BOXING / TIM KAWAKAMI : New Champion McCall Simply Wants to Be Like Michael

Until not long ago, Oliver McCall was merely another talented heavyweight among the talented heavyweights thrashing around in the pit.

He got into trouble and broke the law. At 29, he had derisively--and, given his record, aptly--been sneered at as “just another sparring partner” by then-World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis.

McCall could always throw a solid right cross--he knocked down Mike Tyson in a training session with the punch when Tyson was preparing for Michael Spinks--but he could always mess himself up too.

“I really do feel in my heart that I should’ve been champion a long time ago,” McCall said on a conference call. “But I stopped myself from doing it. And I suffered through not doing it, but I learned and I grew as a man.

“So from that growth and hard-core growing up, I’ve changed and now I want the good side of it.”

In 1988, the Chicago native was sentenced to 60 days in jail for breaking and entering and, over the next several years, his record dropped from 11-1 to 15-4 as he sputtered through what should have been his prime.

“I have talked about that (in speeches to students),” McCall said of his jail time. “I tell the students it isn’t all about your accomplishments, it’s about doing what you can do with what you’re blessed with. I’ve come a long way and I’ve still got a long way (to go).

“The way I put it to youngsters, there are mistakes you’ve made, can be made, will be made. You have to regroup and do what has to be done. That’s the way I go about life, period. There’s a lot of other positive things you can do, other than doing things that can harm you and be costly.”

Three weeks ago, McCall landed a right cross hard to Lewis’ jaw, sending him to the canvas for an eventual second-round technical knockout. And suddenly, Oliver (the Atomic Bull) McCall had gone from no-name to one-third heavyweight champion.

Because he is promoted by Don King, who is eagerly awaiting the release from prison of Tyson, McCall widely has been disparaged as a caretaker champion merely keeping the throne warm for Tyson.

“They’re going to say a lot of different things, but I know one thing, someone who takes my title, they have to beat me, “ McCall said. “I don’t think anybody can beat me, I don’t care who he is.

“I know I beat the best. I know someone will come along down the road who is better than I am, eventually. But I’m going to slide out the back door after four, five fights and retire with the championship.”

McCall’s plan is simple.

“I’m only planning on fighting about three or four more fights,” McCall said. “I just want to retire with the belt, with my honor, being the best I can be, like Michael Jordan did. I’m the Atomic Bull, he was a Chicago Bull, both from Chicago . . .

“Once I fight Tyson and beat Tyson, I can retire with my head up.”

Until then, King has lined up the usual suspects for McCall. Tyson said recently that he won’t jump into a title fight immediately and might want to work his way into shape with 10 or 20 tuneups.

“I want him to be at his best,” McCall said of Tyson. “One fight, 20 fights, 100 fights, then I’ll take what’s mine.”

Peter McNeely, a virtual unknown, might fight McCall in January. Bruce Seldon, a better-known journeyman, might be next. Lionel Butler, another untapped, undisciplined mountain of talent, could be in there too.

Isn’t McCall worried that if he keeps fighting nobodies, he never will be respected?

“Nobody knows them? Nobody knew me!’ McCall said. “There’s a lot of nobodies that can really be somebody.”

Why not plan such fights, King asks. After a boxer with five losses beats Lennox Lewis, and when 45-year-old George Foreman is challenging Michael Moorer for the other two-thirds of the heavyweight title--the World Boxing Assn. and the International Boxing Federation versions--isn’t anything possible?

Meanwhile, unification plans are vague and extremely unlikely, given the promoters’ desires to maintain their shares of the heavyweight crown in these uncertain, pre-Tyson months.

“The heavyweight division is in the worst shape,” King said. “It’s dismal. It is abysmal. Anybody on any given day can win. Nobody really believed, other than me, Jimmy Adams (McCall’s manager) and Oliver McCall, that he would be heavyweight champion today. Yesterday’s nobody is tomorrow’s somebody.”

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Not surprisingly, King and McCall immediately shot down an offer from Lewis’ promoter, Dan Duva, to guarantee McCall $10 million if he agrees to a rematch.

“Instead of wasting his time baby-sitting the title by fighting Moe, Larry and Curly for chump change, McCall should step up to the plate and fight a real fight for serious money,” Duva said. “The only way McCall will ever see this kind of payday is if he breaks into King’s house.”

McCall said he wouldn’t give Lewis a chance to regain his title if he were offered $100 million.

“Now they come with their tail between their legs, with the money to get back into the picture, to try to reinsure the mistake they already made by trying to fight me in the first place,” McCall said

“First, Lennox Lewis disrespected me by (blaming) the referee (for a quick stoppage). . . . Nobody told him to lay down on his back in the first place, then get up like a bowl of spaghetti dropping down to his legs.”

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Rock Newman, manager of former champion Riddick Bowe, has been furiously trying to get his man, generally considered the most talented heavyweight in the world, back into title contention.

To do that, he has to get on the good side of King, whom he had previously disdained.

His most recent effort has been to publicly suggest that he would give King a piece of Bowe’s future earnings if King gives Bowe a shot at McCall.

“We’ll see what happens as Rock moves down the line with Riddick Bowe,” King said. “I’d be delighted to talk to Rock Newman and Riddick Bowe any time they should so desire.”

Boxing Notes

Oscar De La Hoya, after taking seven weeks off--and canceling a fight for the third time in two years--to recover from a virus, recently began training at Big Bear for his Nov. 18 appearance on the Roy Jones-James Toney undercard and dismissed criticism that he is too quick to back out of long-planned fights. “I’m a fighter who, if he’s not in shape and 100%, I’m not going to go up there,” De La Hoya said. “I’m not going to put up with promoters’ . . . . It’s my life and if I’m not ready, I’m not fighting. It’s as easy as that.”

The initial symptoms of the virus, De La Hoya said, were severe headaches, nothing any fighter ever wants to experience. “I took a brain scan, they took pints of blood out of me, everything,” De La Hoya said. “It was very scary. But all my brain cells are there. . . . The doctor said I had a virus, and a lot of people have been misunderstanding what the doctor had said. People were thinking I had a really deadly virus. They would ask me, ‘Do you have AIDS?’ No, no, no, I don’t have AIDS. It was a virus and I am over it.”

Julio Cesar Chavez’s next fight will not be against Frankie Randall but against former world champion Tony Lopez, Dec. 10, in Monterrey, Mexico, King said. Why won’t Chavez fight Randall, who has repeatedly said that he believes he deserves a third shot against Chavez, who has said he agrees? “Right now, it’s Lopez because we want a fight in Mexico. Tony Lopez, after that great fight he had with (Greg) Haugen (a victory last June), that put him in position for this,” King said. “Randall can defend (his newly won World Boxing Assn. junior-welterweight title) a couple of times and then we can bring him and Chavez back for a unification, I think, way down the line.”

King also said he will soon formalize plans to stage the third Humberto (Chiquita) Gonzalez-Michael Carbajal fight “somewhere in Mexico,” probably in Mexico City, on Nov. 12. That card probably will include the long-delayed title defense of WBA junior-lightweight champion Genaro Hernandez against Jimmy Garcia, a bout that originally was to have taken place in September.

Heavyweight prospect Jeremy Williams has settled a contract dispute with his former manager, Bill Cayton, and signed with Top Rank, Inc. Williams is also scheduled to fight on the Jones-Toney undercard.