“The Bellflower Bomber” Irish Jerry Quarry

Jerry Quarry (May 15, 1945 – January 3, 1999), nicknamed “Irish” or “The Bellflower Bomber”, was an American professional boxer.^[2] During the peak of his career from 1968 to 1971, Quarry was rated by The Ring magazine as the most popular fighter in the sport. His most famous bouts were against Muhammad Ali.^[3] 

On the small side for a top heavyweight in his era, Quarry was six feet tall (1.83 metres), under 200 pounds (88 kilograms), with a relatively short reach of 72 inches and a tendency to not keep his guard up even though he was cut-prone. An extraordinary chin, fast handed counter-punching, an excellent left hook, and an ability to set traps were on show in Quarry’s crowd pleasing upset wins over Buster Mathis, Mac Foster, Ron Lyle and Ernie Shavers.

Quarry’s major flaw was a tendency to play the opponent’s game in fights crucial to his career that he might have won with a better strategy, as when he threw caution to the winds and tried to slug it out with Joe Frazier, or failed to press the action with Jimmy Ellis.

Accumulated damage from lack of attention to defense against larger men at the top level, no head guard sparring, and attempted comebacks in 1977, 1983, and 1992 allied to a certain vulnerability to neurological damage that his boxing brothers also exhibited resulted in Quarry developing an unusually severe case of dementia pugilistica. Unable to perform everyday tasks, dependent on his family, and with the fortune he had earned frittered away, Quarry died at 53 years old.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Quarry