Was Mike McCallum avoided?

Duran facing Hearns was the fight to make at the time, for both sporting and financial reasons. Yes, he had to vacate his belt to make it, but that had much more to do with the sanctioning bodies than With Duran.

Hearns going up to face Hagler after Duran was likewise the right fight for every reason. Afterwards there was a window for unification. Not saying for sure he avoided him, but it could have been along those lines. Not a must fight for the people of the day in any way, but there was a window for unification.

McCallumn was hardly a blip on the MW radar when Hagler was champ, so not much to say there. Every single challenger he faced made more sense at the time. That it's a fight one would liked to have had in hindsight is another thing entirely.

Leonard moved away from MW before McCallum moved up there. He could have faced him, though. But where he was at the time, chasing records and big fights when he didn't retire, a fight with McCallum didn't make much sense. Fights with Kalambay, Nunn etc made at least as much sense, if not more, so there's little reason to say that McCallum in particular was avoided,

 

I agree and I think @Dynamicpuncher has made the point previously that Mike would have struggled with prime Hearns.

Tommy could only be beaten by furious pressure (SRL, MMH, Barkley) and being crowded and rushed. Not Mike's game. Stand off Tommy and try to dismantle him, ie Mike's game, only ends with one winner, whoever you are.

 

In other words they would have been fools not to avoid him.

 

Yeah I think he was to some degree avoided. He was a high risk low reward opponent with little or no charisma attached to his name. A great defensive fighter who had decent power, a solid chin and good boxing skills. Not a recipe for lots of invites

 

Exactly mate Hagler, Barkley, were willing to walkthrough whatever Hearns threw at them to get the job done. Even Leonard had to abandon his boxing and go straight into the lions den with his eye completely shut to grind out a very hard win.

I don't see McCallum as that type of fighter in all honesty, hes a methodical highly skilled technical fighter. Hes not going to throw caution to the wind and walkthrough Hearns's punches. He'll do what he always does best and that's methodically try and break Hearns down, I just don't think it would be enough in all honesty.

 

I don’t really think the first part matters.

Even if he was medium risk (and all of them took on medium rink fights for medium rewards), he was NO reward.

I mean if a guy can fight for a world title that goes to purse bids and the winning bid if 70K, he brings nothing to the table.

I also don’t think most people thought of him as high risk until he beat Jackson and Curry. He was just a guy.

 

He was the modern day Charley Burley

 

Was McCallum avoided? From memory, no. I know Hagler and Mike…a bit like me and my ex wife…were never in the same building at the same time. If you wanted to fight Hagler you had to be a MW, no ifs no maybes. That was Hagler’s division, if you wanted him, you’d find him there. By the time Mike started his middleweight career, Hagler had vacated the building.

McCallum could have worked something out at some stage with those two extraordinary weight jumpers Duran and Hearns I guess, but in all seriousness Mike wasn’t on their radar. They had bigger fish to fry…but I definitely don’t see any fear or trepidation behind it. I just don’t think it made financial sense.

As for SRL, I don’t recall a timeline that would have made a fight with them possible tbh.

So the quick answer is no, McCallum was not avoided…not by the big 4 anyway.

 

McCallum was avoided by ticket-buyers and promoters who wanted to make money.

IIRC, James Toney-McCallum I — which was supposed to unify the IBF and WBA titles before McCallum was stripped of the WBA strap a few days before when a step-aside agreement couldn’t be reached with Steve Collins’ promoter (who wanted $50k on top of what Collins was already going to be paid to step aside) drew a whopping 3,500 fans in Atlantic City.

That’s not a huge crowd for two champions facing off.

 

No Mike wasn’t big box office unfortunately, which was a shame for a talented guy like him

 

No, it was probably mostly those who had worked with him, like Steward and Hearns, that knew what kind of risk he brought. But in general he was just an unknown belt holder.

 

He was definitely avoided in the sense that as he remained one of the cruddiest risk/reward value fighters for a big name, they weren't going to be trying to fight him over each other. He wasn't avoided in the way he implies, which was to say that he was owed fights by some kind of objectively overwhelming obligation the top names had to choose a fight with him over everything else available to them. It was never that, that I remember. I might be forgetting a major thing here. Things get murky when you've got superstar guys jumping around in weight trying to face each other for the top dollars they earned a shot at, on a comfortable foundation of a made legacy, then you have the guy coming up trying to make one of those legacies, and he's not in demand, and they're getting a selection of belts as bargaining chips to play around with, in a sense. But it should remain a point of context that he was a terrible risk/reward because he was one of the sport's great talents and he belonged by skill matching in those weight classes with the lower weight legends coming up. He should've been in with those guys, if we were just matching quality, at least a few times. It would've been right, not necessarily that it was individually owed, but it would've been best for the sport.

 

At the time to be featured on HBO you really had to bring something to the table because back then HBO was huge for a boxer to make it on.
So Mikes chance to make an instant splash and get people talking about him was his fight vs Mannion.
And anyone that's seen that fight knows it was a horrible fight which bombed and put everyone to sleep.
You had Mannion who was completely outclassed and Mike not willing to finish him off but play it safe which put off HBO. It was years before HBO had him on again.
You know Mike could have fought Nunn who was getting big in name but he didn't.
It wasn't because Mike was sacred it was because from a business standpoint it was too much risk for Mike.

 

Pretty much the case ...