Would you consider Curry a great fighter in his short peak? Or did just lack that something and as a result was only "very good"? Also, was the Honeyghan loss 100% due to Don being drained? Or did Honeyghan have his number?
My personal opinion, I used to consider him a great, now I'm thinking that he was closer to the level of very good/borderline great.
Curry was excellent all-round. A physical phenomenon, he was very quick, very well conditioned, and very dangerous. Brutal KO power which was delivered via sneaky, short shots with unerring accuracy. The shots which iced McCrory would likely take out most welterweights in history. His foot-work was amazing. All of that amateur experience definitely paid off. I love watching how he effortlessly switching laterally out-boxing, to cutting off the ring and pinning his man down. The form he threw shots with is immaculate. So short and tidy, there was no wasted space or energy. And he set them up proper too, just watch how he shifts forward slightly when coming in with that left hook vs Milton. He was a master of getting the most done with the least amount of energy. This may have been because he had weight struggles, but he seemed happy to coast for a lot of rounds and win them on flashes of brilliance. His defence was very good, except he constantly made a basic mistake, which was to lean back when being pressured. Honeyghan kept catching him when he did that, and it's how McCallum set up that amazing shot. I do think Curry's defence was good, though. He knew how to parry, slip, roll and knew how to keep someone at arm's reach. His ring IQ is vastly underrated, too. I do agree that his competition was pretty poor, all things considered. Beating Starling twice is highly impressive. But after that his record is very thin; LaRocca was more style than substance, McCrory and Jones were clearly about the same level and that level was hardly ATG, Diaz never beat anyone of note before or after, but did lose to Michael Olajide. Stanford is a good win, but was clearly worse than McCrory, as evidenced, and I highly doubt he'd have beaten a pre-Hearns Cuevas. I don't know why people doubt him due to the Honeyghan fight, though. He had the first part of his camp cut short due to managerial issues. A week and a half before the fight, he was still 20lbs over the limit and then his grandad died, halting his training even more. He had to drain himself horrendously to get down to 147, and it showed in there. The versions who fought Starling would've destroyed Honeyghan IMO. De La Hoya probably doesn't have the engine to compete with the aggressive Curry who rematched Starling, and I highly doubt he'd out-box the normal version of Curry who liked to counter-punch but stayed out of range.
Curry is a bad matchup for Oscar. I think Don beats Oscar clearly. Mosley, Ike, and Tito figure to match-up better against Curry than DLH.
I think Curry beats Mosley and Ike pretty clearly - mostly due to styles than class. Tito probably KOs him.
With Mosley, it depends on Shane. If Shane went into true kill mode, and was willing to take some counters to get to Curry, then I think he would get to Curry eventually. If Curry's counters tame Shane, then Curry outboxes him to a UD. With Ike, it's tough to say. It's possible Ike was too robotic for Curry, but it's also possible Ike's jab would bust Curry up, and those sharp right hands would follow.
The latter IMO. Regardless of what excuses he may have had, the manner in which he surrendered his title to Honeyghan and was flattened with one punch from McCallum has to raise serious doubts about his durability and resilience. I wouldn't trust him to be favored over anyone in the all-time WW top 20. I think there were elements of both at play. If Curry was in better shape, he might've been willing/able to ride out the early storm and then take Honeyghan into deep water, where Honey sometimes faded. On the flipside, if Honey hadn't torn into Curry like he did, then Curry might not have been convinced to surrender so quickly.
Agreed on both. I don't doubt Curry being drained played a factor, but Honeyghan just looked problematic for him. For any version of Curry. That's what separates a huge upset from like Curry-Honeyghan from Tyson-Douglas, for instance. With the latter, Mike looked flat against Douglas from the outset, and he had famously not been training for the fight, and got dropped by McCall in sparring. In Curry-Honeyghan, Curry looked pretty sharp imo UNTIL Honeyghan nailed him with that right hand that (no pun) put him on queerstreet. Curry looked like shit from then on.
