Sumbu Kalambay's winning streak from 1987-1989

Fantastic punch. No doubt.

 

Nunn's only got himself to blame when people question that win.If he hadn't been a lazy coke fiend that rarely bothered to give his best, and actually thrown punches like that with regularity throughout his career then maybe we would be looking at him as one of the all-timers.

I've talked about it tons of times on here over the years and give him plenty of credit for it.An amazing punch taking advantage of what was only a marginal mistake that 95% fighters would have struggled to capitalise on in that manner.

But considering his form before and after it, it's not right either to just write off any further ****ysis into the fight as being something other than genuinely representatitive of a clash between the two...as "hipster" stuff.

That's as idiotic as saying it wasn't a good punch and a complete fluke.

 

I know it was close but he had no business losing to that version of Kalule. Kalule was clearly at the tail end of his career at that point after ko losses to Leonard, Moore and McCallum. And shortly after Kalue beat Kalambay, Graham knocked Kalule out and retired him.

 

Not sure what you mean.
The only thing representative of a clash between the two IS the clash between the two.

I'd agree that the fight isn't representative of Sumbu Kalambay's ability. Clearly he has the other results to back up his own rating. His credentials and ability are not in doubt. That's what makes Nunn's emphatic win over him such a great achievement.

Definitely Nunn's best win. I thought he looked pretty good winning the title against Frank Tate too. If I remember rightly he wasn't supposed to beat Tate as convincingly as he did either.

 

That probably wasn't the best way to phrase things.I just mean there IS worth in discussing the fight in terms beyond taking the result at face value and assuming what we saw was an open and shut case of what would happen more often than not when the two fight.

Oddities\unusual\freak results sometimes happen, it's the beauty of the sport, but we should be able to acknowledge fights we feel fall into that category without taking away credit for what did happen.

 

Well, I do understand where you're coming from, but I don't find it easy to believe in some theoretical realm of "likelihoods" that sits above what actually happened. When I think it through it hurts my brain ...

I don't think we can say that single result is not typical when it's the only result, and both fighters were in shape, prime and all that other stuff we would insist on a hypothetical 'prime v prime' scenario.
The question was answered in the ring. It's wrong to throw away the answer to the question because it wasn't easily predicted.

A pair of fighters cannot fight each other multiple times in a vacuum, with each time like they'd never fought before. It cannot actually happen, so it's just conceptual, abstract stuff. Not reality.

"an open and shut case of what would happen more often than not when the two fight."
It is a very abstract concept, compared to what we can see actually happened.
Of course, in a rematch I'd expect Kalambay to be ridiculously careful NOT to get KO'd early because it happened once before ! But then who knows, Nunn might surprise us again. But that's not quite what you're talking about, is it.
You're imagining multiple fights "in a vacuum", like a new spin of a roulette table perhaps. And that implies chances, probabilities, likelihoods, and that can lead us into talking infinite possibilities, "flukes" etc.

The fact is Kalambay was a tremendous boxer at that time, and should still be regarded as such, despite what Nunn did to him.
I suppose the fairest way to look at it is to say that Nunn was SUPER-tremendous on the night he faced Kalambay, and that explains it.:good

 

There is a bit more to that than meets a quick glance though.

Kalule was really draining down to make weight at 154, he was only really comfortable at that weight for a couple of years at the start of his career, but promoter Palle felt it was an easier way to pick up a world title so he kept him in the rankings there even though he was fighting and beating middleweight contenders like Seales and Finnegan too.

If you watch his earlier fights at the weight, you can see he's lost his legs , offensive sharpness and stamina by the time he fights Moore and McCallum.

He should have gone to middleweight after Leonard, but took years off his career with those fights.Nonetheless the eventual comeback at middleweight after a brief retirement seemed to briefly rejuvenate him.Similar to Hopkins looking better for a few fights at 175 after looking like **** at the end of his middleweight run, as making that weight finally took too much of a toll.

He's not quite the fighter he was in the late 70s, but he looked good against early ****** prospect Price, Joly and Holmes(the first two admittedly not up to much) then fought a great fight against Kalambay(for whom it was a big step up compared to his most of the opposition he'd faced in his so far poorly managed career)...probably one of the best 160 fights of the decade for two-way technical action.

imo that fight took most of what he had left, and he only then looked a notably faded fighter against Graham.A bout where he hardly threw any punches.He propably threw more straight lefts in the first two rounds against Kalambay than he did in ten against Herol.

