Should Sumbu Kalambay rank above James Toney?

Yeah, watched that the other day. A true beaut.

 

Barkley fan here too, could use a guy like him around the modern middleweight scene thats for sure, would liven things up a bit in an otherwise barren wasteland of a division. Iran tried like hell to catch up to Kalambay and knock him out, but the footspeed was just too much and by the last 3-4 rounds Barkley was completely gassed, his legs were very unsteady and for my money Sumbu coulda KOed him had he pressed the issue, but by then he knew he was well ahead on the cards so why risk getting nailed by a hail mary punch.

 

Indeed, the suddeness of the KO makes it all the more dramatic, and to think this the same DeWitt that hard punching Tommy Hearns bounced countless powershots off of his chin to no avail for twelve rounds without putting him down for the count, amazing really.

 

Indeed :yep Dewitt was solid and straightforward, Kalambay shows the full extent of his offence here.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftAtnL9Og6U[/ame]

That choppy right and left uppercut (05:45) is a thing of beauty!!! But not quite as good as Saads on Mwale ;-)

 

I saw it coming actually. A bit like the last three rds of Toney-Nunn. Too many clean shots were being shipped by DeWitt prior to the KO (as they were by Nunn) and reactions slowing as a consequence - and then...

 

Just rewatched McCallum-Toney II. That decision was a disgrace. A robbery - nothing less. I was giving Toney the benefit of a doubt and still had McCallum winning it with 3 points. Absolutely no way Toney won that fight.

 

I liked Dewitt, he had a pretty unique loose style.Quick hands with tricky unorthodox combinations and jabs...if he had been less open defensively and a harder puncher he could have been quite good and more than a punching bag for the better fighters around at the time, though to be fair i think he was past his best by the time Benn and Toney got there.The last epic with Robbie Simms took a lot out of him.

It was funny, despite being rightly famed for taking way too much punishment he would always pull of some nice stylish punch slipping at times in his fights.It made you think he should have been doing better technically than he did, but he never did tighten things up...Joichiro Tatsuyoshi the 90s Bantam was similar in style and always in great fights too.

 

Didn't bother jotting down my score, but I would definitely struggle to score anything other than a win for Mike in the first one (couldn't find 6 rounds to gift, ahem, give Toney a draw anyways). Toney has his moments, but with McCallum being so educated in his approach, and the fact 'Lights Out' was ****ed after every assault he launched, I felt McCallum clearly outworked and outmanouvered Toney every step of the way, not coming at James enough to be caught with too many sufficient counters, but keeping Toney moving on his flat feet.

In the tenth round McCallum shows his own quality upper body movement; he is truly one of the great all round technicians IMO.

 

Never seen him Vs Simms, and never really saw Dewitt at his 'best' by the sounds of it, only being thrashed by the top guys. Sounds a fun style to watch, any recommendations?

 

That's what makes Kalambay's win over him so amazing. And he won so very clearly!

But for the record here on ESB; McCallum is at least 1-1-0 against Toney. And even more correctly 2-0.

 

do you think McCallum won the first fight with Toney?

 

Fantastic thread. Full of educated appreciation for legendary skillsters Kalambay & McCallum, with some schooling of ignorant "Toney was a class above" nuthuggers to boot!

 

Nunn and Jirov.

I'm not so sure Toney was fighting a "lesser" version of McCallum, though. After all, McCallum had just reversed his prior loss to Kalambay, and prior to that he had produced arguably his most complete performance (IMO) against Michael Watson.

Sure - as much as losses to Duane Thomas, Chris Pyatt, and a washed up Ayub Kalule affect Kalambay's standing.

Pretty much the way I see it.

 

I think the initial run of tough fights at middle, culminating in the 2nd Kalambay fight took a fair bit out of McCallum, he was slower and gassed badly against Toney.imo that was a fight where he was still very good but you saw him age and hit the wall right before your eyes.

I don't see much to compare in the losses or bad performances both these fighters had, most are pretty different in circumstance.Even the Nunn and Jones jr fights where both failed in as big a fashion as possible in their biggest fight
are at either end of the scale(KO1-total one sided shutout).

Kalule was the best he had looked since the late 70s at 160 and first couple of 154 title fights.The return to 160 gave him a lot of his sharpness, stamina and speed back.After a long amatuer\pro career with some weight weakened beatings in there, it wouldn't last long but he was on-form going into that fight.

Besides though there are negatives that could be gleaned from that fight rekalambay, it's a tour de force of quality boxing and imo one of the very best highest quality middleweight fights of that decade.Lumping it in with stuff like Toney Tiberi and Griffin does it a mighty disservice.

He was an old fighter in his late 30s against Pyatt, again a different scenario and hardly a fight that should hurt his rep unless someone is saying he's a better old man fighter than Hopkins or something like that.

Now the Thomas fight at 154 could be in the same camp as Tiberi, Griffin and quite a few Toney fights circa his 175 early cruiser days... ie a poor performance while relatively prime against someone he should be handling comfortably.

I've never bothered to really research into magazine/newspaper reports on it though(just not really interested enough) and info is very scarce on Kalambay's early career behind the scenes as it is.Tough to categorize it without seeing or knowing more about circumstances.

I did translate an article on his career from his old Italian website a while back though.It didn't really mention the fight but did say he was considering retiring and finding a job before the Demarco bouts and actually had to be talked into giving boxing one last shot for the Herol Graham euro title challenge.

Maybe boxing wasn't a big deal to him back in the early years.Not that it should be an excuse for losing to a decent but significantly less talented 154lber(and i'm sure boxing wasnt a big deal to Toney in his wilderness years either considering his shape)but it would certainly lend to a higher potential for the odd lacklustre 10 rounder loss when on the kind of busy old school schedule his trainers had him and Larocca on.

Or maybe he just sucked that night, or kicked Thomas' ass and got reamed by the judges.

Are you aware how the fight played out, or are we just lumping it in with tiberi etc for teh lulz

 

I had that very close. Mike probably shaded it IMO, but a draw seems a pretty fair result to me.