Is Aaron Pryor overrated?

[Willie Pep 229]

In 1980 Pryor turned down 500,000 to fight Leonard. This was before Ray's eye problems happened.

They paid Duran one million for his first go in Montreal.

I wonder if Pryor thought he was worth the same.

Certainly by 1982, post Arguello, he was. So give him the bebefit of the doubt, his people were looking for the right opportunity.

I have little doubt that Pryor-Leonard would have been made in 1983 had Leonard not gotten injured and that would have been a perfect timing for the match-up.

[JAB5239]

They paid Duran one million for his first go in Montreal.

I wonder if Pryor thought he was worth the same.

Certainly by 1982, post Arguello, he was. So give him the bebefit of the doubt, his people were looking for the right opportunity.

I have little doubt that Pryor-Leonard would have been made in 1983 had Leonard not gotten injured and that would have been a perfect timing for the match-up.

Duran was already a legend at that point. Pryor's best win up till then was a 35 year old Cervantes on the backside of his career. Not that it still isn't a good win, but I don't think it's enough to pass up the biggest purse of your career at that point when you're the one calling for the fight.

If Ray never had the retina issue the fight would have been bigger after the Arguello wins of course. I still think Leonard would have won. He was bigger, faster (although debatable) and knew how to use movements and angles to negate Pryor's attacks. That's just my opinion though. Aaron should have taken the fight when offered though in '81. Had he and won he would have been in the drivers seat and gotten paid better every fight after. Even if he just had a good showing and lost it would have boosted his earning power. I can't know what the man was thinking, but if he thought he really had a chance it baffles me why he would pass on the opportunity.

[Willie Pep 229]

Duran was already a legend at that point. Pryor's best win up till then was a 35 year old Cervantes on the backside of his career. Not that it still isn't a good win, but I don't think it's enough to pass up the biggest purse of your career at that point when you're the one calling for the fight.

If Ray never had the retina issue the fight would have been bigger after the Arguello wins of course. I still think Leonard would have won. He was bigger, faster (although debatable) and knew how to use movements and angles to negate Pryor's attacks. That's just my opinion though. Aaron should have taken the fight when offered though in '81. Had he and won he would have been in the drivers seat and gotten paid better every fight after. Even if he just had a good showing and lost it would have boosted his earning power. I can't know what the man was thinking, but if he thought he really had a chance it baffles me why he would pass on the opportunity.

I understand you point, but it seems predicated that Pryor had a chance to beat Leonard in '81.

Leonard ****** too hard for Pryor. The Pryor who took shots from Arguello does not stand up to that many clean right hands from SRL.

Pryor is done by 8 in TKO in either year. When asked 'Who hit the hardest?' Duran didn't hesitate to say Leonard.

500,000 really wasn't enough for Pryor. This one fight would define his career and when you take out the percentages for manger, trainer, any investors, maybe expenses . . .

(Do they still give fighters training expenses like back in the 1920s?)

. . . and then add in taxes, and what is left for Pryor is not life changing money. This was his one big chance, (likely to come out a loser either year.) So the fight had to be bigger or SRL has to make less.

Insisting on more money seems fair to me. I think offering him $500,00 in '81 is exploitive.

[JAB5239]

I understand you point, but it seems predicated that Pryor had a chance to beat Leonard in '81.

Leonard ****** too hard for Pryor. The Pryor who took shots from Arguello does not stand up to that many clean right hands from SRL.

Pryor is done by 8 in TKO in either year. When asked 'Who hit the hardest?' Duran didn't hesitate to say Leonard.

500,000 really wasn't enough for Pryor. This one fight would define his career and when you take out the percentages for manger, trainer, any investors, maybe expenses . . .

(Do they still give fighters training expenses like back in the 1920s?)

. . . and then add in taxes, and what is left for Pryor is not life changing money. This was his one big chance, (likely to come out a loser either year.) So the fight had to be bigger or SRL has to make less.

Insisting on more money seems fair to me. I think offering him $500,00 in '81 is exploitive.

He hadn't built a name up yet. I don't think it's exploitive at all. Here is something I found looking more into Aaron
it's from a sports Illustrated article but the link had expired.

I had nothing but good dealings with Aaron," says Elkus. "Unfortunately, he's his own worst enemy. He isn't a bad kid, and he's a kid even though he's 27. I don't think Cincinnatians look at him as a professional athlete. I think they look at him as a kid from the ****** who had the gall to say, 'I'm going to turn down a $500,000 offer to fight Ray Leonard.' Now they like to hear that Aaron had a paternity suit, that his attorney sued him, that he fired his business manager, that he doesn't want Buddy LaRosa in his corner anymore. But all that doesn't mean anything. The guy can fight. Aaron has his minuses, but he has a lot of pluses you never hear about."
Smith lined up a $50,000 payday against Antonio Cervantes, the WBA junior welterweight champion, for Pryor on Aug. 2, 1980. It was a typical Pryor fight. Cervantes dropped him with a beautiful right in the first round, but hardly had Pryor touched the deck when he was up and trying to get around the referee, who was still counting, to get at Cervantes. Pryor knocked him out in the fourth round to win the title.

