Jerry Quarry

Jerry Quarry (born May 15, 1945, Los Angeles, California, U.S.—died January 3, 1999, Templeton, California) was an American boxer who became a championship heavyweight contender but never a champion. He posted a professional record of 53–9–4 with 33 knockouts and was known as a heavy hitter with a devastating left hook, but some of his biggest fights were lost owing to cuts on his eyebrows. Quarry was best remembered for his unsuccessful 1970 bout against Muhammad Ali.

(Read Gene Tunney’s 1929 Britannica essay on boxing.)

Like the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, the Irish-American Quarry clan drifted between agricultural labour camps in southern California, where, amid that punishing environment, three of the Quarry brothers—Jerry, Mike, and Robert—found their paths to boxing. Quarry fought more than 200 amateur bouts before starting (1965) his professional career, which he launched by posting 20 straight wins. His closest shot at the World Boxing Association title came during Ali’s temporary “exile” from the ring. In 1967 Quarry prevailed over Floyd Patterson, the former world champion, and the following year he beat Thad Spencer, but after going 15 rounds with Jimmy Ellis in an April 1968 title fight, he lost a split decision.

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Fourteen months later, in his quest for the heavyweight title of the World Boxing Council, Quarry was defeated by the champion Joe Frazier in seven rounds. In February 1970 Quarry again met Ellis, this time knocking him out in four rounds, and he gained the dubious epithet of a “great white hope” in a weight division dominated by Black fighters. That image clung to him during the maelstrom surrounding his next, and most famous, fight—the “Second Coming” of Ali, which took place against a racially and politically charged backdrop in Atlanta, Georgia. By the end of the third round, Ali had exploited a gash that had opened above the Californian’s left eye, and the returning champ was awarded a technical knockout. Quarry earned a purse of $338,000 for his part in the fight, but he protested that he had been robbed of his chance to show “what he could do” to his opponent. During a 1972 rematch, Quarry’s face was again bathed in blood after seven rounds.

In the early 1970s Quarry went on to beat Ron Lyle and Earnie Shavers, but he was knocked out by Frazier in five rounds. Following a defeat by Ken Norton in 1975, Quarry announced his retirement, but he was unable to resist the lure of the ring. He returned briefly in 1977 and in 1983—the same year that he was diagnosed with cerebral atrophy, brain damage induced by repeated punishment in the ring. In his final comeback in 1992, he accepted $1,050 to participate in an unsanctioned fight in Colorado; he was beaten senseless in six rounds. By the time of his 1995 induction into the Boxing Hall of Fame, Quarry was suffering from dementia, his speech was markedly slurred, and he could not completely sign his name. He died of cardiac arrest while being treated for pneumonia.