Is the Fire Out? : Former World Champion Michael Nunn Fights Tonight on an Undercard as a Super-Middleweight Who Hasn’t Been All That Super Lately

The story of Michael Nunn would be an odd one were he not a boxer, where odd is the norm and shattered dreams are as common as a left to the chops; where great talent often ends up shuffling along Lonely Street.

The dream of Nunn, the former middleweight champion of the world, has not shattered, but it is deteriorating like the leather of a worn-out glove.

Nunn is a left-hander with hand speed reminiscent of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, who would leave opponents helpless and bewildered, as punches landed against their faces in a flash.

And against highly regarded Sumbu Kalambay in 1989, Nunn showed surprising power, too, stepping inside and delivering a short, straight left that was breathtaking in its force. It caught Kalambay flush on the chin and knocked him unconscious in his tracks, his body falling seconds later, like an ironing board from an overstuffed broom closet.

Nunn was 26 then. He was paid $1.2 million to fight Kalambay. Nunn was the International Boxing Federation’s middleweight champion and had the boxing world at his feet. Big money fights against Leonard and Thomas Hearns were in the works. Talent such as Nunn’s did not come often.

Tonight in Las Vegas, Nunn will enter the ring again.

He is 28 and will fight a scheduled 10-rounder for the North American Boxing Federation championship, a title he won in 1987.

He will be paid $100,000 and will be on the undercard of the Simon Brown-Buddy McGirt welterweight title fight.

Nunn will fight Randall Yonker of Mobile, Ala., and if you have heard of him, you are either a boxing fanatic or a member of Yonker’s family.

Nunn has another big date approaching. That is Dec. 13 in a courtroom in Calabasas, where he will go on trial for allegedly assaulting his former fiancee at his home in Agoura Hills.

In the last two years, he has two other scrapes with the law. He was charged with punching and kicking six people in a bar near Universal Studios, but the case was settled out of court. And he was arrested and briefly held, but not charged, after he chased down an elderly motorist who had sideswiped his car. Police said that Nunn pulled the man from his car and threatened to punch him senseless.

Rumors abound that Nunn has been heavily into drug and alcohol abuse. He denies them.

Conviction on the assault and spousal-abuse charges carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail.

“So what?” Nunn said. “So I go to jail for six months. Then I get out and I fight again. Who cares?”

Nunn rose quickly as a pro fighter. Managed by Dan Goossen of Van Nuys’ Ten Goose Boxing Club and trained by brother Joe Goossen, the slick-boxing kid from Davenport, Iowa, was a stunning success. He knocked out the first eight pro fighters he faced, and when he knocked out Darnell Knox in Las Vegas Oct. 29, 1987, Nunn was the NABF champion with a 27-0 record. He had the attention of everybody in boxing.

The next year, he fought Frank Tate, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist and the IBF middleweight champion. He beat Tate mercilessly until the torrent of blows became so steady that referee Mills Lane halted the bout in the ninth round, giving Nunn the IBF title.

Four months later, against bruising veteran Juan Domingo Roldan, Nunn was, perhaps, even more impressive, hammering Roldan into submission in the eighth round. Then, early in 1989, he fought Kalambay. Nunn was the underdog.

One minute 28 seconds into the first round, he landed the punch of his life, dropping Kalambay to the canvas with a thud so loud that ringside observers gasped. Kalambay was unconscious for nearly a minute.

Talks began, according to Dan Goossen, for bouts against Leonard and Hearns.

“There’s no question Nunn would have fought both of those guys and made close to $20 million,” Goossen said. “No doubt. It was a guarantee. Leonard was looking for a fight back then and Hearns loved the idea. And Nunn would have beaten both of them. Easily.”

In the meantime, the $1.2-million purse for the Kalambay fight was followed by another $1.2 million for a fight against Iran Barkley. In that one, Nunn played it safe and threw a virtual shutout, winning a lopsided decision.

Then came a $1.1-million fight with Marlon Starling. That’s where the wheels began coming off. Three weeks before that fight on April 14, 1990, Nunn left the Goossens’ training camp. Neither Dan nor Joe Goossen saw him again until the day before the fight. He beat Starling but looked horrible in the process, repeatedly being hit by a man seemingly half his size and with less talent.

“He was such a dedicated guy in the gym, and then suddenly, without telling anyone, he’s gone,” Joe Goossen said. “I still don’t know what he did for those three weeks, but I don’t think it was anything good. He looked terrible against Starling. That was the beginning of the slide.”

Nunn broke for good with the Goossens after that bout, enlisting only the part-time help of famed trainer Angelo Dundee. Nunn beat Donald Curry in October of 1990, but he obviously was not the same fighter.

He wasn’t the same at the bank either. Still unbeaten and still the recognized middleweight champion, his purse against Curry fell to $600,000, half of what he had made in each of his previous three fights.

Then, in May of this year, came the final blow.

