Michael Nunn: How do you remember him?

Mate i always hang off the every word of you and Johnny Garfield. We should be blessed in here to have such real insight. ESB is surely one of the great forum havens.

 

The words skilled, fast, and sometimes boring come to mind. Oh, and a great nickname!

 

true he was there looking to get a unification shot with benn or eubank. especially when both of them were trying to unify wbo and wbc. so nunn was sparring and making his face known in the brit isles. along with his promotor Don King

he was clearly looking for the winner of benn-eubank II then the impossible happend it was scored a draw . so he fought little on a eubank undercard (i think chris maybe) and got clearly outhustled.

i find it a hilarious series of events to be honest.

i think eubank and benn would of beaten him. he had all the tools but people are forgetting how low his workrate was. he was winning fights due to his jab alone. when ever he got caught up in an exchange he almost always lost it. a reason why little got to him was becuase nunn got himself unstuck. with Little throwing a great counter right after every time Nunn double jabbed.

but apart from that fiasco he was a dangerous opponant and had a great use of technique,handspeed, chin, elusiveness for such a big man...and a southpaw. if you wanted to put the word champion on to sombody's name he is it.

and he wasnt draining himself as much as you think to get to middleweight even tho he was 6'3/6'2 he wasnt killing himself to make the 160 limit. of course it wasnt comfortable and not nesicerally healthy but he was hitting 160/168 alright.

 

I remember him as the best middleweight in the years immediately following the Hagler era. And there were several good young middleweights around in that time attempting to step into Hagler's shoes.

There was nothing flukey about what Nunn did to Kalambay. And I'll be the first one to tell you how good Kalambay was.

Those two were without much question the best two middleweights in the world at that time. It was a very significant fight of the that year, a much-anticipated unification.
But Leonard-Hearns 2 and Leonard-Duran 2 would gross more money that year, and Duran-Barkley is probably the more talked about middleweight fight of that year these days. I cant even remember if Nunn-Kalambay was shown at all over here in the UK (where Benn-Watson was the middleweight fight of the year).

Nunn didn't sustain his greatness for long but it's hard to argue with his ability at his youthful peak.
He didn't just show potential, he obliterated one or two guys who were supposed to be his main rivals.

 

I'm off the mind that the Kalambay KO was about as flukey as it gets, and that Kalambay at his best was a better technician than Nunn (though Nunn would've always troubled him). That's just my opinion, as some people tend to feel otherwise on that topic.

 

Kalambay may have been the "better technician", but what better way to beat a superior technician than by pressing the action and hitting him with a knockout punch at the first opportunity ?

Before Nunn hit Kalambay that shot it was looking to me like his height and southpaw style would prove awkward and difficult for Kalambay. But i say that in retrospect admittedly.

Anyway, I dont believe in "lucky punches" or "flukey" first round KOs.
The art of boxing includes delivering those well-placed shots, finding the openings, delivering the coup-de-grace counters.

If Kalambay had gotten up from that shot, survived the round but been so unsteady thereafter that he never gets in to the fight, and goes on to take a one-sided beating for a several rounds incl. two or three more KDs, no one would say "flukey", - and many would say stuff like "Kalambay could never beat Nunn" (something I'm not fond of saying). Yet, we should still see from such a scenario that "that one punch" was the catalyst.
But that's boxing.
The fight starts when the first bell rings and isn't over until the final ring of the bell. Hit the other guy, and dont get hit. Knockouts count.

It's not as if Kalambay did anything in that fight to take anything away from Nunn.

And the fact that we still perceive Kalambay as a fighter who was "good enough" to conceivably beat Nunn on another day should actually add something to what Nunn did in the actual real-life fight. It's just as (at least!) impressive to do that to a guy who WAS A SERIOUS THREAT, than to someone who probably couldn't do better.

That's just my opinion though. :good

 

IMO you can agree with almost all of that unforgiven(as i do, other than i thought kalambay looked sharp and had been making nunn miss comfortably) and still think of it as a fluke\one in a million\bizarre occurrence...etc.

It's the styles and strengths of the two fighters which make it so really, especially in retrospect given how Nunn went on to consistently underwhelm.He barely if ever threw a loaded up left with proper weight behind it like that in any of his other fights, even the ones where he looked good.I you made a slight mistake against Nunn, you almost never got punished like that.

