The Best of the Rest: 160lbs Tier II Tournie - Round 1 - Fight 9: Mike McCallum UD15 Nino Benvenuti

What i've done is i've lifted top tiers out of my top fifty at the poundage and organised them into a seeded tournament to uncover "the best of the rest" at the poundage, with you, the denizens of the world's greatest boxing history forum, casting the deciding vote. The difference between this middleweight tournament and the equivalent at 175lbs is that I've left ALL the guys with no footage in this time. I understand that makes things difficult and for some, frustrating but there are just far too many excellent and intriguing fighters from middleweight history. I understand this makes making a pick very hard, but i hope you'll still place a vote and make a post because obviously without your input the whole thing becomes meaningless.

Pick your man! Write however many details you like or don't in a post below. But maybe try to post, to keep things moving a little bit. You have three days.

And let's be nice. No reason for disagreeing over total fantasies after all!

15 rounds, 1950s rules and ref. Ten points must. Weigh in is 18 hours before the fight.

I'll only vote if it's tied, then I'll decide the result.

Round of Thirty-Two Fight 9: Mike McCallum vs Nino Benvenuti

MIKE MCCALLUM (49-5-1)
Among the greatest light-middleweights of all time, Mike McCallum’s career up at middleweight remains a nearly – nearly lineal middleweight champion of the world, nearly the conqueror of James Toney. In the end, a draw and a majority loss in two fights that could have been scored any one of three ways was the final result of his pair with Toney at 160lbs; such are the tiny screws upon which boxing greatness are turned.

Still, McCallum probably overachieved given the limited amount of time he spent at middleweight. He boxed as few as seven times at 160lbs and won just four of those contests. Outside of those two razor thin failures against Toney, McCallum also went 1-1 with Sumbu Kalambay, making him 1-2-1 versus the best, but they were the best. Mike lost his first fight with Sumbu, as to his vengeance, he earned in a split decision three years later, it was a desperately close fight that illustrated McCallum’s exquisite ability for identifying and boxing to an opponent’s killzone while underlining his limitations at the weight. He just didn’t have the physicality to bully Kalambay out of there in the first half of the fight and Kalambay insidiously boxed his way back in and the contest became another desperately close one that could have gone either way.

Still, when allowed to dominate as he was against another superb technician, Michael Watson, he was lethal, remorseless in his heavy-bagging of the world-class Watson who McCallum broke in eleven. He couldn’t break a spirited and green Steve Collins though and he was run extremely close by a riffing, winging Herol Graham – and that, really, is the story of McCallum at middleweight.

NINO BENVENUTI (82-7-1)
In the end, Benvenuti was destroyed by Carlos Monzon, as was just about everyone unlucky enough to meet with the Argentine in the seventies, but in the sixties were kinder to him. Benvenuti lost just three times in that decade, once to Ki-Soo Kim at light-middleweight in ‘66; to Dick Tiger up at light-heavyweight in ’69; and once at middleweight to Emile Griffith.

Griffith, one of the greatest welterweights, also carved out for himself a superb career at middleweight and it was he that welcomed Benvenuti, an Italian citizen who had been born in Slovenia, to America. If Benvenuti felt stage-fright he gave no sign of it in ripping the title from Griffith in what may have been the 1967 fight for the year; Benvenuti all but dominated Griffith with a career’s best jab and the snaking straight-right which he was most famous for – but most often with a rare but beautiful counter-right-hand that hurt the champion repeatedly. A rematch followed five months later in which Griffith abandoned the rushing attack that had brought him to grief in the first fight in preference of a steady pressure and a beautiful left-handed attack; the strength of Griffith’s jab was variety and Benvenuti was never allowed to settle. It brought Griffith the narrowest of majority decisions, a short right hand that flashed Benvenuti in the eighth the possible difference-maker.

Their third, fought the following year, was part clinic, part barroom brawl just as the first two had been but it was Benvenuti who emerged from the fight with the majority decision on this occasion after sending Griffith spinning across the ring and onto his backside in the ninth – and then surviving his brutal rally in the fifteenth. Benvenuti defended the title on four separate occasions including perhaps his best performance, an eleventh round knockout of the streaking wonder that was Luis Manuel Rodriguez, who he stopped with a single left hook while on the verge of being pulled with cuts. Other ranked men he disposed of in less spectacular fashion include Doyle Baird, Fraser Scott, Ferd Hernandez, Don Fullmer and Luis Folledo.

 

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Mike McCallum out-pecked a tapped Nino Benvenuti scoring a flash knockdown in the ninth with a right-hand right-uppercut combo that sent Bevenuti spinning. The Italian though came roaring back in the eleventh hammering McCallum through both the 11th and 12th before appearing to gas badly at the close of the 13th. Thereafter peace broke out and McCallum cantered his way to a most uncomfortable of comfortable decision.