[2] Curry was originally trained by Wesley Gale Parker out of Fort Worth, Texas.
Olympic Trials (147 lbs), Atlanta, Georgia, June 1980: Curry, at age 19, won his professional debut with a first-round knocked of Mario Tineo on December 26, 1980.
Despite these problems, Curry won by a twelve-round split decision to unify the USBA and NABF welterweight titles and hand Starling his first pro loss.
[6] The win earned Curry the unified #2 spot in the rankings behind Milton McCrory for the welterweight title.
On February 13, 1983, Curry fought Jun-Suk Hwang for the WBA welterweight championship, which had become vacant after the retirement of Sugar Ray Leonard.
Curry suffered a flash knockdown in the seventh round but otherwise dominated the fight and won by a lopsided fifteen-round unanimous decision.
Three months later, Curry's older brother, Bruce, won the WBC light welterweight title.
[7] After making his first title defense, a first-round knockout of Roger Stafford, Curry had a rematch with Starling.
Curry, mixing up punches to the body and head, stayed on top of Starling and pounded out a fifteen-round unanimous decision to retain the titles of the WBA and the newly formed IBF, which elected to recognize Curry as their champion before the fight.
[12] Curry's next defense of the title was against Lloyd Honeyghan of the United Kingdom on September 27, 1986, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
His managerial contract with David Gorman was to expire on September 30, 1986, and Curry announced that Akbar Muhammad would become his new manager.
Akbar Muhammad said Curry weighed 168 pounds six and a half weeks prior to the fight, before he went to New Orleans to train.
Late in the sixth, an accidental headbutt opened a bad cut over Curry's left eye.
Ringside physicians Frank Doggett and Paul Williams examined the cut after the sixth round and told referee Octavio Meyran to stop the fight, giving Honeyghan a TKO victory.
Curry defeated Tony Montgomery to win the USBA light middleweight title on February 7, 1987.
Curry's next opponent, former IBF light middleweight champion Carlos Santos, was also disqualified in the fifth round for intentional headbutts.
On April 6, 1987, the day Sugar Ray Leonard defeated Marvelous Marvin Hagler for the world middleweight championship and two days after defeating Santos, Curry filed a million dollar lawsuit against Leonard and his attorney, Mike Trainer.
The suit stated that Leonard and Trainer took "undue and unconscionable advantage of Curry" through fraud, conspiracy and breach of financial responsibilities, and they "conspired to prevent Curry from entering the middleweight divisions to assure Leonard's unobstructed opportunity to fight the middleweight champion."
[19][20] Curry fought Mike McCallum on July 18, 1987, for the WBA light middleweight championship.
"[22] HBO commentator Barry Tompkins told his broadcasting partner Sugar Ray Leonard, "You settled a case out of court here."
He traveled to Italy to fight Gianfranco Rosi for the WBC light middleweight title on July 8, 1988.
He lost the title in his first defense, dropping a twelve-round unanimous decision to the lightly regarded Rene Jacquot on February 11, 1989, in France.
[24] Following two knockout victories, Curry went back to France to fight Lineal/IBF middleweight champion Michael Nunn on October 18, 1990.
Nunn dropped Curry with a flurry of unanswered punches in round ten, and the referee stopped the fight.
[26] In April 1994, Curry, along with Darrell Chambers and William "Stanley" Longstreet, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit on drug conspiracy charges.
"[27] In January 1995, Curry was acquitted on all charges, Chambers was found guilty and Longstreet took a plea deal.
"I have been systematically...lynched and then castrated by, first, the news media, and then by the criminal justice system," Curry said afterward.
"[33] After the loss, Curry went to Valley Hospital in Las Vegas and learned that he had fought Linton with acute pancreatitis.
[35] In November 2021, Curry's sons revealed that they believed him to suffer from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, due to memory loss and other mental health issues.
Following their appeal on Twitter, the World Boxing Council offered to schedule a brain scan for Curry.