Editorial | The great Mike McCallum

Statistics can sometimes distort, or underplay, reality. In Mike McCallum’s case they did.

His suggests that he was an excellent boxer: 55 fights, 49 wins, five losses, one draw. Thirty-six, or 73 per cent, of his victories were by knockouts. He won championship titles in three weight classes: light heavyweight; middleweight; junior middleweight. Of the 13 times he fought in title bouts, he won 69 per cent of the fights.

It is this newspaper’s position that Michael McKenzie McCallum, who died on Saturday at age 68, was a better boxer than even those statistics indicate. He was a great fighter; perhaps the best of his generation, worthy of membership of the pantheon of the greatest boxers of all time.

Unfortunately, McCallum was cheated of his right to definitively prove, and place beyond all doubt, this case. This is not a frivolous claim.

Known as ‘The Body Snatcher’ for his strength-sapping assaults on his opponents’ mid-sections before taking them out with head shots, McCallum went professional in 1981 after around 250 fights as an amateur, including at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, where he reached the quarter-finals in the welterweight division. He won gold for Jamaica in the same weight class at the 1978 Commonwealth Games in the Canadian city of Edmonton.

BOXING’S GOLDEN AGES

His was one of boxing’s golden ages, with several stars in the middle and lower weight divisions. And McCallum was fittingly among them, helping to inspire a slew of Jamaican and Caribbean boxers who emerged in that era.

He won his first champion belt in 1984 by defeating Sean Mannion of Ireland for the World Boxing Association junior middleweight title at the famed Madison Square Garden in New York.

McCallum defended that title six times, among them his stupendous 1987 knockout of Donald Curry at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

Curry, at the time, was touted in America as the best fighter around, pound-for-pound. He was considered the favourite against McCallum, which, at a point in the fight, seemed a possibility.

In the fight’s second round, the fast Curry, with a sharp right hand, briefly wobbled the Jamaican. McCallum later said that it was the closest he had ever come to being knocked down.

By the fifth round, McCallum was behind on the judges scorecards, before producing one of the shots from which boxing lores are made. He assayed a relatively mild upper cut to Curry’s body, which caused the contender to lower his hands. McCallum, who was shifting to his left, unleashed a massive and perfect left hook that smashed flush on Curry’s right jaw. Lights out!

GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS

McCallum’s first defeat in a professional bout happened the following year, when, moving up in class, he attempted to take Sumbu Kalambay’s WBA middleweight title. He lost in a decision.

He, however, won the belt a year later in a split decision over Herol Graham in London for the title, which had become vacant. McCallum defended the title three times, before he was stripped of the belt by the WBA in a dispute over fees for the sanctioning of a fight.

He, however, in 1991 fought title holder James Toney for the International Boxing Federation’s middleweight title, but the bout ended in a tie. He later lost to Toney.

With the closure of his career on the horizon, McCallum moved up to light heavyweight and in 1994 beat the title holder Jeff Harding to gain the World Boxing Council’s crown, giving the Jamaican fighter a title in a third weight class.

He successfully defended the title a signal time before facing a few losses over the next few years.

But as grand as McCallum’s performance in the ring was, perhaps his greatest achievements were outside it. The first of these speaks to him as a fighter, in a way that his stats could not capture.

It speaks loudly that the biggest boxing stars of the day – Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Haglar, Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran – in their and his prime, all avoided McCallum. They wanted no part of him. And the boxing establishment allowed it.

Second, in a professional sport often equated with rumbustiousness, McCallum behaved with decency and decorum. He made Jamaica proud.