wut kept jerry quarry from reaching greatness was muhammad ali and joe frazier. two fighters who quarry just simply couldnt beat on his best day and didnt match up well against. two great fighters. however that doesnt mean quarry was great......cause i feel on his best day he could have beaten any other fighters of that era. george foreman blatantley and even admitted that he ducked jerry quarry, he wanted no part of jerry quarry. foreman was a guy who quarry matched up well against. here was a guy who quarry should have gotten to prove his greatness against.....but foreman ducked quarry.
ken norton simply did not match up well vs punchers who made norton fight off the back foot. i used to think norton would beat a prime quarry until i watched some quarry films and realized how great jerry was.....and i realized how norton did not match up well vs certain styles. even eddie futch said norton couldnt handle punchers. ken nortons camp avoided the hard punchers of that era and made sure norton fought guys he matched up well against (holmes, ali young all light hitting boxers). quarry is an underated boxer. he had a lot of skills. quarry was also a tiger like finisher when he had his man hurt. quarry was strong and very aggresive. norton doesnt have the firepower to threaten quarry. quarry would dominate norton on the inside. norton had a vunerable chin vs punchers. quarry had the power to knockout norton make no mistake about it. quarry would make norton fight off the back foot which norton was not good at.
Quarry was stopped 6 times in his prime. It's not surprising at all that Norton would stop him.
this is plain out nonsense boxrec hunting. u must look at the circumstances.......
- ali fights were stopped on cuts
- frazier I was on cuts
- chuvalo was a bullshit knockout and if u saw the fight you would know wut i was talking about. quarry could have got up at the count at 2....but he went back down to 1 knee to take a 9 count(Smartly) and he lost track of the count and got up to late. but he was fine......he was dominating chuvalo and would have got up to win a wide decision.
. A long left found Jerry’s temple and caused him to check and dither for a moment before he fell back and sat down. It didn’t seem too big a deal. Embarrassed by the sudden turn of events, Jerry got straight up but then took a knee to clear his head and buy some seconds. His action seemed to be a matter of choice rather than necessity, but then everything went wrong. As the crowd roared and referee Zach Clayton picked up the count, Quarry’s attention became scrambled. Before he knew it, the train he needed to jump on had sped through the station. He still had one knee on the canvas as the count reached ten. Out!
Nobody could believe it. Not the crowd, not Quarry, and probably not even George Chuvalo. In his dressing room, Jerry raged at what he believed to be an injustice. “Nobody knocks me out,” he insisted. “I was looking at the clock and I couldn’t hear the count because the crowd was yelling so much. I got gypped. I got ruined. That destroyed me. I could have gotten up. I couldn’t tell the count by his (Clayton’s) fingers.”
- the ken norton knockout happened when quarry was past his prime, late sub, and out of shape and soft(207lb).
- the frazier II knockout was legit but i think quarry was past it in this fight. watch frazier-quarry I and then frazier-quarry II. joe fraizer and jerry quarry look much faster and better in the first fight than in the 2nd fight. so if your talking about a prime jerry quarry.......he was only ever knocked out by george chuvalo in a very controversial ending.
quarry had a granite chin. norton does not have the power to knockout a prime jerry quarry. his only chance to stop jerry quarry would be by cuts. quarry took flush punches without going down by huge punchers mac foster, ron lyle, earnie shavers, joe frazier I, floyd patterson, etc etc.
norton may have had size......but quarry dealt with the bigger men better.
Quarry being 29 years old is relevant. A heavyweight that is only 29 is still a young man. This isn't a gray area.
Quarry wasn't a last minute substitution; and Norton barely had more time than Quarry did.
every fighter AGES differently.....
ur man riddick bowe was only 28 when he got the shit kicked out of him by andrew golota. however both you and i know that bowe was nowhere near his best anymore when he fought golota. its the same with jerry quarry when he fought norton.
jerry quarry was on his way out when he fought norton. he was retiring when he fought norton. quarry was very battle worn, had slowed down in speed and his reflexes by 1975. quarry took the fight on short notice and showed up out of shape and looked soft. he completley ran out of gas in 3 rounds.
it doesnt take a rocket scientist to realize that was not the vintage jerry quarry in there vs norton.
Norton stopping Quarry in 5 rounds isn't really that suprisingly against a fighter that was inferior to him and didn't have the weapons to beat him.
ill take the prime quarry to stop norton in about 5-7 rounds