That easy win for Graham then leads to him understandably underestimating Kalambay and looking at it as a keep-busy Euro title defence before an already more or less secured shot for the WBA.

kalule's still one of the more underestimated fighters of that era imo...certainly more so than McCallum or Kalambay, though he wasn't as good as either.He had a couple of glaring flaws in his lack of any real power and less than sturdy chin, but he was also a really intelligent, technically gifted boxer-puncher with an ideal skillset to give fits to anyone that wasn't able\stylistically willing to take advantage of those weaknesses by throwing caution to the wind and just overwhelming him with loads of great offense.

An ideal fighter with his excellent upper-body movement, ability to always be in position to punch against a mobile opponent and long-straight punches giving little mistake-material for countering, to take on and out-finesse or trouble other less than powerful hitting fighters, especially those that favoured methodical technical approach\pure boxing,\cute counterpunching at their own pace etc

In other words, i think it was more of a stylistic issue and speaking to Kalule's own talent that he troubled Kalambay...not a bad performance per se, though certainly kalambay was less assertive than he would become afterward and hadn't quite completely refined his style yet(though he was faster of hand and foot in 85 than he was by 88-89).

I think in a hypothetical scenario, you could put a late 70s or brief early 80s 160 resurgence Kalule in with many of the better backfoot pure boxers and defensive specialists and he would give them a hard fight....just the sort of fighter that suits and can excel against that kind of style.

 

i'm not imagining it in a vacuum, just as in what might be likely to happen had they fought a few times, with both going through peaks and dips in form etc which i know is theoretical and ultimately irrelevant to any fighters that did only fight once.

It ultimately comes down to modern boxing schedules not telling us as much as we'd maybe like to know about many matchups i guess.Especially those that might throw up a more suprising result in the one-off clash that did happen.

I mean what if McCallum had only fought Kalambay once, or fights him in an immediate rematch...or what if Mike gives Graham a rematch and herol fights with more respect and caution this time.Or if Toney gives Nunn a rematch etc


Plenty of interesting possibilties in that brief middle era alone.A lot of these fighters were of a high enough quality we really out to have seen multiple fights with each to get a better picture, but that's the modern boxing era.We could do the same speculation on plenty of groups of fighters.

Interesting that when some do have trilogies or more with each other, it truly can make a legacy go to another lvel like we saw with Morales,Barrera,Marquez,Pac.

 

Yes, but not when we already have the fight take place in reality.

Kalambay v Nunn, prime-for-prime, already happened. In real life.

Fantasy prime-for-prime match-up discussion and debates are all very well when the fight didn't happen. But it's nonsensical to bring them in on fights that actually happened.

A clue to what ?

 

... or what if every fighter fought every opponent at least twice ?
I suppose with the 'elite' fighters they ought to fight five times ?
Is that what it takes to say we saw them matched up ?

I think most professional boxers don't approach fights like that. And the better fighters certainly understand that every fight is 100% meaningful. Get it right on the night, that's professional. There's certainly no right to a rematch. Fighters cannot be expected to have to beat every opponent twice or more to prove the point.

 

While it is relevant, very, vedy relevant one fight could also be a fluke. For purposes of that mythical h2h that people seem so in love with. For resume it works fine.

You want to be clearly established as better than someone, you have to beat them more than once. Joey Maxim got blown out by Curtis Sheperd but three weeks later he whipped him clean. And he had beaten him before. Hell Sonny Liston fought Floyd twice and they probably would've done it again had he not died.

Anyway Kalambay is the middleweight Ernesto Marcel. Or maybe John Conteh.

 

We are speculating abou fights that never happened, i e if they'd met one or more times.

And their histories are a clue to that Nunn wouldn't magically land a similar punch every time he met Kalambay.

Let's not pretend this was a Tyson-Spinks kind of affair, where Spinks looked out of his depth every single second the fight lasted. As Watson said about it in his commentary for McCallum-Kalambay 2 "He was caught with one punch when still a bit cold. You shouldn't read too much into that." (paraphrasing)

 

It's a better win than Tyson-Spinks. Because, yes, Kalambay really was a top-flight middleweight enjoying a career peak, he'd proved it. Whereas Michael Spinks as a heavyweight in 1988 does not stand up to scrutiny.

Of course, no one 'reads too much into' Kalambay losing like that. As I said previously, his ability and credentials are in no doubt, his results against McCallum, Graham, Barkeley etc. stand up regardless.

Never would I say that LKO1 to Nunn represents Kalambay's level. Because we have to look as his results as a whole. He's clearly the number 2 middleweight of that period, then and now.
I certainly don't think that the result should be "explained away" though, as somehow less meaningful than any other result on their ledgers around the same time.

Michael Nunn pulled off a GREAT win that night. He was a very good fighter, and that was a GREAT win.
I feel some fans of Kalambay are trying to minimize what Nunn did to him. And that's unfair on Nunn.

 

That's the first I've heard of it.