If you thought Anderson Silva’s ill-fated “I can dodge any punch” strategy vs. Chris Weidman was bad, this is much worse.
Nate Campbell was a high-level super-featherweight (130 lbs) and in March of 2004 he was matched up against Australia’s Robbie Peden on Fox Sports Network’s old Sunday Night Fights program. As expected, it was a really fun fight but Campbell had thoroughly taken over in the fifth round after hurting Peden with a body shot. For those who don’t know, Peden once vomited a whole lot of blood after tons of body shots absorbed against Juan Manuel Marquez two years prior.
Campbell had this fight in the bag. Peden was in survival mode after such a brutal attack. And yet Campbell opted to showboat. Hands down with no expectation that Robbie would have anything left in the tank. He was wrong and Peden uncorked a perfect left hook that sent Campbell crashing to the canvas. Fight OVER. Campbell went from a win to a loss in the most amazingly absurd fashion.
Watch highlights and the KO at the top of the page.
These two had a rematch one year later and Peden TKO’d Campbell sans Nate’s taunting, and this time it was for the IBF super featherweight title. Campbell did recover from this and famously upset Juan Diaz in 2008 to take away Diaz’s unified world lightweight belts. That would represent the last real notable moment of his career before he retired for good in 2014 with a record of 37-11-1-1 NC (26 KOs). Keep in mind that Campbell was only stopped four times and Peden had two of them, while the other two happened well past his prime.
As for Peden (25-4, 14 KOs), he lost to Marco Antonio Barrera after the Campbell rematch, then was KO’d by Ranee Ganoy in 2007 and retired at the age of 34. This win is forever etched in boxing lore and one can only wonder what the reaction would’ve been in the social media era.
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