Plan for World Title Crystallizes for Nunn: Beat Parker, Face Tate

The message for Michael Nunn is crystal clear: Don’t make any plans for Aug. 1.

That’s fine with the North Hollywood middleweight. He’s had only one plan since he turned professional nearly four years ago and that is to win a world title. Now he may get the chance. The International Boxing Federation has ordered its middleweight champion, Frank Tate, to fight Nunn by midsummer should Nunn win his scheduled fight next week against Curtis Parker.

Plan A, according to promoter Bob Arum, is for the proposed Tate-Nunn fight to be held the first day of August in Detroit. The title bout would be part of an Urban League festival being held in the Michigan city that weekend. Also on the card would be World Boxing Council middleweight champion Thomas Hearns.

Plan B would be to hold Tate-Nunn that same weekend in Las Vegas.

But no firm plans can be made until Nunn disposes of Parker, the Philadelphia fighter against whom Nunn will defend his North American Boxing Federation title March 19 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. A victory there would assure the unbeaten Nunn (28-0, 18 knockouts) of the world title shot he has long sought.

Tate already has reportedly turned down an offer from Arum in excess of $300,000 to meet Nunn. But that was when Nunn was only ranked second by the IBF behind Michael Olajide. When Iran Barkley stopped Olajide last Sunday on a fifth-round TKO, the IBF sent Tate a letter, ordering him to defend against Nunn.

“It’s great,” said Dan Goossen, Nunn’s manager. “I could go on with a hundred other adjectives, but great says it all. This is what we have been working for.”

Does Goossen have a preference for Detroit or Las Vegas?

“We’d fight Tate in a phone booth,” he replied.

Nunn, however, does not even want to think about it. Yet.

“I’ve got tunnel vision right now,” he explained. “I go to sleep seeing Curtis Parker and I wake up seeing Curtis Parker.

“But I feel honored to have finally gotten a title shot. I knew if I kept the faith and kept working hard, this would happen. I feel I was blackballed from getting a shot for a while, but that’s OK because the longer they kept me away from a title shot, the more I hungered for it. I’m glad I didn’t get it overnight. This made me more hungry.”

Bob Spagnola, Tate’s manager, was unavailable for comment, having left for Europe on business. But Arum said he has been in contact with Tate’s handlers and anticipates no problems putting the fight together.

“It’s been very friendly,” Arum said. “They know they have this mandatory defense and the negotiations are going well.”

A year ago, Arum was knee deep in details of the middleweight blockbuster between Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvelous Marvin Hagler.

Leonard’s victory left the middleweight picture cloudy. Leonard said he was going back into retirement, but seemed to soften that statement in recent months, indicating Leonard-Hagler II was not out of the question. Hagler also would not rule such a fight out, but not until he cleared up his marital problems. Hearns, who won the WBC title in October, said he wanted to fight Leonard or Hagler.

So far, nobody has secured a bout. Hagler is still bogged down on the domestic front. And Leonard is still waiting.

But with visions of millions of homes wired for boxing dancing in his head, Arum does not want to wait for anybody. So, he has devised a new master plan.

The scenario is this: Hearns faces Barkley in June in Las Vegas. World Boxing Assn. middleweight champion Sumbu Kalambay meets Doug DeWitt, also in June in Italy. If Kalambay and Nunn both win, Arum would match them with the winner going on to face Hearns for a title unification fight.

Sound like a plan? The only thing Nunn will say for sure is that he is not making any vacation plans for the beginning of August.