He was never ovverated. He was a great fighter in his prime and outclassed allot of good quality fighters in the early and mid 90's.
In baseball, they'd call him a first-ballot hall-of-famer. He beat many top-notch fighters but never got to meet the greats of his era when he was in his prime. Great body puncher, great chin, good power, good speed, great defense, great skills, fearless, basically everything that a great has to have.
saw his fights with toney when he was past it slightly, the first 2 fights were as close as they can get
Great fighter , no question....for me one of the best light-middle wts ever, undefeated at 11st and with wins over julian jackson, milton mccrory, and don curry, can prob only put hearns ahead of him at Lt-mld. at middle wt he only lost twice to good fighters in toney (MD) and kalambay (UD) , later as a s-mddle/lt-hvy he put in some good performances well into his late 30's early 40's with a few decision losses to other great fighters....bar maybe tiozzo.
owned the 154 division beat julian jackson in 2 rounds,owned donald curry,finished milton mccory, Beat herrol graham,watson,collins, beat kalambay in a rematch beat james toney atleast once and gave him 2 close fights won a light heavyweight strap and became a 3 weight world champ, fought roy jones and gave jones problems despite his advanced age at this point the man was a warrior and An ATG
He didn't "own" Curry at all. He landed one huge shot straight to the chin in a bout where he was being out-boxed soundly, especially in the rounds leading up to the KO, and the early portion of the KO round for that matter. Still, all credit to McCallum, but far from an ownage, just a damn good punch.
of course. i remember a thread asking fans to rank Toney, Calzaghe, and McCallum. people were ranking Toney and Calzaghe above McCallum. dumbasses.
Whilst my knowledge of McCallum is limited, I've seen enough against great fighters to know the answer is yes.
Curry wasn't "soundly" outboxing McCallum. Soundly to me is the same as convincingly. He was edging him nonetheless.