Mike McCallum died in Las Vegas the other day, aged 68. The obits were kind and respectful, though his death wasn't covered as major news. His passing was limited to boxing sites and, of course, on Jamaican news sites where he was treated as a national figure. All in all, it was as good a sendoff as a fighter from the 1980s might get in these times. McCallum was a great fighter, if not a particularly well-known one.
One thing boxing fans do, aside from complain about scoring, is to look back at the 1980s through rose-colored glasses. It was such a golden era, they'll insist, with all the great ones fighting each other. Fans don't seem to realize that the 1980s were loaded with as much political nonsense as today's game. Fans old enough to remember will always say it was a crime that McCallum didn't get his shot at those guys who were supposedly all fighting each other: Hagler, Hearns, Leonard, and Duran. I remember talking to trainers from that period, and they all said the same thing, that those big names avoided McCallum. McCallum would have fought them all. He'd give them hell.
Thirty-five years ago, I happened to be at the Heinz Convention Center in Boston where McCallum was defending his WBA middlweight title against "Irish" Stevie Collins. That's what McCallum did in those days while the superstars were all fighting each other in their merry tournament. He came to places like Boston, a boxing backwater, and fought guys like Collins, who wasn't yet the fighter he'd be in a few years.
Though I knew McCallum had a great reputation and some big wins over Donald Curry, Julian Jackson and others, most of the Boston crowd had no idea about him. Boston fans knew about Hagler, and they probably knew Rocky Marciano, though I'm sure half the crowd thought Marciano was a retired placekicker for the Patriots. The customers, mostly white, mostly Irish, their little faces turning red with hatred at the site of McCallum as he strolled toward the ring, hurled some nasty words at him. I won't quote them here, but I can assure you they weren't saying, "Welcome to Boston."
It would be silly to say the Boston crowd had no effect on McCallum, because I don't know for certain how he felt. But to look at him was to see a cool character, totally unbothered. It's a cliche to call someone like this a gunslinger, but McCallum was, indeed, a gunslinger.
He looked incredibly out of place in that sea of white faces, and the way his black robe fit over his slender frame made him look wraith-like. There was very little security separating McCallum from the crowd, but no one dared touch him.
His little old trainer, the legendary Eddie Futch, was with him. Futch went all the way back to Joe Louis.
There were rumors that McCallum, who had learned some of craft the Kronk gym in Detroit, had gotten the best of Tommy Hearns on the few occasions when they'd sparred, and Hearns' trainer, the late Emanuel Steward, once told me that Leonard and Hagler ducked McCallum, that the mighty McCallum was elbowed out of the big money in the 1980s. By the time of this fight with Collins in 1990, McCallum had won 38 times, and lost only once. He'd held the WBA super welter title and had defended it six times, and now owned the WBA's middleweight belt, and would go on to defend it three times.
Though he was nicknamed "The Bodysnatcher" for his wicked body punching, McCallum was a good all-around fighter. He'd KO'd Curry with a perfect left hook that sprang out of nowhere as Curry was backing away. That shot left Curry out cold. That convincing win over Curry, from which the Lone Star Cobra never fully recovered, is probably what put McCallum in the International Boxing Hall of Fame, which is where he belongs, for if a fighter can't say he earned millions of dollars, there's no better calling card than a picture book knockout of someone like Curry.
McCallum gave Collins a boxing lesson for the first four rounds and had him on the ropes at one point. To Collins' credit, he kept the fight close from the fifth to the 10th. Knowing he might lose a hometown decision, McCallum boxed smartly in the final two rounds, jabbing and landing combinations. It was nothing fancy, just effective boxing. All three scorecards went his way. The crowd jeered. Futch put the black robe on McCallum and the two walked back through the crowd like they owned the place. For McCallum, it was just another day at the office while he waited for his big money fight.
He was an excellent fighter, and from everything I've heard, a decent fellow. May he rest in peace, and finally get a crack at all those guys who ducked him.
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Don Stradley is the author of The War: Hagler, Hearns, and Three Rounds for The Ages, plus the soon to be released, The Immortals of American Boxing. He writes regularly for The Ring.
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