THE NEW ATOMIC AGE
as a home base for former super middleweight titleholder Caleb Plant, this is a boxing laboratory. The moment I shake McCall’s massive right hand, I discover what will become a theme of the afternoon: that there is a wide chasm between “good athlete” and “world class.” McCall’s fist is large and heavy. I will feel it in the ring later, connecting with my chin. His body is still covered with slabs of muscle and, despite a lifetime spent fighting and an era of heavy drug use that started in 1984 (I was 6 years old) and ended in 2012, he is something of a medical anomaly. McCall has never had an operation of any kind and cleared his neurological exam with flying colors. His body looks better at 59 than mine ever looked on my best day. McCall has only ever trusted two men to wrap his hands – heavyweight legend Joe Frazier and Music City owner Stephen Grand. “It’s the widest handwrap I’ve ever seen,” explains Grand, gesturing to McCall’s expansive knuckle pads behind a desk. M y grandfather smoked several packs of Marlboro Reds each day. He was a tool-and-die man – from Chicago like Oliver McCall, and a fighter like Oliver McCall. He ate steak every night for dinner and I don’t think I ever saw him eat a vegetable. He was the patriarch of our family and when he was 59, none of us questioned his motives or his ideas, even if we thought them unwise. At 59 years of age, McCall – former WBC heavyweight champion, former Mike Tyson sparring partner and former vanquisher of Lennox Lewis with a wicked right hand – won two professional boxing matches, both TKOs, against aging journeymen Stacy Frazier and Gary Cobia. One read of this – that which is popular among comments section denizens (“haters,” per a smiling McCall) – is that it’s not safe for a 59-year-old to fight professionally and that it shouldn’t happen. Another read, of course, is that it’s really not safe for anyone to fight
professionally in what is a hurt business and a head trauma business. A third read, and my personal favorite, is that boxing has always operated (for better or worse) under a strong “if the market will bear it” ethic, which is how full-time-marketer and part-time-boxer-come-lately Jake Paul ended up in a ring, in a massive stadium, in front of a Netflix audience against a 58-year-old version of Tyson. It’s why we all watched that fight against our better judgment, and why my college students got to experience an unlikely and counterfeit version of a Mike Tyson Fight Night. It’s part of what now drives McCall, who launched his comeback well before the Tyson/Paul gentleman’s agreement. “We’re taking calls from David Tua, Bruce Seldon and of course Shannon Briggs, who wants to fight anybody and everybody,” says a member of McCall’s camp, rattling off a who’s who of 1990s heavyweight names. “They all want to be the first to knock him out.” In 77 pro fights, and countless sparring sessions, the inexplicably rugged McCall has never been knocked down or stopped. I ask him to what he attributes his unusual chin. “Only the grace of God,” he says. Boxing, for all its seediness, is also a sport of deep and sometimes inextricable relationships forged over time. A younger version of manager-turned- promoter Jimmy Adams has been visible at McCall’s shoulder – often next to Don King – in many an old fight film. In one particularly tender moment – during the first Lennox Lewis ring walk – he can be seen wiping away McCall’s tears as the fighter made his way to the ring. A walk which was often emotional for McCall. “I had to work myself up!” McCall says of his tearful ring walks. I ask him about fear. “Of course I was afraid!” he says. “But it was controlled fear! The fear became energy!” It’s an energy – and a lifelong addiction that has outlasted his others – that has reunited him with Adams and brought him to Nashville to fight on his friend’s twice-monthly cards.
“That’s what brings me here!” explains a joyful McCall, wearing a red Atomic Bull T-shirt and red workout shorts. He’s perhaps the most kinetic person I’ve ever interviewed. His metal folding chair creeps ever closer to mine during our conversation as he slips, bobs and weaves imaginary punches mid-story. He works up a little sweat just by talking. T oday I might be sparring with Oliver McCall, which may not be a great life choice for me, at age 48. There are a lot of “formers” in front of my name as well. Former college football player. Former sparring partner for a heavyweight pro and dear friend (Sam Comming – see: boxing and relationships). Former author of Facing Tyson: Fifteen Fighters, Fifteen Stories . There’s a scary thing that happens in middle-age where you become known more for your formers. This is, perhaps, what compels McCall back into the ring and, at some level, compels me to want to do this. He’s had an odd career in that he is perhaps best known for his sparring. Namely, the fact that he was Mike Tyson’s chief sparring partner and once put a prime Tyson on the canvas in a session. “Me and Mike was cool,” he says of his relationship with the legendary heavyweight, whom he knocked down in training for the Michael Spinks fight. McCall relates a story in which he was fighting on a card in Chicago that was attended by Tyson and Don King. “I knocked my opponent out,” McCall explains. “Knocked him through the ropes. I walked over to where Mike was sitting and said, ‘I’ll knock you out like that too!’” He became a Tyson sparring partner the next day and showed no fear. “I charged across the ring to his corner,” he says of their first sparring session. “And they gave me a $500 raise on the spot!” McCall’s professional apex came in a surprising 1994 victory at Wembley Arena over Lennox Lewis in which he caught the WBC titleholder with a right
The aging warrior still packs a punch and has never been down.
hand, sending him to the canvas. Referee Guadalupe Garcia decided Lewis wasn’t fit to continue and awarded the second- round TKO to McCall. It is a version of that selfsame right hand that I’ll be facing today. They say that power is the last thing to go. Through it all, the one constant was drug use. A vandalism and disorderly conduct charge. Stints in rehab. A stay at a psychiatric hospital. “It was controlled using,” explains McCall, who remembers exactly where he was when he first tried crack cocaine. “The building is still there. 39th and Indiana, in Chicago,” he says. McCall is a stickler for exact dates and addresses. “I felt like I had no cares in the world. It was euphoria. But the drugs and the addictions are trying to destroy you … to kill you.” The second Lewis fight, finally contested in February of 1997 at the Las Vegas Hilton, was creatively billed “Payback or Playback” and was (to say the least) theatre of the bizarre. The
ringwalks were shockingly minimalistic compared to today’s versions. Lewis walked to the ring in only his trunks, gloves and shoes. Noteworthy was the fact that trainer Emanuel Steward worked with McCall in the previous fight and with Lewis in the rematch, which had never before happened on a championship stage. McCall was a 3-to-1 underdog – a function of looking lethargic against a 45-year-old Larry Holmes and positively listless in a loss to Frank Bruno. McCall had promised to delay his own ringwalk and make Lewis wait for him in the ring, but instead sprinted to the ring, leaping up onto the canvas. “I wanted to do something different,” McCall says of his ring-run. As a result of his drug charges, McCall was not allowed to have any family present for the fight, or “they would arrest me immediately.” “I begged my daughter Tawanna not to look at the fight,” McCall remembers.
His plea was a portent of the bad things to come. When Michael Buffer announced his name, McCall used both gloves to slick back his hair in a move that struck me as quaint and, frankly, kind of cool, as is Las Vegas and the 1990s in general. Adams, as always, was at his elbow. In the middle of the first round, George Foreman – the lineal heavyweight champ at the time (at age 48) and HBO Sports’ expert commentator – indicated, prophetically, that Lewis could win the fight with his long left jab. He would do so, but not in the way that anyone could have predicted. Lewis controlled the fight for three rounds, with McCall offering little in the way of offense. Following the third, McCall walked in circles
54 RINGMAGAZINE.COM
RINGMAGAZINE.COM 55
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs