Mike McCallum

Mike McCallum
Data
Birth Name	Mike McCallum
Weight class	Light middleweight
nationality	Jamaican
birthday	7th December 1956
place of birth	Kingston
style	Left delivery
size	1.82 m
Combat Statistics
Struggles	55
Victories	49
Knockout victories	36
Defeats	5
draw	1

Mike McCallum (born December 7, 1956 in Kingston , Jamaica ) is a retired Jamaican boxer .

amateur

In 1976 he took part in the Olympic Games in the welterweight division for Jamaica , but failed in the third round of the tournament at the later bronze medalist Reinhard Skricek. In 1978 he won the Commonwealth Games in the same weight class and finished second in the Pan American Games in 1979 . His amateur record was 240-10.

Professional career

In 1981 McCallum turned pro and beat southpaw and ex-champion Ayub Kalule (record 40-2) in the build-up phase . In 1984 he won the vacant WBA light middleweight title and then defended it six times until 1987, including against Milton McCrory, Donald Curry and the undefeated Julian Jackson , who later became world middle and middleweight champion. In that fight Jackson got him full, but McCallum did not go down and has been famous for his chin ever since.

After defeating Curry, he put down the title and rose to the middleweight division and went on to play against the Congolese WBA middleweight world champion Sumbu Kalambay in 1988 and was surprisingly defeated on points. A year later he was able to win this, meanwhile vacant title against Herol Graham in England.

He defended the title against Steve Collins , Michael Watson and in a rematch Kalambay. In particular the boxing demonstration against Watson, who had no chance and was knocked out, showed textbook body boxing by McCallum. Shortly afterwards he controversially lost his belt on the green table. He then challenged James Toney for the IBF title in December 1991 , reached a draw, but felt cheated by the judges.

He lost the rematch against Toney, gave weight difficulties as the reason for his poor performance and rose two classes to light heavyweight, where he defeated the Australian Jeff Harding on July 23, 1994 for the WBC world title. After only one successful title defense, he lost the belt in June 1995 to Fabrice Tiozzo . After a loss to Roy Jones Jr. in November 1996, he rose again to a weight class and met in cruiserweight for the third time on James Toney and lost again on points. Then he ended his career.

Throughout his career he has had the problem of getting good opponents into the ring. Thomas Hearns , Sugar Ray Leonard, and others knew how good he was and therefore avoided him. When Roberto Durán competed against the Kronk boxer Hearns and not against McCallum, there was a bitter public dispute with Emanuel Steward . The " Ring Magazine " rated him as the second best light middleweight of all time after Thomas Hearns.

In 2003 McCallum was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame .

Web links

• Mike McCallum in the BoxRec database