This Oliver Twisted the Rules

I was talking to the heavyweight champion of the world.

“What’d you say your name was again?” I asked him.

“McCall,” he said evenly. “Em-cee-cee-ay-ell-ell. First name, Oliver.”

Well, perhaps that’s not quite fair. Still, can you imagine Jack Dempsey having to explain who he was? Or Muhammad Ali? Or even Larry Holmes?

The anonymous heavyweight champion is a product of our times. He’s as anonymous as a Russian spy. The scholars on “Jeopardy” couldn’t pick him out.

You’ve had heavyweight “champions” named Tim Witherspoon, Pinklon Thomas, Tony Tucker, Michael Moorer, Michael Weaver, Michael Dokes, even someone named Tim Puller of late. It’s a crowd shot. The heavyweight champions at any given time wouldn’t fit into a bus. They might as well fight in masks.

Still, Oliver McCall rates more than his traditional Warhol 15 minutes in the limelight.

For one thing, he has fought the best. Mike Tyson, Witherspoon, Michael Spinks, Thomas, Frank Bruno, Carl (the Truth) Williams.

Oh, don’t look for those in the ring listings under “Fights Last Night.” McCall didn’t fight any of them on national television. He fought them in the gym in head-gear and heavy gloves. McCall was a sparring partner.

Now, sparring partners are supposed to be grizzled old washed-up parties, has-beens and never-weres who need the money.

What a sparring partner is supposed to be is not himself. For instance, if he’s training Tyson for the Buster Douglas fight, he’s supposed to be Douglas. He has to be a pugilistic chameleon, a character actor. He has to be versatile. He has to be able to box for one client, slug for another. It’s never a good idea to embarrass the boss. Dump him on the seat of his pants and you’re outta there. Sparring partners who are presumptuous are not in demand. You’re just meant to be kind of a glorified punching bag. Just shut up and take it.

McCall was never very good at either one. He was different in one important respect. While he didn’t exactly try to outpoint his employers, he did study them, learn from them. He probed for weaknesses without their knowing it. He was respectful but not oblivious.

He came to the conclusion if he didn’t have, so to speak, handcuffs on, he would have more than held his own. They were studying Spinks or Douglas or Evander Holyfield through him. But he was studying them . Not a proxy. Oliver was their sparring partner. But they were his. “I picked up moves from them. The way Carl Williams’ threw the jab, the way Mike Tyson moves to get ready to throw the right on you. I put these in my arsenal.”

Sparring partners have acceded to the throne before. Jimmy Ellis got Ali ready for many a fight. But when they fought for real--after Ellis became interim champion in Ali’s enforced absence--Muhammad knocked his ex-sparring partner kicking in 12 rounds.

Oliver’s twist was that he was more successful when the sparring took on reality. Usually, sparring partners can only hope to get on the undercards of their fighter’s main events. Oliver got main events of his own and, ultimately, sparring partners of his own.

He was a skilled, confident performer. Even the fights he lost were wars--decisions to Tucker, Douglas and Mike Hunter.

He seemed a safe enough trial horse for the World Boxing Council heavyweight champ, the classy Brit, Lennox Lewis. A sparring partner, a gym fighter, he looked perfect for the role. Lewis would just use him as the piano, a tuneup for bigger things against Riddick Bowe or Tyson. London bookies made him a 5-to-1 underdog.

Oliver, who had learned how to do it in leaky uptown gyms, sized up Lewis’ weak points. He fought too straight up, the British style. He spread his legs too wide for rapid movement. He was a sucker for the right.

Oliver did what sparring partners are never meant to do: He knocked out the titleholder in the second round with a right hand that caught the immobile Lewis striking a pose in a corner.

The heavyweight cocktail had an Oliver in it.

Oliver defends his title April 8 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas against the venerable Holmes, a champion of the past. Where once he was just a guy with a towel over his shoulders waiting to warm up the main event fighter, Oliver is now the main event. The star, not the stand-in. On pay-per-view TV and live. And not for the sparring partners’ hundred bucks a day and car fare. For the big bucks, $2 million.

“In my mind, everyone should serve an apprenticeship in this business as a sparring partner,” he insists. “I never went the sparring partner syndrome--get busted up, get knocked down, get punched like a bag. I didn’t soak up punishment, I soaked up knowledge. It’s a good route to the top if you’re talented.”

He plans to let Holmes do the learning this time. Oliver plans to teach him what it’s like to get knocked out.