were very close and Curry looked like a future ATG at the time.
I think as well that Mark Breland was a better fighter than people give him credit for. The problem being in his case the expectations that were put on him.
Both of these followed the Leonard, Hearns, Duran era and that is another reason they're overlooked.

 

No. I'm not impressed by Starliing. Frankly, I'm not impressed by any of your fighters. He's mediocre.

 

One of these days you'll learn not to respond to Rooster....

 

Dont listen to him. Starling was a helluva fighter! And I like your avatar. Benitez is one of my all time favs also.

 

If Starling had been given a shot by Milton McCrory, he may have been champ sooner.