I think a Starling/Brown rematch for the IBF/WBC titles would have been a really good fight if it had happened in 1990. I think Starling could have still taken him, but it would have been a tough fight. Simon's style was made to order for Starling.
Brown's reign as IBF welterweight champion was strange. He fought pretty mediocre competiton from Trice until he finally got a notable opponent in Maurice Blocker. The first Trice fight was a war, televised on national TV, but looking back, it shouldn't have been such a hard fight for Brown. Trice wasn't a top flight welterweight. I haven't read the article you linked yet, but if I remember correctly, Don Elbaum promoted Brown and had trouble getting Starling or Honyghan or Breland to fight Brown. I guess the low key Brown was high risk. Elbaum was kind of a small time promoter for a world champion to be working with.
Don Elbaum was a character (he hated that term btw) and a somewhat shady one, but he was a living caricature of everything good and bad about the people you meet around the sport. In no industry can you meet more interesting people than boxing. A couple of Elbaum stories I remember reading: Don had maybe 10 pro fights (some perhaps under different names). Mostly he would throw on some trunks and gloves and step in to help save his own show if a boxer didn’t show up. One time he had to do this. It’s a small show in his own town (Erie maybe?) and everybody knows everybody. So the promoter has to fight and he dons a robe and pulls the hood over his head hoping no one will recognize the promoter is fighting. On the way to the ring, someone does and calls out, “Hey Elbaum, I know that’s you under that hood.” Don turns to him and says, “Shut up, it ain’t me.” Another time, he’s promoting a show somewhere and the tax system is set up so the promoter has to pay a percentage of the profit. The commission is there and they collect at the end of the show. He’s drawn a big house and is about to make $10K and doesn’t want to pay taxes out of his profit. So he books himself a fight added onto the card against some other guy who is there. When the commission comes to collect, he pulls out his checkbook and writes himself a check for $10K as his purse for the show — he found a loophole, so as promoter he didn’t make a profit, haha. Here are some more tales of Elbaum: https://www.ringmagazine.com/news/ode-to-don-elbaum-19312025-3Urs9MpoFjrhUFOK8qEzDR
Simon Says: I'm The Champ. Why Won't Anyone Fight Me? by WILLIAM NACK Originally Posted: April 2, 1990 One evening in 1981, when Simon Brown was 17 years old and only months away from turning professional, he was pounding the heavy bag in a gym on Columbia Road in northwest Washington, D.C., when the door opened and all movement in the gym seemed to freeze. Sugar Ray Leonard, the undisputed welterweight champion of the world, the conqueror of Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns, walked into the room, looking spiffy in slacks and a sweater. ''I lit up,'' says Brown. ''There he was. Wow! To see him there, it was unbelievable.'' ... CONTINUED https://web.archive.org/web/2015052...on-says-im-the-champ-why-wont-anyone-fight-me