ATG: Who Ranks Higher? Tommy Hearns or Floyd Mayweather Jr.

I never saw Hearns/McCallum ever being on the cards, from what I can recall. At the point when McCallum finally started to turn heads, at 154, Hearns was already beginning his next step at multi-division title-winning, at 175.

McCallum then lost his first major outing at 160. Not long after that, Hearns lost his title to Barkley and never competed in the Middleweight division again.

I agree about the money, though. Hearns' mind was trained on both the glory and the hard cash. So, even if them meeting had been a more realistic proposition, the business side of the match would have yielded no takers.

 

Canelo obviously agreed to it in hopes of bulldozing Mayweather in what normally would have been a passing of the torch type fight.

 

Floyd wasted his time fighting shot guys like Pac and Marquez instead of guys like Bradley and Thurman. Those guys would've done to Floyd what Barkley did to Hearns. I feel. That is why I have Hearns at 20 and Mayweather at 200. That is how close this truly isn't and those are the reasons.

 

Every boxer in history can be accused of ducking someone.

 

Perhaps - but, even so, some accusations can be made with greater justification than others.

 

I do know Hearns was seated next to Arum at the Curry vs. McCallum fight, and possibly the Hearns vs. Curry fight was more of fight Arum wanted since Donald I think was favored to beat Mike, and a Hearns vs. Curry fight would have been big at middleweight had Donald won the 154 title in July of 1987 as Hearns won the middleweight title in October of 1987.

 

Replace the word accusations with bias and you're spot on.

 

I love Mike. He really could have made that group the ‘Fab Five’ under different circumstances.

The timelines didn’t really match up with Tommy though.

Duran was Mike’s mandatory at JMW, but he dropped the belt in order to fight Tommy instead. After beating Duran, Tommy then only fought one more time at JMW, before he moved up to fight Marvin at MW. And by the time Mike had moved up to MW himself, Tommy was then having fights above MW, at SMW and LHW.

IMHO, I don’t think Manny Steward would have wanted them to fight each other though.

 

Canelo had no option but to agree to it. There wouldn’t have been a fight if he’d hadn’t have agreed to it.

 

It’s nothing to do with bias.

 

Of course it does.

It's why on these same boards you see people arguing vociferously that Pacquiao ducked Mayweather or Mayweather ducked Pacquiao or Jones ducked Michalczewski or Michalczewski ducked Jones.

It's always argued from the point of view of a fan.

That's where the bias comes into it.

For my money, it's on the champion to make an offer to his top contender and its on that top contender to accept the offer.

In today's day and age politics, networks, promoters and managers get in the way of all that but I honestly don't care about any of that. I can only lament fights not happening.

Archie Moore got paid $800 dollars to challenge Joey Maxim for the world title and he had a record of 133-19-8 and had been boxing for 17 years.

The problem is boxers now can get rich without facing the people fans necessarily want them to.

But as I said, fans argue back on forth depending on who they are fans of and who they dislike.

 

The circumstances were completely different. Completely different.

 

Different in many many ways.

One of those ways being that Floyd did eventually fight those he was accused of ducking.

Jones Jr never faced Dariusz.

From 97 to 2003 they were the top two fighters in the division and Daorisz unified every title, had them stripped off him and Jones then picked them up.

Like I said, these arguments always work both ways. Always.

All we can really do is lament the fights not happening.

 

That's an interesting statement, because Mayweather wanted to fight at a lower weight but they agreed to a higher one. It's almost as if they both compromised.

 

Not only lack of money but lack of interest. McCallum wasn't that well known at the time and no one regarded him as a Charley Burley type being avoided by everyone. His first really big win was when he KO'd Curry, at which point Hagler had already retired, Hearns was one fight from leaving middleweight for good, Duran was on his last legs and Leonard was doing his veterans tour.