Olajide, Tate and Nunn- the young guns that were suppose to take over from Hagler.

Yes, except that Olajide was Canadian, not American.

I live in Vancouver, and I remember Michael Olajide well because he was from here and moved to New York to try and make a splash there. Didn't pan out all that well ended up losing to Tate and then to Barkley and that was pretty much it.

 

No worries, truth is I kind of wish he was..lol

 

Well, the middleweight division was about to become the deepest division boxing had seen in a long time. Despite looking like Michael Jackson, Olajide had all the tools, it seemed, until he stepped his game up. His match with Barkley was intense! It's a good one to revisit now and then.

 

All three had skills,and in various ways, became busts of varying degrees.

 

Olajide wasn't all flash. Guy definitely was a fighter. I remember Tate & his "revolutionary" training that was supposed to allow him to regain his breath between rounds & start each round fresh. I think they showed that in Pre fight piece before the Olajide fight.

Nunn was my guy though. I saw him & he oozed talent. I thought he would be champ a long time. His lack of punch was brutal though.

 

Nunn had by far the best career of these fighters. I think he arguably did enough to make the Hall of fame. He beat a lot of good fighters. Sugar Ray Leonard wanted no part of fighting him in 88-91 that's for sure. Beat Kalambay easily, who was a good champion at the time. Beat Barkely, Starling, Curry. Won a Super Middleweight title. A good career.

 

Good post. Nunn might not have achieved s****om on the level that the fabulous four did, but he was by all means a star in his own right and had a brilliant career. The other two guys still had respectable careers themselves but never came close to amounting to what people originally predicted they would.

 

At the time, I thought Tate was going to be the guy. Not necessarily the next ATG at middlweight, but of those three I liked him best. Olajide never impressed me. For all his flash and all that, he seemed a little wooden to me. Like it wasn't real natural for him to be doing what he was doing somehow, like he was forcing it. Barely escaping against Troy Darrell did nothing to reverse that opinion.

Nunn dismantling Tate though......that surprised me. Didn't see that coming.

 

Kalambay was still the best, despite Nunn starching him.

 

Olajide and Tate got really overhyped at the time before they had done much...similar to that run of champs from Taylor-Pavlik-Martinez we had recently.

Olajide had some good moves, but yeah something always seemed missing there.Just not tough or poised enough really.His largely dominant win over big punching Don Lee was probably his best showing, but Lee looked a shadow of the fighter that had managed to upset Sibson and fought Dewitt.He'd had a couple years of fighting only fight or two at a time and looked like he'd lost all sharpness.

The Tate vs olajide fight is pretty underrated and fought at a good level, but was a comfortable win for Frank by the end.Olajide was more or less finished after the underrated classic Barkley fight, and Tate after being thrashed by Nunn.

Both were solid fighters for a time though, no worse than those hyped recent champs, more skilled actually.Tate especially would have done well had he been around these past post-hopkins years.

 

Graham was better than at least Olajide and Tate too circa 85-88 when they were starting to draw expectations, just avoided that same hype being based in Britain.

 

Graham would have fought for a Middleweight title in '87 but his management, for some reason, decided he should defend his European Title against Kalambay while waiting for his world title shot. DUMB. Kalambay got the shot against Barkley, instead of Graham. I think Graham would have outboxed Barkley. That one fight ruined Graham's career basically, and made Kalambay. If Graham's team doesn't give Kalambay that fight, he doesn't get the opportunities he got to win and unify some titles.

 

Bomber Graham couldn't win the big one. Frank Bruno syndrome.