MY FIRST TIME: MICHAEL NUNN
Nunn managed to halt the habitually durable Juan Roldan in eight.
for sure I was a ringer. She actually climbed into the ring and attacked my coach, started beating him with her purse. (laughs) She didn’t believe I was 12 or that it was my first fight. “They always thought I was older than I was and that I was from somewhere else. After that bout, they made me show my birth certificate before every show. I was an early bloomer; I got to 6 feet when I was 14. I wasn’t always bigger or stronger, but I always had the height advantage, which enabled me to fight in heavier weight classes. I won the Iowa Golden Gloves in three different divisions – 147, 156 and 165.” MY FIRST PROFESSIONAL FIGHT December 20, 1984 – John Borman “It was at the Showboat Hotel in Las Vegas. That was a casino that did a lot of fights back in the day before they tore it down. I knew I was going to be on ESPN. Dan [Goossen, president of Ten Goose] worked out an agreement with Bob Arum, which would have me fighting a lot on the Top Rank Boxing series. “There was some nervousness because it was on TV, but there was no fear of my opposition. I just didn’t want to make mistakes. I wanted to perform. I just knew I had to beat him. This was my first step. Dan, [trainer] Joe [Goossen] and Bob told me my time would come. Against Borman, I was boxing relaxed but focused, and with just a couple seconds left in the first round, I got him out of there. I wasn’t looking for it; I just wanted to win. I was in tip-top shape, I let my hands go and was fortunate enough to get a first-round KO in my debut. [Al] Bernstein [the color commentator] had good things to say about me. I got interviewed in the ring by him afterward, and that felt good.”
with boxing. I didn’t believe it at the time.
Amateur boxing was just something to keep me off the streets. But I almost made the 1984 Olympic team; probably would have been on it, had I boxed at my natural weight of 156, so my attitude changed right before I turned pro. “The day I made up my mind that I would be a champion was right after I signed my first professional contract with [promotional company] Ten Goose and just before I left for California. A top sportswriter from the local newspaper, the Quad-City Times, named
MY BEST PUNCH “It’s got to be the punch that put Kalambay away, because there was so much anticipation for that fight. It was two of the better middleweights at the time, two world champions, and Kalambay was real crafty, real shifty, a great counterpuncher. He could crack, too. “I figured I’d beat him over 12 rounds and I was prepared to go 12, but Joe knew I was going to knock him out. He told me it would happen, but I couldn’t underestimate [Kalambay]. “When I think about it, it was kind of like the punch that ended my pro debut – a left hand that my opponent ran into. It was something that happened that was so natural, I can’t even tell you how I set it up. He just happened to go that way as I threw the punch. He ran right into it. “It’s not like I trained to land that specific punch. I was just in great shape. We trained seven weeks in the Big Bear mountains, training right, eating right, boxing with the best sparring partners, just busting my butt every day. There was something special about this camp. Joe knew I was going to shine, and I did. I shocked [Kalambay]. I shocked his team and the boxing world. Nobody was looking for me to come out punching, and nobody had done Kalambay like that. He’d never been stopped. It was supposed to be my toughest fight. I made it my easiest.”
Black kids were from single-parent homes with no male role model, and he instilled discipline and respect in us. “The first time I came into the gym, I was just goofing off. I spent a whole week there with my friends every day after school, just watching others work out. [Pena] observed all of this with patience. It was a community center, so it’s not like he was going to kick me out, but he didn’t like kids wasting time, either. At the end of the week, he told me, ‘The next time you come here, you’re going to do something – skip rope, hit the bag, something. You’re not gonna be standing around.’ I came back the next week and he started showing me stuff: how to punch, how to slip, how to block. The only boxer I really knew or cared about back then was Muhammad Ali, so I tried to imitate Ali and must have done a good job, because he was impressed. I was jabbing, throwing three and four hooks off the jab. He couldn’t believe I was from around Davenport. He asked if I was from St. Louis, Chicago, Kansas City, one of those Midwest towns that had good amateur programs, because he’d seen a lot of good talent in his time – but he said I was the best. Honestly, the man thought I’d already been in the gym for years. He couldn’t believe I hadn’t been trained. “He told me I would be a world champion if I stuck
Craig Cooper interviewed me at home in our kitchen. Craig told me there’d never been a world champ from Iowa. My mother was listening in and said, ‘Well, you’re going to be the first, son,’ and I believed it from that moment on.” MY FIRST AMATEUR FIGHT “I’d been in the gym training three or four months before my first amateur fight. There was a small amateur show about two hours out of town. We drove out, and I was expecting it to be in an auditorium or a community center, but when we got to the place called Marshalltown, we found out it’s in a barn. They had a ring and everything set up there with all these farmers in attendance. At that time, there may have been maybe two or three Black families in that entire area. So, everyone in the audience was white, and here’s all these Black kids from the ghetto beating up these white kids. It got kind of tense, especially when it was my turn to fight. It’s different now, there’s more Blacks and Mexicans out there, but things could get crazy back in the ’70s. “Anyway, I beat the shit out of the kid they put me in with, just beat the hell out of him, busted up his eyes, gave him a bloody nose. The kid’s mom was mad; she thought
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