Boxing: McCallum's win has taste of triple honours: Jamaican has sights set firmly on Jeff Harding's world light-heavyweight crown

MIKE McCALLUM, the former double world champion, achieved an impressive points win over Glenn Thomas, the highly rated American light-heavyweight, at the Hammersmith Apollo on Saturday and sounded a warning that a hat-trick of titles is in the offing.

McCallum's intends to add the World Boxing Council light-heavyweight title, presently held by Jeff Harding, to his previous spoils of the World Boxing Association light-middleweight and middleweight titles. After the 36-year-old Jamaican had beaten Thomas by 99 points to 97, a scoreline which flattered the loser, he immediately looked ahead to a meeting with the Australian. The date, though, is not proving easy to arrange. 'The fight I want is against Harding,' McCallum said. 'Three times it has been put off, twice because Jeff was injured and recently because the promoters ran into money problems.'

McCallum hopes to meet Harding before the end of the year, but the Australian is already being lined up to fight Crawford Ashley, of Leeds, in this country next month.

McCallum's victory speech also included a swipe at Chris Eubank's fixture list. 'Ever since he beat Michael Watson to win the World Boxing Organisation super-middleweight title, he has only fought guys from the graveyard,' he said. 'At least Nigel Benn has gone to America and fought some good men. To be a champion and to be the best, you have to gamble.'