What went wrong with Barry McGuigan against Stevie Cruz in '86?

It seems McGuigan and Hamed did have something in common after all-a complete inability to cope with and come back from a loss.

Pretty weak when you consider they both had plenty left to give.

 

I agree, part of being a great champion is having the strength of character to come back from defeat.

 

The heat, and the fact was that they probably underestimated Stevie Cruz in the first place.

 

He just got worn down from too many tough wars...caught up to him

 

Too many tough fights in a short period of time. You could see him starting to dip in the Cabrera fight. By the time it came to Cruz, a melting pot of last minute change of opponent, unbelievable heat (10 degrees hotter than Rob/maxim) plus the cracks were starting to appear in the training camp, all combined to a bad night for him. A helluva lot of money was put on Cruz that night too cos the odds dropped significantly so someone somewhere lumped heavy money on him. Was it Eastwood? I dunno, but a substantial amount must have been laid for it to change so drastically, the talk was 1 bet of 500k. Guy was lucky he never lost his life that night with the dehydration he went through.

Having said that i still think he did enough to win the fight. I have the scorecard here somewhere and if he only took the 1 count instead of the 2 (in the 15th) he would have kept the title on a majority decision. Credit to Cruz who fought well too.

 

I lived in Canada most of my life, very hot summers, I spent half of that period in the Okanagan Valley, tropical type heat, 40+ C, like Vegas, S California, Texas, Mexico...

_ucken unbelievable, and I NEVER, EVER got used to it - KILLER!

Barry had No Chance in it!!!

 

Met barry this year. He said (as well as everything else) he had a twisted ancle in camp and was still forced to go through with the fight. If he only went down the one time in the last round he would have kept his title on a draw anyway.

IMO he began to squable about money. Eastwood wanted to sign for multi fight deals in america so barry felt barney wanted to call the shots a bit too much, he would rather have one fight deals and reamin independant. It was something like barry found out the Duvas offered eastwood bigger money for gomez in newyork but barry did not get to hear about it until the vegas fight was signed. There was a loss of trust and it became bigger than taking care of business in the ring. Mcguigan stayed out of the ring so that his contract with eastwood could expire but he proberbly cut his nose of to spite his face.

 

I remember the fight well...

I seem to remember reading at the time that Barry's management accepted some 250k (not sure if £ or USD) to box early on the card i.e. the heat of the day...big mistake...that would seem to suggest they underestimated Stevie...

I also believe that Dave Gorman turned down the McGuigan match once then accepted it the second time, quite a bit later. Gorman must have seen something between the 2 offers that made him change his mind and fancy Stevie's chances...that is significant in itself, imo...

 

He was not properly conditioned for the blazing heat .. he clearly wore down ... it was a shocking upset at the time s Barry was a bold and brave warrior ... all and all he was lucky to a degree as they were building up a super fight between him and a prime Azumah Nelson and Barry would have been crushed far worse than Cruz beat him ..

 

Interesting stuff, thank you!

 

I would've liked to see Bazza in there with Esparragoza and Villasana.

 

The mcguigan of summer 86? Nelson wins.
The mcGuigan of summer 85? Nelson MAY still win, but it aint easy. Barry gives him all he wants.