World of Boxing and Rugby Union
Aaron 'The Hawk' Pryor (39-1-0, 35 KO)
Anyone that knows me will tell you I believe Aaron Pryor was the greatest fighter ever assembled. If it wasn't for his life outside of the squared circle he could have gone on to be the best ever...Bar none. Alas, I can only lament what could have been. As the great Sugar Ray Leonard once said, "There are fighters, then there's Aaron Pryor." It didn't go unnoticed that Duran leapt from lightweight to welterweight when Pryor was in residence at 140lbs.
Historically he came out of the same mould as the truely great 'Pitsburgh Windmill' Harry Greb and 'Homocide Hank' Henry Armstrong.
His pure animalistic demeanor in the ring allowed you a peek into the heart of a man on the edge. Having his crew follow him around screaming "Hawk Time", Pryor was a very intimidating force. He was hungrier than any other fighter I have ever seen on film. He was as raw a beast as they come, a man who truly didn't give a damn about anything. He would come forward for every second of every round tossing punches, each one intended to end the fight early. Opponents spent the whole time trying to fight him off rather than box him as they would wish. Effectively any 'game plan' was thrown out of the window from the first bell just to survive, his knockout ratio is testament that not many did. Indeed Aaron Pryor's knockout ratio is one of the highest throughout the history of boxing.
A few years ago I wrote to Aaron Pryor and was astonished to get a reply. Every question I posed to him was answered very candidly, in effect, he was an 'open book.' It was great to hear my #1 has now found peace with his demons and embraced a faith he didn't know he had. My wishes go out to his wife Frankie too.
As this page is dedicated to my favourite fighter I wanted to give readers a glimpse behind the man. Whilst researching to write my own Biography I unearthed this article in the Sports Illustarated. It pretty much tells the story I wanted to convey.
"Aaron was a natural," says Daryl Jones, a professional fighter and lifelong friend of Pryor's. "He could stay up all night with a girl and come in the next day and work out like nothing happened. The only problem anybody ever had with him back then was getting him out of the gym."
As an amateur Pryor won 204 of 220 fights and took home scores of state and regional titles and two national Golden Gloves championships, one of them won against a skinny but dazzling young slugger from Detroit named Tommy Hearns. In 1976 Pryor lost to Howard Davis in the finals of the U.S. Olympic Trials, a defeat that left him so downcast that for a while he considered giving up fighting and doing something else with his life. Davis went on to win a gold medal at Montreal and become a hero. His professional debut earned him $250,000 and a national TV audience. Pryor, on the other hand, couldn't attract a fight in a lousy biker bar. Determined to get back into the gym and launch a pro career, he put in a call to Cincinnati businessman Buddy LaRosa, who was active in the Golden Gloves but was better known for his chain of pizzerias. LaRosa agreed to take Pryor on, more to enjoy a big adventure than to make a lot of money. Good thing, too. Pryor's first pro fight, in November 1976, was against a former kickboxer. Pryor earned all of $300.
"He wasn't a kid anymore," LaRosa says. "He was 21 years old by then, but you could see he was special, he had something. I think you could hit Aaron with a baseball bat, and he might blink an eye. I remember taking him to a dentist one time—he had all his teeth then, and we had to extract one. The dentist took an X-ray and said to me afterward, 'Look at the jaw structure, just look at this.' And it was unbelievable—built like a Mack truck, he was."
In the ring Pryor gained fame for his frenetic starts. The moment the bell sounded, he charged his opponent and began a relentless assault that put the other fighter either on the defensive or on his back. There was no pawing, no gamesmanship and no fear—not from Pryor, anyway. He resembled a windmill being blown at high speed, and he was hard to hit because he bobbed and weaved so much. He also fought with a fury that suggested a battle with demons other than the one before him.
"The badder the guy was, the more Aaron wanted to stop him," says Jackie Shropshire, a former trainer of Pryor's and now the boxing coach at the Emanuel Center gym. "You've got some guys who wilt under pressure, but Aaron got stronger under pressure. And he would get to the point where he actually drooled—he actually drooled at the mouth! That much animal instinct would come out of him. You could see the stuff, dripping from his mouthpiece. There was no way he could be beaten that night."
