Mike McCallum died in Las Vegas the other day, aged 68. The obits were kind and respectful, though his death wasn't major news. There were short pieces on 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 can get in these times. McCallum was not particularly well-known to younger fans, but he was a great fighter. He was smart and versatile, and in bouts against supposed knockout artists, he was usually the guy who scored the knockout.
One thing boxing fans do, aside from complain about scoring, is to look back at the 1980s through rose-colored glasses. They'll insist it was a golden era, with all the great ones fighting each other. Fans don't seem to realize that there was just as much political nonsense going on in the 1980s as there is today. Fans old enough to remember will always say it was a crime that McCallum didn't get his shot at those guys who were so busy fighting each other: Hagler, Hearns, Leonard, and Duran. I remember talking to trainers from that period, and they all said the same thing: those big names avoided McCallum. They had reasons, I guess. He possessed the two main ingredients to keep him on the "must avoid" list: he wasn't famous, and he was good enough to give them all hell.
Thirty-five years ago, I happened to be at the Heinz Convention Center in Boston where McCallum was defending his WBA middleweight title against Stevie Collins, an Irish lad who had relocated to Massachusetts and was considered a local guy. That's what McCallum did in those days while the superstars were all busy fighting each other. 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 scored big wins over Donald Curry, Julian Jackson and others, most of the Boston crowd had no clue 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, their 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 the rabid locals 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 any gunslinger would be glad to have the nerves of steel McCallum showed that day.
He sauntered with incredible ease through 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 and was enjoying a renaissance among the smarter fans who knew about his past. I don't know how he did it, but the old guy seemed to create a force field between McCallum and the spectators.
There were rumors that McCallum, who had learned some of his craft at the Kronk gym in Detroit, had reportedly got the best of Tommy Hearns during impromptu sparring sessions. Hearns' trainer, the late Emanuel Steward, once told me McCallum was left out of the big money bouts because Leonard and Hagler, two wealthy superstars, didn't want him to intrude on their fun. "When McCallum was young and in his prime," Steward said, "Leonard and Hagler looked the other way. McCallum didn't get the big fights when he should have."
By the time of this fight with Collins in 1990, McCallum had won 38 times, and lost only once (he'd avenge the loss, too). 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 ability to dent a man's torso, McCallum was a good all-around fighter. He'd beaten Curry with a perfect left hook that sprang out of nowhere as Curry backed away. That shot left Curry out cold, flatter than Wiley Coyote after encountering an ACME steamroller. 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.
As for Collins, McCallum gave him a boxing lesson for the first three rounds, and hurt him badly in the fourth. 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.
McCallum was an excellent fighter, and from everything I've heard, a decent fellow. May he rest in peace, and finally get a crack at the 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.
