Ringside Report Looks Back at Former WBA Junior Middleweight Champion Ayub Kalule
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Great Britain has an uncertain past. There is a word that conjures up certain negative values when said out loud and no matter how much we have done to assuage guilt over our past, no matter how much of a revamp or retitling happens, the conduct of our forefathers in purist of Empire was, for most of us, a shameful episode in our history.
We pillaged, we exploited, and we held ourselves high above the native holders of each plundered land we conquered as the civilizers and the lairds.
For some it is, thanks to the whitewashed history books of our education and childhood, a time of great bravery and British heart. Out of it has come nations allied to us in wars, people who have the right to come rightly to our shores as refugees in ways that many others are now being turned away and refused entry – quite wrongly.
When the British Empire became the Commonwealth, it was an attempt not to deal with the past but to try and live with it more comfortably. Nations were finding their feet, demanding independence and being granted it. One such country was Uganda who became independent in 1962.
A far distant African nation of proud people it has suffered interludes of the worst type of dictatorship in the form of the self proclaimed King of Scotland, Idi Amin Dada. It was less simple to cast off the shadows of the Imperial past as people jumped on the idea that some “colonies” were better off with us than without us; they were wrong.
Out of the chaos and the dark forgotten bushland came one man, who in the 1970’s managed to lift some of that gloom and claim for himself and his nation, titles and baubles that went right to the top of the boxing tree; Ayub Kalule, 46-4, 26 KO’s was that man. Someone many believe is the best boxer to come out of Africa.
Born in 1954, Kalule had a distinguished amateur career including winning the world welterweight championship in Havana, Cuba, in 1974 when they were held for the very first time; Sugar Ray Leonard appeared there too apparently…
He started boxing in 1971, his father having boxed, and soon he became a noted young prospect locally, nationally and with little time, internationally. In 1972 he became the under 19 welterweight champion of Africa, in 1974 he was at the Commonwealth Games for his country – only 10 years after independence – and at lightweight he won Gold. In the same year he was again an African champion, in November in Kampala, Uganda. His star was ascending and people were taking note.
The following year, 1975, Kalule moved to Denmark, from where he made all of his fights, and in 1976 made his professional debut. Over the next few years, despite being based in Denmark, he continued to make his mark.
It saw him go on to lift the light middleweight belt which he lost to Sugar Ray Leonard in 1982. It had been a very long road to getting the title as the WBA played politics with him, not wanting him to gain a title that, staying in Denmark, could have been difficult to promote from the far more media friendly USA.
Making his debut in the year of the Montreal Olympics, 1976, he was in his new home of Copenhagen, Denmark rather than Kampala, Uganda he started with no fewer than 30 straight victories. On the way he won a Commonwealth title in 1978 stopping Al Karovou, a World title in 1979 against Masashi Kudo on points and a European title in 1985 against Pierre Joly by stopping him.
There are a few fights for which the memories of this switch hitter who was mainly a southpaw trigger. We may not have taken note of him much on his way up the ranks but when he got to the 24th of October 1979 and he found himself in Akita, Japan where he took both the WBA and lineal junior middleweight titles against Masashi Kudo to become the world champion we sat up; the score cards had it almost a shut out in Kalule’s favor.
He went on to defend his title four times before that fateful meeting, 25th June 1981 with the force that was Sugar Ray Leonard. Kalule proved he was no push over and Leonard was forced to fight in the Houston Astrodome harder than he expected to. Kalule was not rated and not thought to be anything than the delivery boy for Leonard, well this delivery boy had more than Leonard’s address, he had his number.
For the first part of the fight Kalule was stubborn and worthy. Unfortunately, by the 9th Leonard had found the delivery note and stopped Kalule. The defeat was no shame as it left Kalule’s legacy enhanced rather than in tatters. Kalule believed he was on the way to win and by the beginning of the 9th knew he needed to take Leonard on and was ready to do so. As he said after the fight, the ending was a shock to him, “I didn’t expect he could drop me that way”, he was reported as saying afterwards. Kalule’s manager, Morgens Palle, a man who seemed always to have an opinion or ten, was bullish and said Leonard was leading on his card but said that fit Kalule’s strategy. “We had expected to go the last round,” he said. ‘We were going to do the attack after the ninth round. We were going to take the last rounds. Leonard took us by surprise. He was stronger physically than we had expected.”
It was, however a stoppage that many questioned. The referee not being able to communicate in English stopped a fight that Kalule, given his gestures at the time he was stopped seemed as confused as the flurry of punches he had just taken. There was to be no rematch, despite the protestations that came out of the Kalule camp. Kalule had proven to be just too dangerous.
The story did not end there though and Kalule fought on for another 5 years, taking the European middleweight title in 1985 in Copenhagen against Pierre Joly, defending it against Sumba Kalambay in Italy 6 months later; Kalambay went on to win the WBA middleweight belt.
Kalule also got another world title shot in 1982 in Atlantic City against Davey Moore but was knocked out in the 10th. Not long after his final world title chance he retired in the 7th round against Mike McCallum, the fight also taking place in Atlantic City; this was only 4 months after the world title fight against Moore.
We remember him in the UK, partly because it was Herol “Bomber” Graham who took the European title he had won against Joly on the 5th February 1986. It wasn’t to be the first time he had faced British opposition having notably beaten Kevin Finnegan in Copenhagen in 1978 but Kalule was not to have it all his own way this time.
The fight was marred by Kalule’s management team deriding Graham and by the time “Bomber” got in the ring there was only ever going to be one winner. Having been defeated beforehand, Graham was in no mood to entertain another defeat and by the 10th the referee was in between the fighters waving it off. Graham was also fighting in his home town of Sheffield, so it was never going to end pretty for Kalule. The issue of the management team aside, Graham’s assessment of Kalule is one with which I cannot argue as he describes him in his autobiography as “a classy southpaw…”
It was his last fight. Following retirement he went into business and left Denmark to find himself trying to make a commercial life in Kenya and a home life in Uganda from where he was to train boxers. Given his legacy there are many who think he was Africa’s best ever boxer. It is an assessment ripe for debate and one ready to happen now, but there is certainly no doubting his name belongs in the conversation.
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