BoxRec

Has anyone read "Hard Luck: The Triumph and Tragedy of Irish Jerry Quarry"?

I believe it came out earlier this year.

Any opinions?

I was a bit disappointed with the Quarry book as he is a good subject matter and there has been no previous biography so there was a gap in the market for this book.

My first problem is the cover. At first glance, the pair of tattoo’d fists makes it look like yet another king of the gypsies, football hooligan, hard bastard type book .... though I did enjoy the story behind the tattoo-ing of the fists. And surely there was someone better to quote on the cover than former professional boxer Mickey Rourke?

There are a few mistakes like Mac Foster getting mixed up for Bob Foster as an opponent for Mike Quarry, and saying Jerry Quarry lost to Alongi first time yet two sentences later correctly saying it was a draw!

But as someone from the UK, what really grated on me is what I can only describe as “Americanisms”.

“A Jed Clampett special nor a Joad-Mobile”, “crapping in high cotton”, “get busy spending some real cabbage”, “Chuvalo brought his lunch-box”, “Scrap Iron brought his lunch box”, “Quarry ate Buster’s lunch” etc etc.
What the hell does that stuff mean? It just broke up the flow of the book for me trying to guess what the author was meaning with all these cliches.

I did enjoy reading about Mike Quarry and I hadn’t realised just how active a pro he had been (20 fights in less than a year). I also hadn’t heard of Quarry challenging Norton to a fight in a car-park after Ken made some smart remarks about Jerry’s woman.

But overall, this book just didn’t live up to my expectations.

Bladder wrote:I was a bit disappointed with the Quarry book as he is a good subject matter and there has been no previous biography so there was a gap in the market for this book.

My first problem is the cover. At first glance, the pair of tattoo’d fists makes it look like yet another king of the gypsies, football hooligan, hard bastard type book .... though I did enjoy the story behind the tattoo-ing of the fists. And surely there was someone better to quote on the cover than former professional boxer Mickey Rourke?

There are a few mistakes like Mac Foster getting mixed up for Bob Foster as an opponent for Mike Quarry, and saying Jerry Quarry lost to Alongi first time yet two sentences later correctly saying it was a draw!

But as someone from the UK, what really grated on me is what I can only describe as “Americanisms”.

“A Jed Clampett special nor a Joad-Mobile”, “crapping in high cotton”, “get busy spending some real cabbage”, “Chuvalo brought his lunch-box”, “Scrap Iron brought his lunch box”, “Quarry ate Buster’s lunch” etc etc.
What the hell does that stuff mean? It just broke up the flow of the book for me trying to guess what the author was meaning with all these cliches.

I did enjoy reading about Mike Quarry and I hadn’t realised just how active a pro he had been (20 fights in less than a year). I also hadn’t heard of Quarry challenging Norton to a fight in a car-park after Ken made some smart remarks about Jerry’s woman.

But overall, this book just didn’t live up to my expectations.

I agree with basically every thing bladder said, especially the bit about the odd slang used. A lot of it was so obscure it wasnt even funny. I didnt mind the use of the Hard Luck tattoos on the cover as those were Jerry's dads trademark and symboized the toughness and brutality of that family life which Jerry was a product of while also bringing to light all of the bad luck Jerry suffered in his career. As stated above there were some fairly glaring mistakes or ommissions. One of the biggest in my mind was the well publicized 1966/67 sparring match between Quarry and Frazier when they were both up ane coming contenders. This really set the stage for their rivalry at the time. Also much of Jerry's early career was really glossed over and dealt with in a very short order fashion when even early on, as a prospect, Quary was one of the biggest fighters on the west coast and was on television quite often for interviews, guest appearances, etc. That fact, the idea that Quarry was a VERY BIG DEAL very early on is completely lost in the book. They also dont give a whole lot of background information on Quarry's back injury going into the Ellis fight. This is historically a pretty big part of Quarry lore and apparently the authors had access to people who would be able to shed light on the subject but they simply tacked on a short postscript of the injury after the discussion of the Ellis fight. As it stands its better than nothing but still pretty lacking IMO.

Klompton, do you know much about Quarry and Frazier sparring back in '66-'67?

I know Frazier spent some time out in Los Angeles training with Futch during that time period and had a couple of fights as well.

Would love to know how those sparring matches went.

Frazier was on top of quarry all the time bulling him to the ropes. Quarry was good at fighting off the ropes but not against frazier. Frazier smothered jerry and didnt allow him to get off. He also bloodied quarry. It started a lot of speculation about a showdown between the two.

the session was held at the main street gym

Sadly there seems to be a lot of self or "independently" published boxing bios that are, frankly, complete crap. Badly written, half-hazard research and simply inaccurate information. I haven't read this book but it sounds it belongs on the same shelf with the numerous others.

On the other hand, there is some truly good and well-researched stuff out there.

yancey wrote:Klompton, do you know much about Quarry and Frazier sparring back in '66-'67?

I know Frazier spent some time out in Los Angeles training with Futch during that time period and had a couple of fights as well.

Would love to know how those sparring matches went.

Yancey, there apparent is film of the sparring session available:

http://www.nbcuniversalarchives.com/nbc ... 676_s01.do