Tommy Morrison was a white heavyweight boxer who could punch and came with notoriety after appearing in a Rocky movie. He was the perfect package made for TV and pay-per-view.
But unexpected losses to Ray Mercer in 1991 and unheralded Michael Bentt in 1993 derailed a promising career. The Bentt fight was particularly devastating. Morrison, nicknamed “The Duke,” was defending his WBO heavyweight title for the second time in his hometown of Tulsa, Okla., not far from where he grew up.
A huge mega-fight and pay-day for a bout against Lennox Lewis loomed. But all that was ruined when Morrison was knocked out in the first round by Bentt, who would fight just one more time before retiring with an undistinguished 11-2 record.
“He was one fight away from a major championship bout, and he got KO’d,” recalled Ross Greenburg, who was an executive at HBO at the time. “After that fight he never recovered emotionally, and that’s what started the tailspin.”
Morrison died Sunday night in a hospital in Omaha, Neb. He was 44. The cause of death was not made official though Morrison had tested positive for the HIV virus in 1996 and subsequently denied the diagnosis and claimed he never had the disease. In recent interviews, Morrison’s wife, Trisha, said the former boxer suffered from Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which attacks the nervous system. Morrison’s mother, Diana, told ESPN her son was suffering from AIDS.
“He had some ability,” Greenburg said of Morrison, who won his first 28 fights and gained fame for his role as Tommy Gunn in the 1990 movie “Rocky V.” “He wasn’t a bad fighter. But he had that wild streak and couldn’t control himself.”
That wild streak included a DUI conviction in 1998 and another arrest in 1999 on drug and weapons charges, among numerous legal issues.
Morrison compiled a record of 48-3-1 with 42 knockouts and would eventually fight Lewis in 1995 when he suffered a sixth-round knockout in Atlantic City. But he was looking to make another comeback when the Nevada State Athletic Commission tested him and found him positive for HIV just before a bout against Arthur Weathers. His boxing license was suspended and a three-fight deal worth a reported $38 million vanished.
His longtime promoter, Tony Holden, told ESPN Morrison was devastated by the diagnosis. “People wouldn’t shake his hand, wouldn’t come close to him, wouldn’t let babies next to him,” Holden said. “And I saw that, and you took a kid from this height of stardom, being in movies, to the point where everyone wanted to be Morrison’s friend to the point where, man, nobody wanted to be in the same room with him.”
Morrison became convinced his positive tests for HIV were false and eventually staged a comeback in 2007 when subsequent tests were negative, amid speculation whether the blood tested was actually his.
Though he made an estimated $10 million in his boxing career, Morrison died without proving whether he was more than hope and hype.