The Curry-Starling fights: How did you score them?

Two of the more quality welterweight fights of recent time from a technical standpoint.

Both of them were super close. Who did you have winning them and by what margins?

Here are my cards:


Marlon Starling vs. Donald Curry I: 115-115 Draw
Starling: 1,3,5,6 and 9.
Curry: 4,7,8,10 and 12.
Rounds 2 and 11 even.



Donald Curry vs. Marlon Starling II: 144-143 Curry
Starling: 1,4,5,6,11 and 13
Curry: 2,7,8,9,10,14 and 15.
Rounds 3 and 12 even.


Will be interesting to see if anyone scored either fight for Marlon. In my opinion he has an argument for winning both.

Curry finished well in both fights, but I definitely think Starling has a case for winning either fight. Both times I thought Starling mugged Curry pretty well on the inside with his superior strength, though Curry had a decisive edge on the outside with his longer reach and well placed punches.

 

Cheers TS.

All in all I think Starling was a little unlucky to end up with two losses from those fights. Think it's unfair that Curry gets generally ranked as the better fighter too because of it. Both these guys were on the same level for me, and Starling probably had the better career all things considered.

Never had a really decisive loss in his career. The Nunn fight was probably the clearest loss but even that was close I felt. Definitely think he won the second Breland fight.

 

Yeah... I love the first Whitaker-McGirt fight but besides that the Curry-Starling fights are probably as good as you'll get in the welterweight division in the last 27 odd years as far as technical boxing goes.

 

Nunn looked pretty apathetic (heck let's just make that pathetic) against Starling, and even though Starling got outworked, he was landing the cleaner, crisper stuff for sure.

I applaud your tolerance levels for giving that bout multiple viewings Mante

 

If he was more durable I think he would hang ok with Napoles but he would still be troubled by Leonard's raw athletic ability, which was on a different level to Curry's.

Napoles would of course have the advantage in fluidity and I'd probably still pick him to eek out a win even if Curry did have greater durability.

I think we received clues as to Curry's vulnerabilities (i.e. lack of durability) before he met Honeyghan. In his first fight with Starling, Mooch rocked him on a couple of occasions and forced Curry to more or less 'run' for a while until he regained his composure. Starling also cut Curry's lip and Don continuously licked at it, and kind of lost a bit of composure by being so preoccupied with the leaking blood. There was also of course Curry's unwillingness to grind with Starling on the inside, opting out by hugging Starling to get on the outside after the ref broke them up. Didn't seem comfortable in there.

I also think he appeared uncomfortable with Jun-Suk Hwang's raw strength and bullying tactics. Hwang was too incompetent in the skills department to really expose a flaw in Curry's game, but all the same, Curry looked vulnerable to me.

 

It's been a while since I've seen the rematch so it's not totally fresh in my mind. I do think he did a better in the rematch on the inside, but I still think Starling got the better of it there on the whole. Curry had excellent precision with his punches on the inside, but he lacked a bit of ferociousness to dig in and grind. Wasn't his style. But it's more of less why he could be beaten there. Starling certainly didn't have a more educated inside game, but he did have the scrapping mentality, and that's why I think he beat him there. I think someone like Whitaker would beat him there too, despite not having a strength advantage against Don. He'd just be more eager to have a go and get more done. Curry seemed a bit reluctant to me.

I'll actually have a look at the rematch a little later tonight, see if I'm misremembering exactly what went down there. Wouldn't be the first time.