Michael Nunn's KO over Sumbu Kalambay

Just because Nunn KO1 Kalambay was considered unlikely before it happened, doesn't make it an "unlikely chance occurence".
Every time we are surprised by an event doesn't make that event a "fluke".

 

We sure can be, provided it's unlikely to happen again.

 

in the short time he was in with Mike, he was having difficulty with Mike's height, and left handedness, as well as his quickness & agility

the others- Barkley, Dewitt, McCallum were not like this and Sumbu was the quicker one

Here tho, Mike was the quick, slick upstart and this worked against the subconscious of Kalambay. Before long we saw one of those unforced errors we see in tennis, and football against the more demanding competition

 

But seeing as we were so wrong in forseeing the event the first time, how confident can we be of predicting anything as "likely" the next time ?

 

It's all pointless guess work.
Maybe Ali would have lost "9 times out of 10" to Foreman in 1974, but who cares. It's all science fiction.
No one cares. Everyone knows Ali is great and so is Foreman.

The agenda is to cushion Kalambay from his bad defeat in his biggest fight.

 

Well, what odds would YOU personally give that scenario unfolding again, as compared to say, a decision victory for Nunn?

 

No, it's not..........I don't have a shred of like or dislike for either guy. No emotional investment whatsoever. It's just that I see the term "fluke" being misunderstood and frankly I'm a bit hung up about it.

 

I'm not a betting man.
But if Nunn was to knock Kalambay out with one punch again, I could hardly feign surprise.

You can easily persuade me the fight going the distance is more likely. Certainly that makes sense to me, more so since Kalambay would be aware of his fatal error this time.

It's the uncertainty that make these fights interesting. They were both top fighters. Anything can happen, as we know.

 

That very essence is part of what's so attractive about boxing in the first place. We can certainly agree there.

 

I wasn't meaning emotional investment, like or dislike. I was simply saying people are at pains to say "LKO1" doesn't represent all of Kalambay's value as a fighter historically or around the time, so the loss is lablled a bit of a "fluke" to cushion him.

I think perhaps you misunderstand the term "fluke". Or perhaps there's more than one correct interpretation.

 

Kalambay did pretty well against Herol Graham though, who was a fast, elusive, undefeated southpaw.
That was a pretty big upset too, back in 1987.

 

I think of "fluke" as the noun definition you posted. At least in this context.

And also a type of parasitic worm. But that's different in a way.

 

Yeah, it doesn't work for me.
Every punch landed could be considered an unlikely chance occurence, if that punch is. Hit a guy hard enough and he'll get KO'd.
It was a great punch through an opening. The sharper man got the job done.
Nunn obviously could hit.

 

Okay, that's cool, guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

The detractors to my stance seem to want to take this and skew it to where if I suggest the odds are it wouldn't happen again (hence the fluke reference) or would be highly unlikely to happen again that way, then it somehow means that I'm downplaying Nunn or denigrating his effort, which is so strange to me. It's nothing of the sort. If those people can sit there and tell me they would expect Michael Nunn to KO Sumbu Kalambay in the first round again should they have a rematch, or that Nunn should start knocking everyone else out that way, then I think they're misunderstanding Nunn, and history tells us it DIDN'T play out that way. The historic evidence is on my side here. He returned to his more cautious customary way of fighting again after that, essentially proving it was a fluke.

That doesn't mean Nunn sucked, or that his effort on that night wasn't spectacular, because it was. I'm merely suggesting the odds were quite long indeed that it wouldn't happen that way again. And it didn't.

 

That is what we do here to a large degree. We hypothesize. It's a bit laughable to hear "but you're just guessing" on a forum where fantasy match-ups between fighters that didn't even live during the same time are quite popular. Yes, saying the KO was a one off amounts to guessing - but on a pretty solid foundation since Nunn never won like that before or again and Kalambay never lost like that before or again.

But this shouldn't take away from Nunn's legacy in any way, since it did indeed happen. When ranking him this very impressive result should of course be included.