THE NEW ATOMIC AGE
around the ring, refusing trainer George Benton’s pleas to return to his corner. “McCall is doing a very strange thing here, folks,” said Larry Merchant on the call, stating the obvious. “I wonder if that’s against the rules or not,” added Foreman. McCall wandered and gazed out into the audience in a posture that was equal parts bewilderment and honesty. He was doing, I suppose, what we all do when faced with an impossible task: We spin our literal and figurative wheels. “I could see where Lennox’s momma was sitting at ringside,” he says. “I saw her cheering for him, and I thought of my own mother not being able to be there. I sort of went into a trance.” As the fourth round unfolded, McCall walked around, guard down, shaking his head and occasionally turning his back on the confused Lewis, who responded with what looked like both confusion and compassion. “This man’s mind is gone,” said Benton to Merchant. “Have you ever seen anything like this in your life?” After Round 4, McCall wept. Referee Mills Lane knelt in his corner in a posture that I can only describe as “fatherly,” asking McCall if he wanted to continue. Lane waved off the fight early in Round 5. “I’ve seen some strange things in boxing,” said Merchant. “That is certainly one of the strangest.” Merchant opened his interview with, “Lennox, congratulations … I guess.” “After the fight, I said, ‘Y’all got what y’all want, now can you leave me alone?’” McCall remembers. “It made me feel bad.” T he conversation between HBO announcer Jim Lampley and Foreman immediately post-bout encapsulates an incredibly prescient, human and decent bit of journalism. I found myself thankful, for McCall’s sake, that we didn’t have social media in 1997, as it would have made a bad
weekly in my early 30s, in a ring in the basement of our home, with our kids playing video games on an adjacent sofa and my wife coming down occasionally to get some meat out of a basement freezer as Sam battered me around the ring and taught me everything he knows. I trained for this particular engagement at age 48 by battling the flu for a month, which still had me wheezing at night, sounding not unlike a kitten meowing. Not an especially empowering thought. “Let me show you some ring generalship,” says McCall after a long session of rope- skipping (he skips like a teenager), shadowboxing and mitt work. I have never felt more inadequate, athletically, as I hit a heavy bag with one eye trained on McCall in the ring. Once I join him, our headgear never comes on, but McCall works me around the ring in a light, technical spar, teaching me (a freshman) a doctorate- level class on heavyweight boxing, counterpunching and defense. He chins me with an uppercut and I feel a fraction of the heavy right hand that stopped Lennox Lewis. His ability to avoid my feeble right hand, step to his left and then batter my exposed ribs is stunning. This is what world- class feels like. I’m 6-foot-2 and
McCall had an emotional breakdown during the Lewis rematch.
situation worse. “This guy has had a painful life,” Foreman explained. “He’s been in and out of counseling for drugs, and believe me, there are a great many people in the same [state] he’s in … I wanted to just get up there and embrace him and let him know it’s going to be OK.” “Let’s hope he can continue to pursue the path of religion in which he now believes, and that that can be the reconstructive mechanism in his life,” Lampley said. “This guy is in bad shape and he needs us,” Foreman said. It was sweet. Recovery is rarely linear, and this has certainly been the case for McCall. He was baptized at age 12 in Chicago by the uncle of singer Lou Rawls. “God has kept me, by grace, through my ignorance,” he says of the drug years. His mother died a year after he got clean.
“Were you tempted to use, that night?” I ask him. His eyes well up with tears and he tells a story of walking to a bodega in Racine, Wisconsin, where he could have scored junk … but didn’t. “It was the Holy Spirit keeping me,” he says. Part of his redemption, as an older man, has included fighting on professional cards with his son, Elijah. “There’s no joy like fighting, and winning, on a pro card with my son!” he says. “I was his trainer and I worked my son’s corner, and then I walked into the room, changed, and then I came out and won my fight! It was awesome. Those two fights were probably the most exciting fights of my career, Lord knows.”
W hen I come out of the dressing room in my gear, McCall is in the ring, now shirtless, working the mitts, in a vintage pair of Atomic Bull fight satins. He is sweating profusely, and a few of the gathered boxing lifers – including coach Nettles Nasser – marvel at his speed and power. In a gym full of young alphas, McCall is still the one all of them stop to admire. I am, of course, far from the first writer to suggest this sort of thing.
McCall is still fit and fight-ready at nearly 60 years old.
a strong (albeit chubby) 250, but I feel like a child playing one-on-one in the driveway against my father. There were a handful of moments where he could have sent me home in the back of an ambulance, if he’d so desired. A popular boxing adage is that Father Time is undefeated. But I wouldn’t bet against The Atomic Bull.
Norman Mailer famously sparred Jose Torres many times. Hemingway, it seemed, sparred with anyone who was willing. My personal favorite, George Plimpton, wrote of his sparring session with Archie Moore in Shadow Box . I sparred with my heavyweight friend
Ted Kluck is the author of 30 books and teaches journalism at Union University.
56 RINGMAGAZINE.COM
RINGMAGAZINE.COM 57
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs