Damn shame he didn’t maximize his potential. but a 1980-1983 Pryor was an enigma. And a live dog against any lightweight in history
I would say that Pryor maximized his potential. He's universally regarded as a top 3 all time junior welter. The GOAT junior welter by many. His style was always gonna burn out quickly. I don't subscribe to the notion that guys like Pryor and Tyson didn't maximize their potential. They were as good as they ever could have been... only over a 2-3 year period. Unmaximzed potential is someone like Bojado, who could have been a world champion, but didn't amount to shit. All time greats maximized their potential.
The only critique of Aaron I have regarded his potential would be that he didn't get the big fights he wanted. However, I don't think that meant he didn't get the most out of himself. He played the cards he was dealt and made the most of them. In a sense, he put every single aspect of his life before boxing and in terms of what he achieved, he got everything that he put in back. Everybody who knows who Aaron Pryor was knows he was a monster and a great fighter. I don't think there's anybody who ever gave any time to boxing who doesn't respect that.
Between 1980 and 1983, he was awesome. But the fights he most wanted, didn’t come off, mostly due to forces outside his control. The week of November 8-13, 1982, was simultaneously the best and worst of Pryor’s career (and a significant one in boxing history as well): -November 9th: Sugar Ray Leonard has called a public event that many predict will be to announce a fight with Middleweight Champion Marvin Hagler. Instead, he announces his retirement. Aaron Pryor’s dream fight goes up in smoke too. -November 12: The Battle of the Champions takes place with Pryor celebrating the greatest moment of his career, a 14th round TKO over Lightweight Champion Alexis Arguello. -November 13: With Pryor fresh from his win over Arguello the night before and with a new high profile, he watches a seemingly run-of-the-mill title defense for Ray ‘Boom Boom’ Mancini, WBA Lightweight Champion, turn into a tragedy when Mancini kills Duk-Koo Kim, overshadowing talk of a potential Pryor-Mancini superfight. He peaked that week as a fighter but his future also changed. He had to settle for a rematch with Arguello instead of super fights with Leonard and Mancini so by that point, there weren’t any real challenges left at junior welterweight. A year after the first Arguello fight, he was wandering the streets of Liberty City, Miami, looking for crack.
Pryor’s drug addiction shortened his career, but I think his whirlwind style generally would have made for a short stay at the top
He made the most of his talents and abilities I think. His highly energetic and aggressive style was always going to burn him out quickly and his troubles with drugs didn’t help as well. We definitely missed out on seeing him move up to 147. At his best though he was a monster.
It's better for his legend that he didn't move up. Leonard, Hearns, Duran, and Benitez all would have whupped his ass at 147.
