Measured Against All Time: Mike McCallum

In tribute to the "Bodysnatcher"

On May 31, boxing lost one of its true masters.

Not unexpectedly, eulogies of the man known as “The Bodysnatcher” couldn’t avoid what wasn’t in his career. For some, he will always be the man who never got his dance with one of the “Four Kings” just as much as he was a three-division world champion who made his mark without them.

For McCallum, timing was everything…and his wasn’t always the best. Many of the best names he faced weren’t fully appreciated until years later. Others, like Roy Jones, came after he could really do anything about it.

Despite that, his name remains a favorite among hardcore fight followers with some of his best bouts finding new life in the decades since his career ended in the 1990s. He was a first-ballot, easy Hall of Famer for a reason, one who went on to remain a trainer and presence in the sport until his passing.

Looking back after his loss to the boxing world, we ask how good was Mike McCallum, measured against all-time?

McCallum’s career will be examined in five categories:

1. Accomplishments

2. Competition Faced

3. Competition Not Faced

4. Reaction to Adversity

5. What Did He Prove?

We begin with…

The Tale of the Tape

Born: December 7, 1956
Height: 5’11
Hailed From: Kingston, Jamaica
Turned Professional: January 14, 1981 (TKO4 Rigoberto Lopez)
Record: 49-5-1, 36 KO
Record in Title Fights: 13-2-1, 8 KO (14-3-1, 9 KO including interim title fights)
Lineal World Titles: None
Additional Title Reigns: WBA Super Welterweight (1984-88, 6 Defenses); WBA Middleweight (1989-91, 3 Defenses); WBC Light Heavyweight (1994-95, 1 Defense)
Entered Ring Magazine Ratings: June 20, 1982 (#10 – Jr. Middleweight; Cover Date August 1982)
Last Ring Magazine Rating: February 5, 1997 (#9 – Light Heavyweight; Cover Date May 1997)
Current/Former Lineal World Champions Faced: Ayub Kale RTD7; Donald Curry KO5; James Toney D12, L12, L12
Current/Former Alphabet Titlists Faced: David Braxton TKO8; Julian Jackson TKO2; Milton McCrory TKO10; Sumbu Kalambay L12, SD12; Steve Collins UD12; Jeff Harding UD12; Fabrice Tiozzo L12; Roy Jones Jr. L12
Record Against Current/Former Champions/Titlists Faced: 6-4, 6 KO, 1 KOBY

Accomplishments

McCallum had a decorated amateur career, including representing Jamaica at the storied 1976 Games in Montreal as a welterweight. McCallum won his first two bouts before losing a heartbreaker in the quarterfinals, missing the medal round 3-2 to eventual bronze medalist Reinhard Skricek. Relocating to the United States, McCallum continued in the unpaid ranks through the remainder of the 1970s, winning multiple National Golden Gloves titles and a National AAU crown.

McCallum turned professional at age 24, moving quickly through the ranks and winning his first 21 fights, including a knockout of former lineal and WBA junior middleweight champion Ayub Kalule. It was enough to secure a mandatory crack at the WBA crown at 154 pounds less than three years after his debut. The belt was vacant after then-champion Roberto Duran opted to face WBC champion Thomas Hearns in what was initially intended as a unification contest. In October 1984, matched with Sean Mannion, McCallum won a fifteen round decision on the undercard of Marvin Hager-Mustafa Hamsho II to capture his first title.

McCallum would follow the Mannion win with ten consecutive knockout wins, six of them in defense of his title. McCallum had amassed a record of 32-0 with 29 knockouts during his tenure at junior middleweight and made his move up the scale.

McCallum’s first crack at a middleweight crown ended in his first defeat, outfoxed by WBA champion Sumbu Kalambay in March 1988. Three quick wins kept McCallum in position for another title shot but it wouldn’t be a rematch with Kalambay. Kalambay was forced to relinquish his title when he opted for a fight with IBF champion Michael Nunn in what was initially intended as a unification contest. McCallum seized the opportunity left for him, traveling to the UK in May 1989 to defeat the cagey Herol Graham for the vacant WBA belt.

