What do you think about Ayub Kalule?

He is hard for me to judge. Has skills for sure and definitely has the basics down but I am not so sure about his competition being the strongest.
The best fighters he faced except for Kalambay he got stopped.

 

IMO Kalule was underrated.Very skilled fighter,amateur World champion,pro World champion.Best fighter in Uganda ,IMO he was better than Beast and Boza and one of the best African boxers all time

 

I would say slightly under-rated as well. To an extent reminds me of Roger Mayweather.

 

Very good, but just with some significant flaws and poor management. A favourite underdog fighter of mine from that era.

He fought in between middle and light-middle and beat quite a few contenders, and former challenger /champs....Kevin Finnegan, Sugar Ray Seales, David Love, Rudy Robles, Ralph Palladin, Johnny Baldwin at middleweight....Elisha Obed, Miguel Angel Castellini, Ho Joo at 154...of course not all of these guys were good fighters, but most at least solid, and generally contenders in or near their prime. So he was one of the guys making their way through the field at the time, like Hagler, Minter, Vito...but Palle was a conservative, cautious promoter and decided to go the weaker 154 route which was easier to get a title shot in, despite the fact he had admitted he was having to work extremely hard to make weight by then.

That paid off initially with the win over Masashi Kudo in japan, but it increasingly affected his stamina, legs,punch resistance and general sharpness. The loss to Ray should have been the sign to move up now, but instead Palle went for a follow up title shot against Davey Moore, perhaps thinking that he would be too inexperienced and that having a world title again would open up the options for a bigger fight afterward. But Kalule's legs and stamina were too far gone and he got drawn into a brutal 10 round war (an underrated, excellent action fight btw). Then in an appalling decision, he put him back in three months later against 16-0 McCallum again at 154; Kalule, by then with no legs for boxing adapted by becoming more of a pressure fighter, but that was never going to work and by the mid-rounds McCallum sensed weakness and goes all out, hurting him repeatedly; a fast tiring Kalule takes more unneccesary heavy punishment in the last few rounds and retires on his stool.

He retired after that, for a year and a half/two years if I remember rightly, before coming back for a brief return at 160. His punch resistance and the springy Napoles'ish using the ball of the foot a lot movement for in-and-out countering angles from the 70s didn't really come back, but he did briefly regain stamina and some precision, which allowed for a short successful comeback where he exposed Jimmy Price (a commonwealth and ABA amatuer champ that was being built up by Frank Warren, and Kalule was there to take the fall), beat the good underachiever Lindell Holmes, picked up the euro title again,defended against kalambay, before coming undone against Graham. However ,the great effort he put forth in the debatable Kalambay fight seemed to use up most of what he had left...imo he looked shot against Graham, clearly worse than in the fights against Moore or McCallum; his fundamental prowess meant he was still slipping and blocking lots of punches, but physically he looked ready to be taken. I think he threw more left-hand leads, jabs and combinations in the first two or three rounds against Kalambay than he does in the entire fight with Herol.

Technically he was mostly excellent. Smooth, slick upperbody movement, high quality blocking and parrying, all well integrated with good, intricate footwork. Before the weight-making slowed his legs too much, he was especially good at controlling the distance and always staying in punching position right in front of an opponent ,using little half-steps, and moving in and out of exchanges at different angles. An accurate, heavy jab, though he used it too often as an intentionally short/slower distractor/disruptor for drawing counters for my liking; when you don't have power and are always in position to punch, doing that invites a lot of counters against it and is taxing on the defence. Very accurate straight left lead and counter, uppercuts with the lead hand, and use of a lot of tight, long pseudo-jab/hook hybrid shots. Had a lovely looking right-hook to the body and head that he didn't use enough. He was a converted right-hander, which I don't think was a good choice for his technical style and other attributes (in the amatuers it probably was, but not the pro's) as his whole offensive approach was heavily focused on the sharpshooting with straight-left, which had no natural power in it at all. In those fights when he was drained he was too sparing in fully opening up with his natural power hand; those pseudo hooks/jabs that were great for breaking up rhythm, pointscoring and getting the last word on exchanges he was fully in control of were no substitute for a classic hook when you're getting hit more and need some firepower to gain respect.

However, it was a methodical, finely-tuned, "stay mostly in range" boxer-puncher style that really demanded you have good to great power to get the most out of, and he was a light-hitter that usually got the TKO's on his record with corner retirements from being outclassed, injuries and cuts. The title defence against the limited, overmatched Steve Gregory really shows just how light-hitting he was. A thoroughly dominant sparring session fifteen rounder that would have been over in a third of the time at most if he had a solid dig. He also did not have the best chin, made worse by the weight issues. For someone who was very difficult to hit twice in a row, or fully flush, he was rocked many times. Hand and foot speed were just typical world level middleweight stuff, though he had a fluid bouncyness to his footwork in the manner of Napoles or Dejesus before the weight cutting.

This all added up to someone who was very skilled, but quite fragile, and couldn't really impose his style on fighters in terms of actually hurting them to match the level of technique advantage he often had - those title defences and some of his earlier decision wins I have all have a very methodical, mostly one-sided air of "this fight would have been over a while ago if this guy could punch" to them. It adds up to a fighter that near their best would be very tough to beat with lower/average output jab and counter based finesse, especially if the other fighter isn't a hard puncher themselves - you couldn't really outmaneuvre those very accurate, straight, surprisingly long-armed punches being in position to fire and build up points, even if they weren't hurting you. Or if you don't bring quite enough offensive quality in general, you're probably going to get outclassed round after round. But on the other hand, one who could be vulnerable to elite/talented offensive boxer-punchers/sluggers/swarmers just grinding and wailing away at, pushing him onto having to expend too much energy slipping punches and riding out being rocked . All of his losses except the Graham one have a big element of " this guy is really accurate and hard to land on without getting countered, but his punches aren't hurting me at all and he's right there, so **** it, I'm just going to go up through the gears and pound away at him until I get through".

 

Wow what a great post thank you.

 

I always liked southpaws so I liked Kalule. I'm surprised SRL fought him as he had a huge payday coming up with Hearns and it seemed like a bit of a gamble taking on the then unbeaten Kalule. Ayub fought well against Ray but Ray was more talented in all aspects and so prevailed although the fight was interesting. I would have liked to see Ayub against Hope or even Minter. The battle of the southpaws.

 

Excellent post