The Body Shots EVERYONE FEARED Explained

Quite the opposite. Mike hardly gets any praise.

 

In general I think. But he has some extremist followers who are very loud at times.

 

If Mike had let someone else guide his career instead of himself he would have had an entirely different career.
Nobody really ducked him they just passed over him for bigger more money fights which in pro boxing money is the ultimate objective.
I also wondered why he couldn't land the big fights and then I found out: he was a huge pain to deal with always trying to demand more then what he was worth at the time. So much of a pain that certain boxing people didn't even bother trying to make fights involving him because they knew he would start to demand things.
People have short memories. Back in the 80s HBO boxing was MAJOR league. You put on a good show or are impressive you had got it made.
So Mike gets his HBO date vs Sean Mannion.
While Sean is a game boxer he's very limited and basically the ideal opponent for Mike to look spectacular against.
So what did Mike do? He stunk out the joint. All he had to do was step on the gas and Sean wouldn't have finished the fight but Mike went 15 dreadful rounds with an opponent who was outgunned in every department.
And lets not mistake something: if Hearns or another big name had been in there in Mikes place they stop Mannion in under 8 rounds.

 

Mike was such a classy fighter. He went to the body constantly without doing what most think that you need to do to work that way- he didn't wade in and take punches to land punches. He was so fundamentally sound. Tight elbows, proper punches, very sound.
Two other things...He used his jab to put guys in a position to where he could hit them with another punch, he wasn't trying to land every jab, but each one had a purpose. Second, he liked to get guys in a position where they put both hands up because then they can't hit back.

 

Don't agree. Tyson went to the body very effectively when he had an opponent covering up, most often on the ropes, but McCallum was always working the body, even in the middle of the ring. Lots of his counters were to the body, whereas Tyson's counters mostly were to the head.

When Tyson landed good body shots the results were often spectacular given that he was a spectacular puncher. The same with Roy Jones, who somebody else held up as a better body puncher than McCallum. McCallum wasn't the kind of puncher who could break a man in half with one punch so he doesn't have the highlights they have, but his body work was more consistent and multifaceted.

 

I agree …McCallum never neglected the body …which was smart on his part …because he wasn’t a particularly hard puncher

 

How many stoppages did McCallum score to the body? Does anyone know?

 

I don't doubt the body punching by Mike wreaked havoc on boxers but as far as stoppages from body shots he's lacking.
Take a guy like Mickey Ward who stopped a ton of people with ONE body shot and you would have to say he went to the body better then Mike did because he has the knockouts from body shots to back it up.

 

I haven't implied that's all a good body puncher is, but part of the criteria for assessing the best body punchers of all-time is their ability to finish someone off there. I'm not purporting to be a McCallum expert, however, which is why I'm asking.

 

Don't forget the old adage - kill the body and the head will die.

I think a good description for him would be that he was "an accumulation puncher" - to the body. Certainly comparative to some. He couldn't bang near as hard P4P as guys like Arguello (and you won't see a bunch of incredible stoppages to the body from Mike) but his overall commitment to a consistent body attack paid dividends in it's own less flashy way.

 

Thank you. That's the sense that I got watching his fights, but I haven't seen enough of them to know whether I was missing something.

 

Julio Cesar Chavez and Marco Antonio Barrera were classic Mexican body punchers. Gennady Golovkin at his best was a feared body puncher and of today’s fighters, you’ve got the likes of Errol Spence who likes to wear opponents down with a consistent body attack and Naoya Inoue who tends to take out opponents with single shots to the body.