McCallum would defend the crown three times, including avenging the Kalambay loss, to set up what was (recurring theme emphasized) initially intended as a unification contest with lineal and IBF middleweight champion James Toney in December 1991. The WBA wanted McCallum to defend against Ireland’s Steve Collins, who McCallum has already successfully defended against in 1990. Instead, McCallum embraced the role of challenger to headline a TVKO (HBO) pay-per-view for the first time.

The first Toney fight ended in a draw and demanded a return. In his final fight at middleweight, McCallum would lose a competitive majority decision in August 1992. What followed was one final move up in weight.

Skipping over the super middleweight division, McCallum would score a couple victories at light heavyweight before facing Randall Yonker for an interim WBC title in March 1994. A fifth-round stoppage win led four months later to a crack at WBC champion Jeff Harding. McCallum won a unanimous decision, making him a titlist in three weight classes at 37 years of age.

Light heavyweight would be the shortest of McCallum’s title reigns. A 38-year old McCallum lost the title in his second defense, dropped for the first time as a professional en route to a decision loss.

The Tiozzo defeat was the first of three losses in McCallum’s last four fights, the others coming to Roy Jones for an interim WBC title and Toney in the last fight of their trilogy.

Among outside the ring honors, McCallum was named as or in the following:

• KO Magazine Best Junior Middleweights of the 1980s #1 - 1989

• Boxing Illustrated 1987 Knockout of the Year - 1990

• Boxing Illustrated Fight of the Year - 1991 (v. Toney)

• Ring Magazine Greatest Jr. Middleweights All-Time #2 - 1994

• Ring Magazine Top 50 Fighters of the Last 50 Years #49 - 1996

• KO Magazine Best Middleweights of the 1990s #6 - 1999

• KO Magazine Best Light Heavyweights of the 1990s #9 - 1999

• Ring Magazine 80 Best Fighters of the Last 80 Years #79 - 2002

• Ring Magazine 100 Greatest Punchers of All-Time #87 - 2003

• International Boxing Hall of Fame - 2003

• BoxingScene Top 20 Jr. Middleweights of All-Time #3 - 2009

• International Boxing Research Organization Greatest Jr. Middleweights of All-Time #2 - 2019

• Ring Magazine Top 100 Boxers in the History of the Ring Rankings #93 - 2022

• Ring Magazine 100 Greatest Punchers of the Last 100 Years #91 - 2022

Competition Faced

Using a combination of Ring Magazine, Boxing Illustrated (later Boxing Digest), and KO Magazine rankings as a reasonable gauge of McCallum’s professional years, the below are the men recognized as champions or ranked in the top ten when McCallum faced them. The rankings provided for opponents represent the most recent in those publications’ print editions on the eve of a fight, with an exception for historical lineal champions. For McCallum, the opponents identified were:

• 11/13/1982: RTD7 Ayub Kalule (Ring #6, Cover Date: 12/82; KO #4, CD: 02/83 - 154)

• 07/28/1985: TKO8 David Braxton (Ring #6, CD: 09/85; KO #5, CD: 11/85 - 154)

• 08/23/1986: TKO2 Julian Jackson (Ring #6, CD: 10/86; KO #10, CD: 12/86 - 154)

• 04/19/1987: TKO10 Milton McCrory (Ring #9, CD: 06/87; KO #7, CD: 08/87 - 160; KO #7, CD: 08/87 - 154)

• 07/18/1987: KO5 Donald Curry (Ring #7, CD: 10/87 - 160; KO #4, CD: 11/87 - 154)

• 03/05/1988: L12 Sumbu Kalambay (Ring #4, CD: 06/88; KO #7, CD: 06/88 - 160)

• 05/10/1989: SD12 Herol Graham (Ring #6, CD: 05/89; BI #6, CD: 08/89; KO #6, CD: 08/89 - 160)

• 02/03/1990: UD12 Steve Collins (Ring #8, CD: 05/90; BI #8, CD: 04/90 - 160)

• 04/14/1990: KO11 Michael Watson (Ring #6, CD: 07/90; BI #3, CD: 07/90 - 160)

• 04/01/1991: SD12 Sumbu Kalambay (Ring #3, CD: 07/91; BI #6, CD: 07/91 - 160)

• 12/13/1991: D12 James Toney (World Middleweight Champion)

• 08/29/1992: L12 James Toney (World Middleweight Champion)

• 03/04/1994: TKO5 Randall Yonker (BI #10, CD: 04/94 - 175)

