Who wins? Had you asked me 15 years ago, I would have called it a pick em. Now, I think Napoles would have chewed Curry up badly.
I agree. Napoles was far too... everything for Curry. It'd look like the Lewis rematch IMO. I actually think Curry is closer to Cokes than he is Napoles.
There is a lot of Cokes in Curry. I believe that they are both from the same area in Texas and that both were associated with Doug Lord, who also was involved, early on, with Jesus Chavez. I think that, if one were to look deeply into it, that Cokes had a very strong influence on Curry.
Beautiful fight but I think that Napoles, at his peak, would have thrashed Curry. Interestingly I used to think that Curry had a shot against Napoles due to Napoles' tendency to cut and the way Curry stopped Colin Jones due to that, and Curry being a sharp puncher. Napoles wouldn't have trouble dealing with Curry's more methodical style.
Napoles was simply a lot better than Curry. Curry was Napoles-lite in a way - he was a boxer-puncher but one who didn't have the looseness of Mantequilla. I think that would be his undoing - Napoles would be comfortable boxing with him on the outside and trading with him on the inside. Napoles is too smart for him and either outboxes him for a comfortable points win or starts to ramp up his dominance later on and stop him. I'm going for the latter outcome.