"That's when our problems got real bad," says LaRosa. "After Aaron won the title, he demanded the books. His second wife, Theresa, took them over. She's a very intelligent, capable lady, and I figured we were a team again. But Aaron wasn't satisfied. He never is. He has an insatiable lust for fame, for respect; he's got to be like Leonard. He'd throw a ****zine at me, yelling, 'He's on the cover.' I'd say, 'Aaron, you have to wait. All you have is a junior title.' "

Once at a boxing dinner Pryor lambasted Leonard for not helping him on his rise to the title. Leonard took him aside and said in essence, "Hey, man, nobody helped me either."

Smith, meanwhile, was working on a $250,000 fight against Saoul Mamby, then the WBC junior welterweight champ, to unify the title. But Theresa got to Pryor first and shot him in the midst of a quarrel. The bullet, a .22, went through his right forearm, grazed his chest and wound up in his coat pocket. Later, Theresa said she had shot him because she loved him, and they later reconciled. Pryor told LaRosa that the incident was LaRosa's fault, because he tried to mediate their domestic problems.

By now Wells Fargo had caught up with Smith, and the Mamby fight was canceled. The next thing LaRosa heard, while watching the television news, was that Pryor had fired him. Pryor had also replaced his attorney of the moment.

"Aaron, what are you doing?" LaRosa asked. "I've got a contract for you to fight Roberto Duran for $750,000."

"No, I don't want to fight him. My new attorney told me not to sign anything until you and I work out a new contract." So much for the firing of LaRosa.

By the time they worked out a new agreement, the chance to fight Duran—and the $750,000 payday—was gone. The new contract covered six years; LaRosa's share was cut to one-third and he no longer had any ancillary rights. Expenses were to come off the top.

"The ink wasn't even dry on the damn contract," says LaRosa, "when I found out Aaron had signed a one-year promotional contract with Don King, who was going to give him a $100,000 bonus. Then King sent me the contract to sign. I told Aaron it was a mistake, but if that was what he wanted, then I'd sign.

"Aaron said, 'But King is going to get me a Duran fight, a Mamby fight, because he's got Duran and Mamby.'

" 'Aaron,' I said, 'we had a Duran fight, but you didn't want it.' "

Pryor's partnership with King lasted only three fights. In the first, in June of 1981, he stopped Lennox Blackmoore in two. The following November he beat Dujuan Johnson in seven.

[Kid Cauliflower]

Talking about Aaron, in an article in The Guardian,
his wife Frankie Pryor talks about the awareness of CTE, or rather the lack of it.
She wants the condition to be highlighted more. An extract of the article:

Frankie Pryor fills my Zoom screen with warmth and humour – and a little anger at boxing’s failure to discuss the damage it did to her husband and most fighters. “I took care of everything,” she says of her 30 years with Aaron. “I didn’t understand the damage was caused solely by boxing until he started showing anger. Aaron was so easy-going until then. I started taking him to a neurologist around 1994. At that point we didn’t know [it was CTE]. Initially it was just front temporal lobe damage but he never stopped going to a neurologist until he died. A neurologist said: ‘This is the only Hall of Fame fighter I’ll ever work with and we need more proof to confirm what we believe.’”

Was there sufficient proof Pryor had been brain-damaged by boxing? “Oh yes. You see that damage in every old fighter – without exception. I noticed all the fighters acting the same when we got together. His wife would go to the restroom and that fighter would get confused. One of us other wives would handle the situation. We educated ourselves about CTE because it’s not something you talk about to your regular girlfriends. We had this group – me, Brenda Spinks, Marvin Hagler’s wife Kay, Ken Norton’s wife, Rose.”

Frankie Pryor also mentions Muhammad Ali:
“The one fighter who could have brought lots of attention to this was Ali. [But] Ali’s family chose to say, ‘Oh, he has Parkinson’s, it has nothing to do with boxing.’ It has everything to do with boxing.”

Great stuff. Who would have thought the wives had a little support group to discuss their husbands' CTE?

[QueensburyRules]

Oh shiat! Now your askin for trouble lol!! Watching Pryor at work is kind of like watching the late Kevin Randallman using wrestling skills in MMA... Akin to watching the Alien monster opening its six mouths, and then you see a puree where someone once stood.

I think this fight would be monumental! Crawford has good grappling skills and knows how to fight. So Pryor would not be up against a pure puncher like Alexis. I still think Pryor could win that fight overwhelming Crawford... I might go so far as to say that is a prediction.

- - Finally some meat and potatoes outta you.

Aaron forte was totally unorthodox combined with blinding power. Craw starts well, but once Aaron warms up, it’s BOOMsky time.

[billeau2]

- - Finally some meat and potatoes outta you.

Aaron forte was totally unorthodox combined with blinding power. Craw starts well, but once Aaron warms up, it’s BOOMsky time.

It would last a bit because Crawford was actually an excellent wrestler. But eventually yeah...