It was a left hook, and delivering it was James Toney, a fine fighter but a decided underdog against Nunn, whose purse value had fallen again, to $500,000.

By the ninth round, Nunn was exhausted and Toney began pounding him. In the 11th round, his arms dangling, Nunn walked into a solid left hook. He dropped like a rock, his legs twitching on the canvas for several seconds. Somehow, he got to his feet and staggered into the ropes but Toney finished him quickly with five concussive blows before the referee could stop it.

Goodby title. Goodby attention.

Goodby career?

Perhaps. There was a hint of that last week at a news conference in Westwood in connection with Nunn’s fight tonight, a news conference attended by only three reporters. Dundee, Nunn’s trainer for the last year and one of the best-known boxing trainers in history, was in an elevator. It stopped and in stepped Terry Landry, Nunn’s manager for the last eight months, a former car salesman who says he got his start in the boxing business a year ago when he sold promoter Don King three Rolls-Royces in Encino.

A long silence ensued, a reporter standing between Nunn’s trainer and Nunn’s manager.

Finally, Landry, the manager, looked at Dundee, the trainer, extended his hand and said, “Hi. I’m Terry Landry.” Dundee shook the hand and said, “Hi. Angelo Dundee.”

They had never met.

Ferdie Pacheco, veteran boxing doctor, said: “Angelo Dundee is facing a big challenge with Michael Nunn. Technically, he’s perfect. But he needs a fire in his gut. I don’t know if he’ll ever have it.”

Nunn will fight tonight at 168 pounds, in a division called super-middleweight and eight pounds above the normal middleweight limit. Trainers jokingly call it a division for middleweights who don’t like to train anymore.

“I’ll be just as great at 168,” Nunn said. “I’ll rule that division, too. Just watch.”

Some will.

“He’ll keep fighting, and I think he has a chance to be very good again,” Joe Goossen said. “Maybe even win a title in some division. But I think any chance he had of being a superstar, a mega-superstar like Leonard or Hearns, a fighter he could have been, has passed him by. He had his chance and he let it go. You only get one chance like that in your lifetime.

“He had the greatest gifts of all for a middleweight. He was tall and left-handed and so quick you just couldn’t imagine. Michael Nunn had it all.”

The split with Ten Goose Boxing left both Goossens shaken. But it was as much their decision as Nunn’s.

“Dan Goossen wanted to take all my money,” Nunn claimed. “He wanted too much. I’ve only got one career. I’ve got to look out for me. He can always get another fighter. I’ve only got me.”

Dan Goossen’s share of Nunn was one-third of his purses. Joe Goossen earned 10% as the trainer. Both percentages are standard in boxing. But Dan Goossen, so eager to hold onto Nunn and so sure that gigantic paydays lay ahead for everybody, agreed to cut Ten Goose’s share in half, giving Nunn a contract that called for an 80-20 split.

Dan Goossen, who has reserved comment on the issue since the split, was irate at Nunn’s charge that he was trying to take too much of Nunn’s money.

“That doesn’t even deserve a comment,” he said. “The reason we’re not with Mike is because of his misdirection. That comment is just a part of it. He is terribly misguided.

“When he started doing things we didn’t approve of, things he did when he left camp, we could have turned our heads and let him do whatever he wanted every night. The parties, everything. We could have shut up and collected our commissions for as long as it lasted. But we wanted the best for Michael Nunn, and no amount of money will ever cause me or Joe to turn our heads in lieu of someone’s well-being.”

With the 80-20 offer, the Goossens told Nunn to shape up or ship out.

Nunn was on the next boat.

That was the first shock for Bob Surkein, an amateur boxing official and former Olympic referee who found Nunn as a 14-year-old kid in a Davenport gym. Surkein guided Nunn from there, serving as his adviser through a sparkling amateur career and into the pros.

Surkein was in the Ten Goose office when the 80-20 contract offer was made.

“Mike just turned it down,” Surkein recalled. “It was what he asked me to negotiate for him. It was just what he asked for. Dan Goossen did everything for that kid. And then Mike walks away.”

Nunn left behind the Goossens and Surkein. And the break has left scars not only on Nunn, but on the Goossens, too.

“It changed us,” Dan Goossen said. “It hurt.”

For Surkein, now in his 80s and living in retirement in Florida, the break has been agony.

“I was terribly shocked by the whole thing,” he said. “I was (Nunn’s) biggest supporter, and he knew that. Anything he wanted, I made it my business to get it. And the Goossens handled him beautifully. He was like a part of their family.

“But when the big money started coming in, so did his old friends from Davenport, guys who weren’t boxers, guys with bad ideas. Mike is a good kid. But he can be led around very easily. They told him we were all no good.

“Just before the Starling fight, he walked out of the gym and said to me, ‘Bob, I love you.’ And I haven’t heard from him again. He never called. He won’t talk to me.

“And I’ll tell you something. It has just broken my heart.”