Better/Greater: Mike McCallum vs Azumah Nelson

Fair enough, ol’ boy!

 

I doubt McCallum "trashes" Duran. Outpoints him? Yes.

 

I think you are seriously underrating Hatton at 140.
He was a tireless pressure fighter with limitless stamina and decent power just like Fenech.
Obviously, Fenech has to be rated overall a better fighter because of 3 titles in 3 weight classes,..and his domination of Callejas and Nelson the first time.
Hatton has a very noteworthy domination of a still very good Tszyu.
But stylewise,..they were similar.
That’s all I was saying.
At least Hatton didn’t get stretched by pillow fisted fighters like Calvin Grove and Phillip Holiday!

 

And as far as being a H2H threat against any 122 pounder ever?
Gomez might have killed Fenech

 

I'm as high on Gomez as anyone on the forum, and I think Fenech is a tough fight for Gomez at 122.

Jeff doesn't win though. Gomez stops him late, but Gomez would know he's been in a fight.

 

McCallum beats Benitez for sure.

 

For sure is a strong way of putting it.

 

Deliberately so

 

McCallum fought maybe 3 guys you could call defensive/counter-punching stylists in his prime. Kalambay, Toney, and Graham. He did just enough to beat Graham, while being made to look pretty damn poor in the process. I had him losing by a point, I believe, against Toney in their first fight. And Kalambay essentially did a paint job on him.

Curry was out-boxing him prior to the KO in their fight as well. These things don’t lead me to believe he’d fare all that well against Benitez.

 

McCallum got shut out by the best boxer he ever fought, yet he "for sure" beats one the best pure boxers of all time?

Makes perfect sense.

 

This.

 

Toneuy fought nothing like benitez. Amd yeah, Curry outboxed him for a few rounds before being put flat on his back.

If we talk about curry, lets talk about how his worse, less talented brother arguably should have gotten a win over benitez

 

Well, that has nothing whatsoever to do with this fight, but OK. Benitez was a newly minted 19 year old and fighting in his first fight as an official Welterweight, having just vacated the Lt. Welter title. He then conclusively won the rematch 2 1/2 months later. Anything to add?

As to your earlier points. Toney fought more like Benitez than either of the other two fighters I mentioned. Odd that you singled him out. Both were renowned for their expert slipping/countering skills in close quarters and off the ropes.

Your Curry point was redundant, seeing as I said the exact same thing. The point was that McCallum consistently struggled with boxers, particularly those with quicker hands and/or feet. We’re not talking about one off night when he was a greenhorn like your Benitez/Curry example (which wasn’t relevant to begin with). These things were always issues with him.

 

It's the "for sure" part of Doub's statement that's ridiculous.

As if we're talking about McCallum vs Yuri Foreman or something.

Based on the Kalambay, Curry, and Graham fights, it's absurd to say that McCallum "for sure" beats the Benitez that schooled Duran and dismantled Hope.

 

2 of my favorite fighters to watch. I would give Nelson the nod to both questions. I think they are probably very close and wouldn’t argue someone who felt Mike deserved a nod.

 

Welcome, Philly!

 

I'd argue Nelson for both as well, based mainly on two points:
-Nelson's destructions of ATGs Gomez and Fenech outweigh any wins on McCallum's resume IMO.
-McCallum had a bit of a tendency to come up short in big fights IMO, i.e.: Kalambay I and Toney.

 

By that same token, couldn't you penalise Nelson for dropping losses to Whitaker, Sanchez and his 'draw' with Fenech?

 

Oh shit, it's gettin good now .

 

You could argue he had mixed results, but I think it's notable that McCallum never beat a single reigning champ until he beat Harding late in his career, and even that was under bizarre circumstances. He was set up with a journeyman to win a vacant jr. MW title, was decisively outboxed in his first ever challenge of a reigning champ, won that champ's title after it had been stripped from him, came up short again in his challenge of Toney, won some sort of "interim" belt up at LHW, and then took the "full" title from a guy who had been out of the ring for 2 years. In short, I'd argue his career was propelled somewhat less by big fight victories and a bit moreso by boxing politics than Nelson's.

 

Nelson only beat two, by my count. Old Gomez and Ruelas, and the reason Ruelas was reigning champ, was because Nelson lost the title to Leija.

And McCallum had less champs to fight. Hearns wasn't at the weight long enough to entertain a unification, not with a Hagler fight scheduled for '84, then happening in '85, and from there Tomas, Rosi, and Aquino were all paper champs who weren't in any rush to fight McCallum. Then he beat the man who beat (the better) two of them. As for IBF, well, they didn't have a champion in the division until the year McCallum won the title. Guys like Drayton and Santos were contesting for those. Jackson and Curry beat those two.

Whereas Nelson didn't fight Esparragoza, Cruz, Lopez or Mitchell. He also didn't fight Fenech until Fenech had retired. He had long stretches of multiple years to have fought at least one of them.

 

I wouldn't argue that Nelson could've made more big fights than he did, but I would still say the record corroborates that he did a better job of capitalizing on the ones that did come his way. Even in his loss to Sanchez, as a late sub and comparative novice, he still pushed the champion hard all the way into the 15th round. By contrast, when McCallum got his big shot at Kalambay, he basically laid an egg.

It should also be noted that there were stretches in Nelson's career where he was plainly avoided as well, especially as a FW. NOBODY wanted to fight him for at least 2 years after what he did to Sanchez, and he seemed to genuinely push for what would've been a big unification fight with McGuigan that never happened.