Boxing Roundup : McCallum Stops McCrory, Retains His Title With 10th-Round TKO

Mike McCallum retained his World Boxing Assn. junior middleweight title with a 10th-round technical knockout over Milton McCrory Sunday at Phoenix.

Referee Joe Cortez stopped the scheduled 15-round bout at 2:20 of the 10th with a bloodied McCrory slumped against the ropes in a neutral corner.

McCallum, 30, took control of the close fight in the eighth round when he opened a cut on McCrory’s left eyelid.

McCrory, whose nose was bleeding from the second round on, survived the ninth round when Cortez temporarily stopped the fight to repair loose tape on McCrory’s left glove.

McCallum, who had predicted a fifth-round knockout, wasted little time attacking McCrory in the 10th and was battering him on the ropes before Cortez stepped in.

“After I cut him, I knew I had the fight,” McCallum said. “In the fifth, I started getting to him with body shots. I slowed him up a lot and then I picked up the pace. I hit him with a lot of shots--combinations, right hands, hooks--but I couldn’t put him down. That eighth round was my best round all year.”

The victory improved McCallum’s record to 31-0 with 28 knockouts. It was the fifth straight successful title defense for the Jamaican now living in New York who was once McCrory’s teammate on Detroit’s Kronk Boxing Team.

Immediately after the fight, McCrory, now 31-2-1, was taken to nearby Scottsdale Memorial Hospital to have a plastic surgeon look at his cut eyelid.

“He’s OK,” said Emmanuel Steward, McCrory’s manager. “It’s just a cut. We wanted to get it checked and taken care of.”

On the undercard, Meldrick Taylor pounded out a unanimous 10-round decision over Mexico’s Primo Ramos in a junior welterweight fight.

The 20-year-old Taylor, a gold medalist in the 125-pound division at the 1984 Olympic Games, controlled the bout from the opening bell and won by a 97-91 score on two judges’ cards and 99-91 on the other.

Taylor, from Philadelphia, now is 15-0-1 as a pro.

Chang Jung-koo of South Korea stopped Efren Pinto of Mexico in the sixth round at Seoul, South Korea, to defend his World Boxing Council light flyweight crown for the 12th time.

Referee James Jenkin of the United States stopped the scheduled 12-round fight 59 seconds into the sixth round after Pinto was knocked down for the fourth time in the fight.

Chang, 24, improved to 34-1 in retaining the crown he won from Hilario Zapata of Panama in March 1984. Pinto, 26, dropped to 23-7-1. Both fighters weighed the division limit of 108 pounds.