Bob Arum has promoted some of the biggest names in boxing during his 40-plus years working in the sport.
From Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali to Floyd Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya, Arum has worked with them all.
One fighter, who could have been as big a star as the aforementioned but never reached his full potential was Donald Curry.
‘The Lone Star Cowboy’ was a sensational amateur boxer with an impressive 400–4 record in the unpaid ranks.
He qualified for the 1980 Moscow Olympics with the United States national team yet he did not get to compete at the Summer Games due to the U.S. boycott.
Instead, Curry turned over as a professional later that year and went on to win his first 25 fights.
During this impressive run, he was crowned the undisputed welterweight champion of the world when he knocked out Milton McCrory at the Las Vegas Hilton in December 1985.
At that time, the last man to unify all the belts at 147lb was Sugar Ray Leonard, who bested Thomas Hearns for the prestigious distinction four years prior.
Arum expected Curry to go on and carve out a similar legacy to that of Leonard, however, it didn’t quite work out that way for the Texan.
“The fighter that comes to mind quickly is a welterweight that I promoted who was extraordinarily talented and I thought would be a huge star but fell short, named Donald Curry,” Arum told talkSPORT.com when asked who the biggest underachiever he promoted was.
“I co-promoted with Frank Warren in the UK. He was a tremendous talent, but he never ever reached his full potential…
“I thought that skill-wise he was the equal of Sugar Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearns when they were welterweights, he was enormously talented.
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“But he ended up with managerial problems and business problems. And he got sidetracked and when he came back after sitting out for a while, an English fighter named Lloyd Honeygahn beat him.
“That was the beginning of the end for Donald Curry.”
When Curry fought Honeyghan in 1986 he was widely considered to be one of the best fighters in the world.
He opened up as a massive favourite but was battered from pillar to post by the Brit before he retired on his stool at the end of the sixth round.
In the lead-up to fight night, Curry’s training had been disrupted after he was kicked out of his gym by his long-time manager David Gorman.
A string of legal issues followed him throughout the back end of his career and he would subsequently go on to lose six of his next 14 fights before retiring as one of boxing’s great underachievers.
