School me on Ayub Kalule...

Very good fighter. He won the inaugural amateur world championship at welterweight. Gave Leonard a very good fight. He beat the excellent Kulumbay but his downfall was that this was a rare occurrence usually losing his biggest fights against Leonard Moore McCallum and Graham who also beat him in the amateurs.

 

I thought Kalambay beat him, but he gave a good account of himself. He was a strong, busy arm puncher who frankly benefited greatly from the relative dearth of talent in the 154 pound weight class at the start of the 80's but he could actually fight a little. Not a great boxer, not a great puncher but strong and decent at just about everything and an awkward southpaw to boot.

 

Graham beat Kalule in the amateurs??

 

Sorry that was a mistake.

 

Honest mistake, no harm done.

 

He lost to Leonard when Ray moved up but was a top fighter .. what disappointed me about him was his losing to the vastly less experienced Davey Moore prior to Moore lost to Duran .. that was a disappointment and placed his overall talent in perspective .. agood but nothing that good .

 

I only just found out there is a 57 minute doco on him called "Kalule" from 1979. As others have already said, strong, awkward and quite good but not that good.

 

He was the classic who needs him? fighter.

If you were a top fighter you would except to beat him, but you know even a comfortable win would be ugly. If you were a prospect, it would be far too risky, because of the lack of reward even if you did win.

 

Good fighter who gave Leonard some problems. Roger may have beaten him as well, there was brief talk of a fight between them.

 

That's a fair judgement of him

 

Ayub Kalule was an awesome fighter who could have been better...or not. We'll never know. When he turned pro he quickly moved up to his natural growing weight of middleweight, where he beat Sugar Ray Seales, Kevin Finnegan, David Love, Johnny Baldwin and won the Commonwealth middleweight title. He was on his way and may or may not have fit in nicely in the Marvin Hagler era along with Vito, Hamsho, Minter, Sibson, Parker, Davison, etc. But when he was on the brink at 160, his manager Mogens Palle decided to take him the easy route and boiled him down to junior middle. Palle even admitted it was murder to get him to 154. As jr. middleweight champion, his competition declined severely. I recall Flash Gordon, the acerbic, reclusive writer was very critical of him at this time saying, "You fight s**t, you become s**t." After the Leonard fight was his time to move up but Palle kept him there boiling him down. A fighter who once could do 15 rounds no problem was absolutely exhausted after about 7 rounds with Moore. A fighter he should have had no issues with. Again Palle kept him there and he took a thumping from McCallum before retiring. But eventually came back - finally - at 160. He put together some nice wins over Kalambay and Lindell Holmes and even won the European middleweight title, but he was 32 by the time he fought Graham and that was that. Again, I say we'll never really know how he would have fit in with that group. Maybe he would have done well, maybe not, but he (and we) was deprived of knowing. He was very strong, with that Emile Griffith-like upper body, so who knows.

 

Probably the greatest Ugandan-Danish boxer of all time. Quite skilled, but on the very border of meeting the physical requirements for a world-class fighter. Consequently, with just a slight dip in physical ability he could go from looking talented (if unimposing) to utterly feeble in the span of one fight. He was coming off a good performance against Kalambay when he fought Herol Graham, and Kalule against Graham was the definition of a shot fighter, this despite the fact that he was the reigning Euro middle champ at that point.

 

He was a southpaw who was naturally right handed

 

If I showed you a tape of Ayub Kalule ...and then a tape of Sumbu Kalambay ....you would think there’s no way Kalambay loses to Kalule