Marlon Starling still hopes to one day take his rightful place in the International Hall of Fame, writes Thomas Gerbasi.
TO MANY in the boxing world, especially in New York City, Mark Breland was going to be the next Sugar Ray Robinson. One of the best amateurs produced by the United States, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist was on his way to great things in the professional ranks, going 18-0 en route to winning the vacant WBA welterweight title against Harold Volbrecht in February 1987.
Six months later, he faced Marlon Starling, a veteran of 45 professional fights who had beaten Simon Brown, Floyd Mayweather Snr, Jose “The Threat” Baret, Kevin Howard and Tommy Ayers, but came up short in his first fight. title shot against Donald Curry in 1984. And more disappointments against Brooklyn’s Breland were expected, but the then-28-year-old from Hartford, Connecticut had other ideas, even if he knew it could be an uphill climb.
“That was a great Olympic champion, and he was supposed to beat Breland,” said Starling, now 63. “He was a promising young guy and I was a veteran. And conditioning and being a smart fighter can beat a rookie. But Breland, they talked about how he hadn’t lost a fight in so many years and he was an Olympic champion. My position was do or die, and I had to take a lot of punishment to win that fight.”
Starling fell behind early, but the almost frail Breland never got to his feet, hitting the deck several times as he tried to get his legs back. That was the signal for “Magic Man” to press on, and he certainly did as he dodged the champion’s five-inch height advantage and began to take down his foe.
“Breland had a really good shot,” Starling said. “Everybody was talking about his right hand, but his jab was the most important thing. So you just had to be smart with Breland.”
In the 11th round, Starling abandoned intelligence in favor of brute force, and that strategy worked. Breland was counted out 1:38 into the frame, and Marlon Starling was a world champion in an era when that feat wasn’t so easy to pull off. But why did Starling pick on a New Yorker like that?
“Hey, they were coming for me,” laughed the affable Starling, who still lives in Connecticut, where he is a member of the state’s Boxing Hall of Fame, one of three he honors along with halls in Rochester and New Jersey. The only one missing at this point is the big one, the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota.
It’s a sad omission, especially given what he did in the ring and the era in which he did it. And he feels the same as his fans and many in the media about it.
“He should be in the Hall of Fame,” Starling said. “There are quite a few people in that hallway who should be there earlier. God bless you. And I’m not jealous, but I’m just saying I know I should be. When we say, Hall of Famer, we try to judge it by the decade you were in, and you can’t get past that decade of the ’80s, it wasn’t like I was just the WBC champion. I was a WBA champion, I was a USBA champion, I was a NABF champion and, at the time, we had some good fighters back then.
That could be the understatement of the year. Just look at Starling’s résumé to see the level of fighter he was regularly in the ring with: Curry (twice), Brown, Breland (twice), Lloyd Honeyghan, Michael Nunn and Maurice Blocker. It was a Murderers Row and Starling carried a Tommy Gun on every trip between the ropes, her skill set was sublime but with the ability to strike when she wanted and wade into deep water thanks to her gas tank and an iron chin that only reached. he dented once when Tomas Molinares knocked him out with a clearly thrown punch (and landed) after the bell. That fight was later ruled a no-contest, and ironically, Starling still considers the 1988 fight to be one of his best performances.
One of the most satisfying? His next fight, when he took the WBC welterweight title from Lloyd Honeyghan on February 4, 1989. There was a heated build-up to the fight, but once the bell rang, the challenger took over, stopping his foe in nine rounds.
“Honeyghan was the easiest fight of my life,” Starling said. “I had no problem with Lloyd Honeyghan. When I said jump, he jumped. If I say I’m going to hit you on the head, I do. it was easy.
Such longevity in the sport at the highest level is rare, but Starling came from a rare era when the best fought the best and boxers learned their trade the old-fashioned way: hard work.
“He was a sparring partner when he was in my 10-round fights,” said a man who competed in two 15-round bouts against Curry and Breland. “He was fighting everyone who came to the gym and needed work. I had to work because I had to get in shape. And I stayed in shape. Those were gym fights. You go home and it hurts. But those were good days. I wouldn’t change those.”
