A Boxing Memory: Don Curry vs. Milton McCrory

A Boxing Memory: Don Curry vs. Milton McCrory

It wasn’t only a fight for the undisputed welterweight championship of the world. It was for recognition and a fight for an identity.

Both Donald Curry and Milton McCrory had struggled for acceptance. They both held world titles, but they had a bigger battle to cross over into the mainstream. He was still in retirement, but the shadow of Sugar Ray Leonard still loomed large. Leonard had targeted Curry and McCrory in 1984 when he launched his comeback, but when he was dropped by Kevin Howard and struggled to overcome the unheralded Philadelphia journeyman, Leonard walked away and left the two rival champions wondering what might have been.

In 1985, Curry and McCrory did battle for WBC, WBA, and IBF baubles. The 9,000 Las Vegas Hilton was only half full. An indication that despite their undoubted talents, they were still fighting in the shadows. Both earned $750,000, another little sign that the winner would need a little more to break through into the upper echelons of their sport to earn the multi-million dollar paydays they felt that they deserved.

Curry started as the heavy 4-1 betting favourite, the fighter who was perceived as a superstar in waiting. Larry Merchant, working for HBO, said, “McCrory is regarded as a good fighter. Curry is regarded as potentially a great fighter.”

Curry was 24, and unbeaten in twenty-three fights. McCrory 23, a draw with the underappreciated Colin Jones, the only blemish in twenty-eight fights. Both had said pre-fight that it was one more fight and done at the weight. The desperate struggles Curry had to make the weight were an open secret. But McCrory was struggling also. A piece of both was undoubtedly lost as a result of those struggles to boil their bodies down to the 147-pound welterweight limit.

The winner was being lined up to challenge the WBA light-middleweight champion, Mike McCallum. Curry was even talking about fighting Marvelous Marvin Hagler in the not-too-distant future. A fight with Hagler was being earmarked for 1987. It was a trial for potential greatness. A fight where undisputed was only the beginning.

Both were undefeated, but the hard-to-please boxing fraternity was not convinced. Curry was viewed as a supreme technician, but he needed a little more to excite the masses. Referenced as somewhat of a reluctant warrior. For box office appeal, he needed something more.

McCrory, who cited baseball as his first love, was even further away from what he craved. Plagued by hand injuries, the Kronk fighter had two exceptionally close and hard fights against the tough Welsh fighter Colin Jones. McCrory was rocking and reeling several times in both fights, and he looked on the verge of defeat multiple times. A draw and a wafer-thin points win for McCrory in the rematch did little to change the perception that he would be forever lingering behind his contemporaries who were all vying for what Leonard had left behind. It wasn’t about who won, but how they won if they wanted to take their careers to the next level.

One scribe referenced Curry as the ‘artful dodger’, but in that Las Vegas ring, Curry would show something different. He walked out to Dare Me by The Pointer Sisters. Dare, he did. It was the night he indeed touched greatness. The supreme technician, for one night only, turned into a murderous puncher.

McCrory had height and reach advantages. It was his supposed route to victory. In truth, his only one. For the first half of the opening round, McCrory looked tight but still found space and had some fleeting success boxing behind his jab. But on the biggest night of his life, Curry was in no mood for a cautious approach. He badly wobbled the WBC bauble holder with a left hook in the opening round, and the pattern of the fight had already been set. McCrory survived. But not for long.

Curry exploded a stunning left hook at the halfway point of the 2nd round to drop his rival champion heavily. It looked over. But McCrory miraculously got to his feet. Arguably, it should have ended right there. McCrory was allowed to go on, but Curry instantly unleashed a fight-ending right hand, and it was several minutes before McCrory got to his fight. It was a deeply concerning knockout. And one that could and should have been avoided.

Curry was crowned the first undisputed welterweight champion of the world since Leonard had vacated his throne. Nobody expected the fight to be this one-sided. In simple terms, McCrory was effortlessly blown away.

“I couldn’t believe how slow he was,” Curry said post-fight. It looked to be a golden ticket for Curry. The kind of performance that would signal a move to superstar status.

The man in the middle Mills Lane, said of Curry, ”On the precipice of being a great, great fighter. When history tells the story, he may be one of the greatest.”

But Curry had already reached the summit of his career. Despite talk of fighting McCallum or Thomas Hearns at light-middleweight, the move up in weight was delayed, and in a seismic upset in unflattering surroundings, the unfancied British challenger Lloyd Honeyghan smashed Curry all around the ring in 1986. The American finally moved up, but the damage was already done.

McCrory never recovered from his one-sided defeat to Curry. He admitted post-fight that much of his love for the sport went with his first professional setback. Like Curry, he suffered a defeat to Mike McCallum, and his career slowly flatlined. It ended in 1991, with a win over another Curry, the journeyman Robert Curry was stopped and time was called.

Curry never did achieve the greatness his talents threatened. He carried on far too long and left the sport a badly damaged fighter. It’s a familiar story, but no less sad.