Was McCallum the Burley of his day?

Pretty much took on his own murderers row, avoided by the biggest draws of the sport, at least he got title shots though, but the alphabet belts stopped him largely getting the massive fights. An ATG technician, intelligent, defensively solid, master boxer

A seriously underrated resume and underrated great

 

McCallum was the very definition of a high risk/low reward fight. Too good for his own good. He was past it when he fought what he is most remembered for by the masses, his bouts against Toney. Way past it when v. Jones, Jr.

 

No....... McCallum did get fights and win three titles at 154, 160 & 175 pounds, so he wasn't neglected......... Granted, Mike was bland and a hard sell to John Q. Public, but he made his mark and is in the IBHOF..........

MR.BILL

 

Which year, guessing its 1946, and accounting for inflation that is around 100k in todays money, not massive granted, but for the time not too shabby

 

He ducked Hagler.

Burley tried his best to get the money fights, mccallum seemed to think the bigger draws should come to him for the most part.I have a lot of time for Mike purely as a fighter, but i've never liked, nor bought all his whining about being frozen out.It's overplayed.

 

Depends which 1 you use and what it account for, we have a 300k house today that was bought for around 8k in the 1970s, if you base it on house prices then its worth a shed load more than the figure I quoted

 

Not a valid comparison at all between McCallum and Burley. McCallum got his opportunities to fight for titles, whereas Burley did not..that's a very simple distinction I know, but a valid one. McCallum was just another highly respected and dangerous title holder of the 80's, while Burley was criminally deprived of a fair shot at any of the reigning champions of the time, and though that's a negative, it certainly contributed to the aura and mystique of Burley as a guy so good and so feared by the real badasses of his time that none of them were willing to risk their crowns and reputations against him. There's no way to adequately compare the underachieving McCallum, who failed to secure fights vs Leonard, Duran and Hearns for example, but STILL was a title holder with a guy like Burley, who was just cheated, IMO, of a chance to beat a champion. It was a travesty to have been so good, yet never to have had a chance to say, at the end of his career, "I was a champion".

 

Burley was also a title holder.

 

I'd say this entire post basically sums the whole story up in a nut shell. Mike McCallum may very well end up being one of the most forgotten and underappreciated all time greats ever..

 

But at least McCallum actually got cracks at several titles in numerous weight classes, even if he still argued that everyone was scared of him and that they were denying him the chance to put food on the table - an overstatement to say the least. Burley, in comparison, probably WAS denied the chance to put food on the table.

McCallum is a deserved ATG; a fine, fine champion and a superlative technician who had everything but real speed in his arsenal and who defeated a long line of good opponents. But he gets his due, which is more than the likes of Holman Williams and Lloyd Marshall tend to get.

I'm only hoping that your post wasn't sarcastic or anything such, cos if it was, I've just made a right **** of myself .....