Marvin Hagler Of Mid 80s vs Prime Sumbu Kalambay

Why a mid 80's Hagler? Wasn't he supposedly shot to **** at this point? Do you not think Kalambay was good enough to compete with the all great and wonderful peak Hagler? Coz,it's incredibly difficult for me to ever envision a time in which Kalambay wouldn't give Hagler absolute fits.


A guy like Kalambay would force Hagler out of his comfort zone and actually force him to think.And as a slightly intoxicated Goody Petronelli once remarked to George Kimball over a warm glass of sherry: "Mah-vin no like think.Think bad."

 

I am not a kalambay fan, and actually am just starting to get into his fights...What would make you say this???? Is it based upon kalule alone??? He eseemed to fine against Simms and Graham when I checked these 3 out over the weekend....So is this just something based upon a lone loss to kalule or is this supported over a wider body of work???

 

Mugabi countered the **** out of mid-80s Hagler. Sumbu is the best counter-puncher ever.

 

I uploaded the full Kalule fight. Ayub had his moments but I felt Sumbu clearly won.

Kalambay was a little off against southpaw, but this whole 'southpaws caused him fits' is a myth IMO. Kalule, Nunn and Graham (2nd fight, Sumbu past his best) are a pretty odd and diverse list of southpaws anyway. The more basic ones (Sims) Sumbu handled just fine.

This fight is a toss-up for me as Hagler gets a rough deal from some IMO. Oer 15 it's anyone's guess, what I will say is Kalambay could definitely compete in this class.

His showing in the first McCallum fight is one of the best displays of pure boxing I've ever seen.

 

While we hadn't seen much evidence of it, coming out of Kampala City Bombers 'The Beast' would've been equipped with top-notch boxing skills, despite his reputation as a banger. And it's obvious that if he was ever gonna' put it all together that was the night.

He gave everything, and it took everything. The eye injury not long after didn't help but Mugabi was a waste after that fight, glass jawed and not too scary.

 

Kalule's a highly technical fighter that when close to his best form would give a lot of trouble to the vast majority of fighters that take a relatively passive, finesse "pure boxing" approach to him.

He could close the gap or stay in punching range in front of a mover with ease and was an extremely accurate straight puncher with a long reach and every punch slip in the book while coming forward.Really top notch textbook upperbody movement.He rarely gave any real openings to the average counterpuncher and you had to work to land punches, be busy, vicious and not give any respect to take appropriate advantage of his LOcche'esque power and so-so chin.Keep him off kilter and that's not something trying to be a patient counterpunching textbook cutie with a liking for feasting on mistake material will do.These tools are a lot more important than simply being southpaw.

It's more those attributes about Kalule's own technical facility\ approach and the kind of fighters it excelled against that made that a good fight, plus Kalambay's own relative inexperience and not yet fully defined ring-generalship or style.Though technically advanced he was more of an outright perimeter mover in mentality at that stage-reminding at times of Famechon and ali with the footspeed and snapping jabs-rather than the slower paced mover that emerged against the likes of Barkley and McCallum.

Despite his age, he'd been very slowly and poorly matched in Italy with only wins over Drayton(who at that stage was more often totally going through the motions in his pro career and making more of a living from his work as a sparring partner for the likes of Hagler) and Clint Jackson of any note.He really should have been mixing it with Hamsho, Sibbo, Grhaam and the other more visible US based contenders a lot earlier than he was to get to peak and be noticed quicker, but lacked the connections and geographical base to do so.Kalambay would certainly want to have gone into any title fight with Hagler(or whoever else really) with a few tugh learnign fights like that behind him and not in the wholly unpreprared fashion of his initially similarly matched Italian based African LArocca did against Curry.

 

atberry is a ****ing idiot.and Frankenfrank