Terry Daniels was born four years before Don Themer, but I knew of him because he played sports at Southern Methodist University in the 1960s, and my Dad made me into a fan of theirs, since they were the closest “big” university around and because Southland Athletic sold uniforms to them. Appropriately, my oldest son, Will, earned his law degree there in the mid-2000s.
Terry Daniels, oldest child of five, came from an Ohio family that owned several businesses. He was a high school honor student and outstanding 3-sport athlete in high school and decided to “strike out on his own” at a college 1,000 or so miles away—SMU in Dallas, Texas, where he earned his diploma.
Trying to make the football team as a freshman, Daniels “re-messed up” his knee that he had hurt during his high school gridiron years, and doctors advised against ever playing football again, even though the injury did not keep him from doing most of the other things he really liked to do, so he moved on to pitch for the SMU baseball team.
To stay in shape during his “off” times, he also took up boxing, much to the chagrin of his Dad, who said that he had not sent his boy off to be a boxer!
However, he was GOOD! In amateur competition, he was one of the best in the area and won three Golden Gloves City Championships and one State Title during the next four years.
In 1969, he felt good enough and confident enough to turn “pro” instead of finishing his Political Science degree requirements at SMU—at least not at that time!
Ronnie Wright became his trainer, and well-known, Doug Lord, became his manager. You may remember Lord as the Manager of a boxer about whom I wrote a few months ago, Champion Curtis Cokes!
Terry, fighting not always the best competition but some good ones, won bout after bout (23) and only lost one, with one draw—pretty respectable for a student who took up boxing to stay in shape!
This “Ohio boy” was not known as the best boxer, but as a good one who could punch and “be punched” with the best! He fought a nationally-ranked boxer named Tony Doyle and managed not to be knocked out or to have the fight stopped, but he lost unanimously in 1971.
Still in 1971, things improved, even though he also lost his next match with a pretty famous name—Floyd Patterson, who had earlier been a somewhat “undersized” world champion! And, he again escaped unscathed by injuries after he put up a good fight for the entire ten rounds.
Then came the “break of his life,” as some might say. Terry Daniels made his reputation even better known by defeating Ted Gullick, who, although not a giant name, had entered the ring with eighteen fights that had produced fourteen knock-outs of his opponents!
A MASSIVE right hand blow by Daniels floored the stunned “knock-out artist,” who left the ring before the end of three rounds and did not return!
I won’t go into all the details, because you boxing fans probably already know and have remembered how Daniels moved on into the biggest opportunity of his boxing life. The “powers that be” in the boxing world saw a chance at a very interesting match-up and probably a great box-office draw and put together the “fight to go along with the Super Bowl in which the Dallas Cowboys would (They hoped!) play.”
So, they put together a TITLE FIGHT, pitting Terry Daniels, the “son of a millionaire,” as they called him in the papers, and Joe Frazier, the “son of a South Carolina sharecropper.” It was also a chance to take advantage of the allure of a match between a Black and a White boxer and an older established boxer and a rather young and inexperienced boxer, things that always drew larger crowds!
Daniels admitted to a reporter(s) that he was smart enough to know why he was chosen, which included the ideas that “this would be an easy bout to pad the champ’s record and an easy payday!”
According to reports, Mu hammad Ali, who had lost the title to Frazier less than a year earlier, also helped the “hype” when he pointed to Daniels and announced the following: “Outside of me, he’s the prettiest boxer around!”
Terry Daniels was at least 20 pounds lighter than the champ and was one of the “biggest underdogs,” and maybe the biggest, in the previous decade or two.
He admitted that when he stepped up to shake Frazier’s hand, he had never squared off against anyone nearly as imposing—and the few times he hit the Champ with good blows, he just stood there staring at him as if nothing had happened!
The fight was halted during the 4th round after Frazier had “decked” Daniels three times already!
Terry Daniels, though, enjoyed the fame the fight brought him, and he enjoyed being part of the “hoopla” the next day when the Dallas Cowboys “pasted” the Dolphins.
During that same year (1972), he graduated with his political science degree from SMU, lost four more fights, and was advised by Lord, his Manager, to take his big payday and enjoy it and give up boxing.
With a final 35—30—1 record, he waited and took that advice in 1981, saying he always had and still did love boxing!
Not long ago, Terry Daniels died at age 74 after a long illness. He had battled Parkinson’s disease, a product of his years as a boxer, and he was living at that time back in the Ohio town of Willoughby, where his brother/companion/friend Jeff had re-located him for living arrangements and care.
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