Pryor drooled buckets the night in 1980 that he relieved Antonio Cervantes of his junior welterweight title with a fourth-round TKO. And he drooled even more two years later when, at the age of 27, he took his perfect 31-0 record and his title to Alexis Argüello in a bout that boxing historians often put on their lists of all-time great fights. Argüello, a proud Nicaraguan with finely honed boxing skills and a devastating knockout punch, was vying to become the first fighter ever to hold titles in four different weight classes.
They fought before some 24,000 in Miami's Orange Bowl. It was wild and savage from the start, and it lasted until the 14th round, when Pryor launched a busy attack that crumpled Argüello to the canvas and left him unconscious for a full four minutes. The defeated Argüello collapsed yet again on the way to his dressing room. He'd suffered a concussion and a cut under his eye that would require eight stitches. Pryor, with his prehistoric jaw and uncommunicative demeanor, seemed hardly fazed, even though he'd absorbed punches that "would have decapitated most people," as Argüello's agent said later.
The rematch was in Las Vegas, and this time Pryor needed just 10 rounds to put Argüello away. As the referee counted him out, Argüello sat on the canvas hugging his knees to his chest, his face a mask of befuddlement. "I felt for him every time I hit him," Pryor said afterward.
In 10 short months he had made his fortune, and now some who know such things were saying that, pound-for-pound, Aaron Pryor was one of the greatest fighters who ever lived. He couldn't climb any higher, for there simply wasn't any sky left. A month later, in October 1983, Pryor instructed his lawyer to post a letter to the World Boxing Association. "We represent Aaron Pryor," the letter said, "and hereby give you formal notice that he has retired as the undefeated world's junior welterweight champion."
Pryor didn't stay retired for long. Not even a year, as a matter of fact. He came back for the obvious reasons. For one, he missed the ring. He missed the way it used to feel, how everything in the whole world was reduced to that single moment in time when he and another man came together and went at each other terribly. For another—and this is where his story takes a different spin from those of most fighters who can't stay away—Pryor had been introduced to drugs. People called it freebasing then, but whatever it was called, he tried it and liked it. Despite all the drugs, Pryor won a couple of fights and managed to claim the International Boxing Federation junior welterweight championship in 1984. But when he became inactive after defending his title in March 1985, he was stripped of the championship, and he retired again. He was still living in Miami, still using. When he ran low on funds, he traded cars, clothes and furniture for drugs. As much as Pryor had lost by then, his perfect record and his name on a boxing card were still worth something, and in August 1987 he was back in the ring again, this time with Bobby Joe Young, a former contender with a 29-5-2 record and a nasty right hand. Pryor had put on a few pounds to step up to welterweight, and during training he looked slow, not to mention hugely
uninterested. The bout was scheduled for 10 rounds. In the seventh Pryor took a blow to the ear and dropped to the canvas. He rose to his feet but for some reason kept his back turned to the referee, who seemed slightly baffled by the fighter's behaviour but kept counting nonetheless. The count reached 10, and the great Aaron Pryor was undefeated no more.
He went back to Cincinnati with the dim hope of starting his life over. Boxing had left him with a detached retina in his left eye that would require surgery, but crack was still part of his life and had done most of the damage. During this period of his life Aaron was rushed to hospital with acute abdominal pain. He had a ruptured ulcer due to drug use. During his long stay in intensive care at the hospital he asked God to deliver him from drug addiction. The first Sunday after his release from the hospital, and with 40 stitches still in his stomach, he made his way to Sunday services and has been there ever since. He is now a Deacon at New Friendship Baptist Church, Cincinatti, Ohio.
Despite the lows in his life, the great man, has no regrets. Pain itself is a great motivator to point your life in the direction you want it to be. In retirement Aaron makes personal apppearances around the world, undertakes movtivational and anti-drug speeches, is active in the church and more importantly enjoys a lovely family life.
As his greatest fan it frustrates me that he flew slightly under the radar of the likes of Duran, Hagler, Hearns and Leonard. There is no doubt in my mind if circumstances were different and Aaron was given the chance his legacy would have been even higher than the truly great one he has already. As stated, with no regrets Aaron takes great pride in his 1996 International Boxing Hall of Fame induction & 2001 World Boxing Hall of Fame induction. From my perspective though it was the Associated Press in 1999 who got it right; naming Aaron Pryor the Greatest Jr Welterweight of the Century. Thus the greatest ever.
Saying Aaron Pryor was just a boxer is like saying Marilyn Monroe was just a blond. He was phenominal.