Funny thing is, as Reggie Johnson showed, Toney could be tagged and badly hurt by that kind of punch.It would have been interesting to see a rematch with a more motivated Nunn, but it seemed he couldn't care less..moving up and getting a gift against Cordoba.

 

Fair enough. The way I see it, Nunn was a never a one punch hitter, never one to really even commit to single punches, and was more known for his physical abilities than his craftiness as a technician. Kalambay, on the other hand, was a textbook precise technician who was rarely ever hit clean, nor did he leave obvious holes or weaknesses in his defense to exploit. All of that considered, I don't think that would've ever happened again, even if Nunn were to have beaten Kalambay on the basis of being a difficult styles matchup for him.

He did it though, that's all that really matters in the long run. I just tend to think Nunn gets overrated because of it, while Kalambay gets very much underrated.

 

True enough.
I'm a huge appreciator of Kalambay, and in the spirit of fairness I'm not too keen on making excuses or alibis for fighters. Kalambay got caught, it happens. And I give Nunn full credit, so i reckon he should get rated highly of it (and the rest of what he did). So I guess I dont penalize Kalambay much for it at all, but I credit Nunn a lot for it. Neither fighter loses out.
Whether I'd rank Nunn above Kalambay overall is another matter though. They'd sit close on any list of middleweights that's for sure.

 

For sure, Nunn's performance against Kalambay stands out as different or unique among his wins, the fact that he connected with such a devastating left hand punch, and that early in the fight. Sure enough, Nunn rarely if ever did that, esp. not against such a great fighter.

But to me, that's like saying Tommy Morrison rarely boxed on the back foot going for a points win, so his fight with Foreman was flukey. It's obviously not so.
All good fighters, or most of them anyway, have the ability to land the knockout punch if opportunity arises. It's not a "fluke" when they do so, any more than it's a fluke when a "one-punch knock out fighter" outboxes someone. It's just a matter of what happens in the moment, or from moment to moment. The point is to do what works. Whether it's pre-planned or improvised it's all down to the ability of the fighter and the moves he chooses to make. No one goes into a fight with someone with fast hands, skill and power and overall ability of Michael Nunn thinking "Oh, I can afford to make mistakes against this guy, and leave myself open for his best punch" .... in the same vein I guess kalambay (or any good fighter) would say, "No one can afford to make a mistake and leave themselves open for my best punch".


In my opinion, there's nothing bizarre or flukey about one-punch KO in a championship fight (unless we're talking exceptionally creampuff punchers, who rarely become champions). We watch these elite guys knowing that the possibility is always there. These guys can knock each other out. Nunn KO1 Kalambay was a surprising result, that's all. Calling it bizarre or flukey makes it sound as if it was something beyond ordinary explanation, something other than GOOD BOXING at play.

 

He fell into what I like to call an underrated era. Nunn, McCallum, Kalambay, Tate, Barkley and others. He had incredible athletisicm and his potential as fighter was endless but he had bad habits outside the ring. I've seen his fights with Toney, Kalambay, Barkley and a few others and I really took a liking to him.

 

Mike was always one of my favorites. He proved that HE was the true heir to the middleweight division and that any other claimants were clearly in no mood to dispute that.

Opponents first gained a healthy respect for Mike after witnessing the dispatch of Parker. As Mike would say after the fight "Micheal Nunn doesn't let no man roughhouse him"

As Clancy would say during the fight "Mike literally surrounds a guy and buries him". Nunn would move off to one side and load up on him as he did in the Parker fight. With his speed he could get away with it.

He totally outclassed Tate and by early 1989 was considered the man to beat. Not that any other big names out there would actually want to test that claim if you know who I mean.

By the way, what is the real story behind the animosity between Ray and Mike? I heard they got into it once and Ray had to back off. That was smart of him to do.

Anyways, I think Mike's big moment was the Kalambay fight which is one of my favorite exhibitions on tape. Anyone interested in learning the sweet science, this is it! Mike was so quick and so fluid, Kalambay could barely reach him, great as he was.

Both seemed equally as adept in slipping punches as the other but was Mike unnerved? Hardly. Barely a minute into the fight as both were loosening up, Mike spots an opening and delivers with frightening impact. Sumbu drops with a thud and the fight is over before it's begun.

 

So well said it's scary.