Donald Curry said he asked Leonard and Trainer for
advice concerning his future, and they advised him to stay at welterweight
and not to move up in weight to fight WBA light middleweight champion
Mike McCallum or middleweight champion Hagler. Curry was going to
face McCallum on June 23, 1986, but he decided to back out and stay
at welterweight. Several weeks later, Leonard announced that he was
coming out of retirement to fight Hagler.
Curry vs McCallum
Curry
fought Mike McCallum on July 18th, 1987 for the WBA light middleweight
championship. The fight was televised live on HBO. Curry tried to
have Sugar Ray Leonary, who worked for HBO as a commentator, removed
from the broadcast team, but HBO decided to include Leonard as part
of the telecast.
McCallum, 31-0 with 28 knockouts, was boxing's longest
reigning champion. Curry, a 2-1 betting favorite, boxed well and was
leading on all three scorecards after four rounds. In the fifth, McCallum
caught Curry on the chin with a left hook, putting down for the count.
"I don't know what he hit me with," Curry said forty minutes after
the fight. "I don't know what happened."
HBO commentator Barry Tompkins
told his broadcasting partner Sugar Ray Leonard, "You settled a case
out of court here."
WBC light middleweight champion
After outpointing
former WBC champion Lupe Aquino, Curry got another title shot. He
traveled to Italy to fight Gianfranco Rosi for the WBC light middleweight
title on July 8, 1988. Curry put him down five times, and Rosi retired
on his stool after the ninth round. "I trained hard for five months
to win this title and it paid off," Curry said.
Back-to-back title shots
Following
two knockout victories, Curry went back to France to fight Lineal/IBF
middleweight champion Michael Nunn on October 18th, 1990. Although
Curry found the target, he didn't have the power to hurt the bigger
champion. Nunn dropped Curry with a flurry of unanswered punches in
round ten, and the referee stopped the fight.
Legal Troubles
In April of 1994, Curry, along
with Darrell Chambers and William "Stanley" Longstreet, was indicted
by a federal grand jury in Detroit on drug conspiracy charges. The
ten-count indictment charged them with conspiracy to distribute cocaine,
possession with intent to distribute cocaine, money laundering and
being part of a continuing criminal enterprise. "My God, I don't know
anything about this," Curry said, "I'm guilty by association. I've
never, never ever had anything to do with drugs. I knew Stanley Longstreet
and Darrell Chambers as boxers. I know nothing about any drug ring.
I'm stunned."
In January of 1995, Curry was acquitted on all charges,
Chambers was found guilty and Longstreet took a plea deal. "I have
been systematically...lynched and then castrated by, first, the news
media, and then by the criminal justice system," Curry said afterward.
He also said paying for his legal defense destroyed him financially.
In
March 1996, Curry was jailed for failing to pay child support. He
won work release soon afterward, but that was revoked after he again
failed to make support payments. He served six weeks of a six-month
sentence.