One training session he won’t forget was against Thomas Hearns. Starling was initially going to work with Sugar Ray Leonard, but when that didn’t work out, he went to work with “The Hitman” for the 1981 SuperFight between Leonard and Hearns.
“I went to work with Ray and they didn’t want to train,” Starling recalls. “But they asked me to go up to work with them, and the day before, they didn’t want to train. Then when Tommy and Ray were going to fight in Vegas, I went to work out with Tommy and got the better of him, but he hit me with his right hand and when I got back to my room, my nose was running and I was like, I think my jaw is broke, and my jaw was broken.”
Sidelined for five months, Starling returned with a vengeance in 1982, going 6-1 with four knockouts, the only split decision loss coming in his first fight with Curry.
“I fought Curry twice and I thought I beat him the first time,” Starling said. “He was one of the best fighters I ever fought. I told Curry, ‘I beat you the first time,’ and you know what he told me? ‘That’s not what the logbook says.’”
Starling laughs, and has kept in touch with Curry through the Texan’s son, and also makes sure to get on the phone with Leonard, the one fighter he regrets not sharing a ring with. And you can guess how those conversations are going.
“I wanted to fight Ray, and every once in a while, he and I get on the phone and talk about it. Ray says, ‘I would have kicked your ass,’ and I’m like, ‘You know better than that. For one, you would have to try harder to hit me.’”
This is true. Starling not only had an iron chin, but his defense was above and beyond that of most of his teammates. Do you want proof? Go to YouTube and search for “Starling Defense” and see what comes up. For him, that was simple.
“I was always taught as a fan to bring your hands back,” he said. “If you bring your hands back, you don’t have to worry about getting hit. You know if you hit someone, what are they going to do? They’re going to want to hit you back. Is it that simple or what?
He laughs when he then refers to the Molinares fight.
“He had a plan when he was fighting Molinares,” Starling said. “I beat him very easy. Guess what? It never ended that way. So what do they always tell you?
Defend yourself at all times?
“Need I say more?”
These days, Starling isn’t as attached to the sport as he used to be.
“Boxing was good for me, but I don’t watch it anymore, and I never thought I’d be a guy who wouldn’t watch boxing,” he said. “I think they took a big hit in the late ’90s.”
As 1999 turned into 2000, Starling was already more than nine years removed from his last pro fight. After defeating Honeyghan, he successfully defended his title against Young Kil Jung, then moved up to middleweight, only to lose a majority decision to Michael Nunn 34-0. Four months later, on August 19, 1990, he dropped a majority decision to Maurice Blocker and then left at the age of 30.
“After the Blocker fight, I was angry,” admits Starling. “I said, ‘No, I’m not going to do this anymore.’ I think they stole the Blocker fight.”
It was a brave decision, especially with the reality that he was only 30 years old and in a position to be in big-money fights for years to come. But the single father who raised his son, Marlon Jnr, never came back.
“If I had known then what I know now, I probably would have stayed, but you know what, my dignity meant too much for me to stay,” said Starling, now the father of three sons and grandfather of three girls, none of whom are aware of what Grandpa used to do for a living.
“They want to read and all that,” Starling laughs when asked if her granddaughters have already looked it up on YouTube.
However, many still know what he did, with a social media post led by his friend, former boxer and current trainer John Scully to inform a new generation of what Starling achieved and why he should be in the IBHOF, which the “Magic Man” still visits every year, even competing in (and finishing in) the traditional 5K race.
When told about this push to get her her due, Starling smiles.
“That means a lot,” he said. “That means I got up to go to work every day and I enjoyed going to work. When I circle people, they’re like, ‘Remember that Marlon Starling?’ Whether he won or lost, they know Marlon Starling was there to perform. And I never went in there to chase him. I didn’t like being hit. If he was going to fight, I’m here to win it, I don’t care how much money you’re paying.”
That’s a Hall of Famer speaking.
