Mike McCallum vs Julian Jackson

I've always had Tommy as my no.1, but I'm gradually coming around to McCallum possibly being number 1. Over 15, I give him a better chance of stopping Tommy than the reverse. The thing with McCallum, he had the skill, guile, and heart to either catch Tommy, or force the issue with him at some point in the fight. 12 rounds, I still think I'd take Tommy.

 

p.s. McCallum is brilliant in this fight. His abillity to maintain his poise and technique during this "Hagler-Hearns" type onslaught is as good as I've ever seen. He aslo kept to his gameplan against a master technician in Curry. In that fight, I think his bodywork and Curry's rapidly closing eye were going to pay off later in the fight anyway. I never saw that as a guy being outclassed and just landing a lucky punch. Great fighter. Maybe a little underrated?

 

I agree just about 100% regarding both this fight and the Curry fight. Maintaining the poise and technique that McCallum did under such heavy fire, especially when you're a slow starter, is far from easy and mightily impressive to my eye. So is being able to step it up so quickly and take control in the pocket with such a brutal puncher.
I also think that never at any point was Mike being outclassed by Curry, even if it was the latter - a magnificent technical operator in his own right - who had the better of the early proceedings, McCallum sometimes being as I mentioned a slowish starter at times. That KO was no lucky punch as far as I can see. McCallum was excellent at feinting/rolling with his upper body to set up those lefts to the ribs and I think he knew that Curry knew this, hence the switch up catching Curry out and resulting in the KO.

Mike swings from being overrated to underrated back and forth, and I think he's gone back to being a bit underrated at this particular time. Whatever his limitations in conventional athleticism and maybe sometimes handling certain styles, he was a master old school technician.

 

I've always said this was a poor man's version of Hagler-Hearns, with poor man's versions of each fighter at a poor man's version of 160.

 

I agree, I think the stoppage was to early as well. Jackson was definitely hurt/stunned and in big trouble...but he was covering up good and still seemed to have his wits about him. I don’t think he would win, but feel he should have been given a shot to prove it

 

I wish Jackson stopped him so badly