Tony Tucker/Lemuel Stephens and the 1980 US Olympic boxing plane crash disaster !!

The 80s was a great decade as we know (You know it's my favorite ) But it could have been a heck of a lot better.....

A plane carrying the US team to Warsaw, Poland crashed while trying to land in a snow storm.........March 14th 1980 ....

Whilst the trials hadn't been completed the team contained a collection of the Amateur elite........Most notably Lemuel Stephens who was already the favorite for an Olympic gold............He had just knocked out DONALD CURRY and MILTON MCCRORY !!......

Among the "lucky" members missing were James Shuler and Bobby Czyz who were both injured and couldn't make the trip !!! Shuler would be unlucky later...

The luckiest was future IBF Heavyweight champion Tony Tucker who while sitting next to his best friend Lemuel Stephens in the airport departure lounge told him .....If there wasn't a place for his father Bob on the plane he wouldn't be going !!.......

There wasn't a place for his Father Bob !!....

Would Boxing have been different had they lived.......I think undoubtedly they would have added to an excellent era.

Never be forgotten all 22 members of the team.............and the talent forever lost on that trip...

Nice little tribute, Truss.

The only one from the departed that I know anything at all about was predictably Lemuel Steeples. There is some footage of him on YouTube from the 1979 Pan-Am Games, actually. Pretty unfortunate for him that he stayed amateur until a pretty advanced age for that era, because he missed Montreal '76 by a fraction and was desperate for an Olympic gold. Had he turned pro earlier he'd never have been on that flight - and to rub it in further, the USA ended up boycotting Moscow '80 anyway.

I'd heard he'd beaten Curry and McCrory but for whatever reason I was totally unaware that they were stoppage wins. Doesn't necessarily mean much with regards to how they'd have got on as pros of course, and he must have been a few years older and more developed / experienced than those guys when they boxed as amateurs, but impressive results nonetheless.

Post-1980 Steeples would have needed a freakishly meteoric rise to have landed on the Light-Welter / Welter title scene while Pryor (a peak version anyhow), Hearns and Leonard were still doing their thing there, but between Pryor fading away and Chavez, Taylor etc winning titles there about half a dozen years later the 140 division died a bit of a death. If Steeples had transferred even half of his amateur ability in to the pro ranks you'd have to imagine he'd have been a pretty good bet to pick up a belt at Light-Welter anywhere between 1983 and 1988, and rematches with older, wiser and stronger versions of Curry and McCrory just north of that at Welter would have been interesting, and decent sells with the amateur history between them.

Pryor was showing wear by 84...........Remember that awful Hinton fight in 85......

Who knows............

Yeah, if he'd been moved along at a more serene pace and not graduated to title level until 84-ish then Pryor might well have been beatable. I had Pryor beating Hinton but not by a lot. Work rate towards the end (took him an age to warm up) coupled with that late knockdown swung it for him but he was there to be outboxed by then. Hinton was really just an unremarkable boxer helped by being a southpaw.

Was Steeples a lefty as well or am I just imagining that?

He wasn't a southpaw Chris...........

But he had a good shot to go with his talent...

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1243&dat=19800314&id=k0BYAAAAIBAJ&sjid=w_YDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4438,5129474&hl=en

Nice one Scotty...