• 07/23/1994: UD12 Jeff Harding (Ring #6, CD: 11/94; BI #3, CD: 09/94 - 175)

• 06/16/1995: L12 Fabrice Tiozzo (Ring #6, CD: 10/95; BI #8, CD: 07/95 - 175)

• 11/22/1996: L12 Roy Jones Jr. (Ring #1, CD: 02/97; BD #1, CD: 01/97 - 168)

• 02/22/1997: L12 James Toney (Ring #5, CD: 05/97; BD #6, CD: 03/97 - 175)

Among opponents unranked by the above noted publications, one stands out for extra notice. McCallum’s first title defense, on the road in Italy, ended in a thirteenth round stoppage of Luigi Minchillo. It was just the second stoppage loss of Minchillo’s career and his first in six years. Minchillo had a win over former titlist Maurice Hope and had gone the distance in losses against Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns.

Multiple McCallum wins aged well. Jackson, Curry and Collins would all go on to win titles, with Jackson and Collins winning them in multiple weight classes. Jackson and Curry are both enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

All of McCallum’s losses came to fighters of championship pedigree with three of them coming at the age of 38 or more. There were no bad losses. Jones and Toney are both enshrined in the Hall of Fame and there is a powerful case for Sumbu Kalambay being one of the greater omissions from not just the Hall but even the option to vote for him, to date, on the ballot. Tiozzo was also an excellent fighter who would add a title at cruiserweight and go on to be the only fighter to stop one of the titans of his era at light heavyweight, Dariusz Michalczewski.

Competition Not Faced

As always, this section is concerned with what did not occur, and not why it did not.

Discussion of McCallum’s career in relation to the “Four Kings” has always been part of his narrative but those weren’t the only fighters who could have added to his resume depth.

McCallum fought in three weight classes and here we can focus on men who held titles in those weight classes during the years McCallum was active in them and near the title picture. Broken down by weight class, they would be:

Junior Middleweight

• Mark Medal (IBF)

• Carlos Santos (IBF)

• Buster Drayton (IBF)

• Roberto Duran (WBA)

• Thomas Hearns (Lineal/WBC)

• Duane Thomas (WBC)

Middleweight

• Frank Tate (IBF)

• Michael Nunn (Lineal/IBF)

• Thomas Hearns (WBC)

• Iran Barkley (WBC)

• Roberto Duran (WBC)

• Doug DeWitt (WBO)

• Nigel Benn (WBO)

• Chris Eubank (WBO)

• Gerald McClellan (WBO)

Light Heavyweight

• Prince Charles Williams (IBF)

• Henry Maske (IBF)

• Virgil Hill (Lineal/IBF/WBA)

• Dariusz Michalczewski (Lineal/IBF/WBA/WBO)

Some of these names will stand out more than others and overlap with McCallum for relatively brief periods of time. For instance, Medal was at the end of a title reign just as McCallum was arriving in his first title shot. Duran, as noted, vacated his belt rather than facing McCallum in 1984 and never defended his middleweight title after upsetting Barkley.

Other names may technically have not overlapped as champions but merit mention. McCallum didn’t move to middleweight until after the reign of Marvin Hagler ended but they were within a division of each other as champions for a few years. Sugar Ray Leonard competed at super middleweight and light heavyweight in catchweight bouts with Hearns, Duran, and Donny LaLonde before an ill-fated move to junior middleweight in 1991 to face Terry Norris.

At middleweight, the biggest miss was likely Michael Nunn. Nunn was regarded as the best middleweight in the world for several years post-Hagler. Benn and Eubank also stand out. Had McCallum opted for super middleweight rather than light heavyweight after the Toney loss in 1992, perhaps some of those fights could have happened. A rematch with Jackson at middleweight would also have been interesting but McCallum’s win over him at junior middleweight keeps that out of the unfazed competition category.

McCallum’s tenure at light heavyweight was short so there’s not a lot to seriously consider missed, but there were names that could have enhanced him in his later years. A win over Hill or Maske would have stood out more on his record than a Harding win.

Reaction to Adversity

McCallum’s sixteen year professional career came with a range of challenges both physical and technical. The way he handled those moments is part of what made him who he was.

On the physical side, his chin and balance stand out. McCallum could be hurt and faced some ferocious punchers. It took until almost the age of 40 for anyone to drop him for a reason.