I don't understand where Mosley gets this reputation for "being tamed" on this board. The guy was in numerous hard-fought battles with a who's-who of top fighters from 147-154. As far as vs. Curry goes, I wouldn't trust that Curry doesn't either break from Shane's bodyshots or gets flattened by a single well-timed hook.
I might have admittedly overdone that rep. 99-01 Mosley probably had the fire and willingness to take some Curry bombs to get to him. I shouldn't really be questioning Shane's intangibles here, when Shane CLEARLY had more intangibles than Curry.
From 1980-on, here's how I'd break it down. Guys Curry DEFINTELY loses to: Leonard, Hearns, Duran. Guys who I think Curry loses to, but it's not a given: Benitez and Trinidad. Too close to call: Quartey, Cuevas, and Mosley. Curry beats imo: DLH, Whitaker, Floyd, Forrest, Cotto, McGirt, Simon Brown. Curry EASILY beats: Thurman, Porter, Garcia, Brook. Tough to say, because their comp has been lacking: Bud and Spence.
Curry was Having Trouble Making Weight @ Least 2 Fights PRIOR to Honeyghan...The ONLY Reason he Didn't Move Up to '54 Soooooooner was Because Ray Leonard's Advisor, Mike Trainer, Talked Curry into Remaining @ '47... Curry-Hagler was Being Discussed; Hagler was # 1 Lb for Lb, Curry was # 2... Curry Takes Trainer's Advice, LOSES, Leonard Unretires to Face Hagler Afterwards... REED
Curry did look excellent at 154 against Pablo Baez before losing to Honeyghan. He looked solid at the weight.
I think he showed greatness at times, even if his overall record doesn't quite suggest he was in that bracket. Some fighters with generally good / very good, rather than great records were capable of doing things in the ring which marked them out as being that little bit more special than most other good / very good fighters in or around their level, and Curry was one of them. By the time of the Jones and McCrory fights, he really did look like the complete fighter. Of all Welterweights since, I think Curry was the closest thing to Napoles at his best in terms of style, mixing balance and technique with power and a bit of a nasty streak. Very good as applying that classy pressure, and his economy of movement was tremendous. With regards to the Honeyghan loss, it's hard to say for me because Honeyghan had a similarly short prime. Compare Honeyghan against Rosi, Shufford and Curry to the one who turned up against Blocker or Starling, and it's like night and day. The early version was a fast-twitching ball of energy who could carry the fight, but who also set his attacks up properly and had that same kind of bite and nasty streak about him. The latter version loaded up like a bar room brawler and struggled in the face of decent power. For what it's worth, as I'm sure most will know Starling, who had the advantage of sharing the ring with both of them, always maintained that Honeyghan was all hype who got a weight-drained Curry at the right time which blew his reputation out of all proportion, and that he'd have never competed with Curry before his weight issues. Read into that what you will. My instinct on this has always been that Curry probably was legitimately struggling at 147 by that point. Frank Warren claimed it was common knowledge at the time, and a key reason in why he made the fight with Colin Jones a couple of years before, reasoning that if Jones could make it past the first few rounds a weight-drained Curry might be there for the taking later on. Given what Curry had shown in the two or three years before, I find it hard to see Honeyghan hammering him like that if Curry had been in top condition. But that doesn't mean Honeyghan couldn't have still caused problems for the best version of Curry, and I do think that Lloyd would have always posed different kind of problems from those posed by Curry's other victims, even the better ones.
The Forrest fights. But I agree with you, considering how hittable he was, Mosley was a rather courageous fighter, was very durable and had quite a chin. That uppercut from Forrest would have ko'd a lot of fighters.
I rewatched Curry-Baez tonight. Jesus Christ Curry was sharp in that fight! And that was at 154. He really should have stayed. Makes me feel like junior middle would have been his peak division.
