Look Out, Rocky IV, It’s Curry-McCrory I for Welterweight Title

LAS VEGAS â€”  This fight could very well be the first in a series, assuming projected growth rates.

First, tonight, for the undisputed welterweight championship. Then, just a bit down the line, for the junior-middleweight title. Then, in another year or so, for the middleweight crown.

As they prepare to battle for the heavyweight championship, 1991:

“Good to see you again, Donald.�

“And you, too, Milton. How is the wife, anyway?�

“Fine, thank you. The flowers were lovely. Shall we fight?�

“By all means, and do say hello to the missus when you get home.�

The subsequent meetings between Donald Curry, World Boxing Assn. champion, and Milton McCrory, World Boxing Council champion, may not be marked by such civility. But likely, unless one destroys the other altogether in the meantime, they will all be attended by increasing interest.

This appears to be the beginning of what could be a wonderful rivalry, the antagonists’ paths to greatness interrupted by head-on collisions every year or so. Rarely have two boxers of such similar caliber come along at the same place and same time. It’s what makes the title-unification fight between the two undefeated boxers at the Hilton tonight so promising.

And since they are so young--McCrory is 23, Curry 24--and since they promise to grow, you can imagine their destinies will forever be linked, just as were two former welterweight champions. Curry says this will be the last time he tries to make 147 pounds, and McCrory is of a similar mind.

“This might not be the last fight they have,� promoter Bob Arum said. “They’ll follow each other around for a number of years; it’ll be like (Sugar Ray) Leonard and (Thomas) Hearns. It’s not that magnitude right now because Leonard was such a star coming out of the Olympics and so flashy, and because Hearns was this menacing presence, absolutely destroying everybody.

“Also, the division they fought through was flush with talent. To get to each other, they fought guys like Roberto Duran, Wilfredo Benitez, Pipino Cuevas. So it was different. And yet, to me, it’s the same.�

It is certainly very similar. In this particular drama, McCrory assumes the role of Hearns, in fact a Kronk gym stablemate from Detroit who held half the welterweight title before Leonard handed him his first loss. Curry, of Fort Worth, takes on the well-groomed part of Leonard, who held the other half.

McCrory, like Hearns, is tall at 6-1 and is known, or at least was known up to the time he won Leonard’s vacated half of the title, as a puncher. Curry, like Leonard, is more a skillful boxer, and if he is not as flamboyant in the ring as Leonard, his marquee looks and refined articulation outside the ring give him the best shot at achieving star quality.

As Arum said, neither is ready right now to be fitted for the mantle of greatness that Leonard shrugged off two years ago.

McCrory had to go 24 rounds in two fights to beat Colin Jones for the vacant WBC title. His biggest victory since was a three-round knockout of Carlos Trujillo.

Curry, who knocked Roger Stafford out in one round for the vacant WBA title, has fought slightly better opposition, but not better enough to claim ring immortality.

Still, Arum has tabbed Curry, one of the more complete boxers on the scene today, as “the future star of boxing� and has projected him into a fight, the next fight of the century, with undisputed middleweight champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler. “Unless we’ve overestimated his abilities.�

Curry, whose troubled half-brother Bruce once held the super-welterweight title, cannot be questioned on talent, but you wonder how driven he really is.

His early training was desultory at best. He would argue with even that. “In the beginning, I didn’t train, at all,� he said.

Starting at 15, he went to the gym only “when I felt like it.� He once told his trainer, Paul Reyes, that he was burned out. Reyes said to take some time off. Curry stayed away a year.

When he returned, he trained for two days and won the Fort Worth Golden Gloves.

The whole point of his amateur career, besides keeping him in shape between basketball and football seasons, was to, uh, meet people.

“I fought in the AAU tournament, and it was on TV,� he said. “I went back to school, and suddenly, the opportunity to pick up girls was there.�

And then Sugar Ray Leonard hit and hit big. “That was the beginning of my pro life,� Curry said.

Curry identified with Leonard and very nearly followed his career path, footstep by footstep. He had won the 1980 Olympic trials and, as Leonard had been in 1976, was favored for the gold medal. But the boycott ended all that.

Since winning the title, his goals have changed somewhat. No longer does he want to fight so he can afford a used car. Now he wants “to make some kind of history, to be another Sugar Ray Leonard.�

For that to happen, he admits, he’ll have to beat more than McCrory. “I have to beat McCrory, win the 154-pound title, beat Hagler--knock all the pins down. And I have to be impressive doing it. Now, there is a pressure to perform. A 12-round decision won’t mean anything to the public.�

Of course, it is possible that even were it to be a 12-round decision, he wouldn’t win it. McCrory, though at least a 4-1 underdog, seems strangely confident.

In the event of a victory by McCrory, Curry could devote himself full time to the nine-week course from the Columbia School of Broadcasting that he has been taking during his training, and join the media.

Unless he’d want to try McCrory somewhere else down the line.