McCall: It Was Strategy

Nervous breakdown? What nervous breakdown? It was all a clever act.

So claims Oliver McCall.

Only 19 hours after disappearing following a bizarre performance in a World Boxing Council heavyweight title fight at the Las Vegas Hilton, McCall reappeared at a bizarre news conference Saturday that included WBC President Jose Sulaiman, promoter Don King, members of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, a ringside doctor, a psychiatrist and a drug counselor.

McCall held the floor for nearly an hour, insisting that his refusal to fight against Lennox Lewis and his overall strange behavior was actually part of a prefight strategy. That behavior resulted in a victory for Lewis when referee Mills Lane stopped the fight in the fifth round.

“They did not give Oliver McCall the opportunity to play out my fight game,” McCall said. “I was upset the fight was stopped. I would have brewed up my anger to where I would have knocked Lennox out.”

Others were not convinced. After listening to an emotional McCall speak, loudly at times, ranting and raving, in tears at one point, Sulaiman said that, while he is convinced of the fighter’s sincerity, he will recommend that McCall seeks help for his emotional well being.

Psychiatrist Leonora Petty, who examined McCall for more than a hour Saturday morning, declared him mentally fit but, according to McCall, the doctor recommended follow-up treatment.

And Elias Ghanem, chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, still believes there was more to McCall’s Friday night behavior than mere strategy.

“There was something wrong, something going through his mind,” Ghanem said. “We would have a hard time licensing him unless we know he is back to normal.”

The commission has held up McCall’s purse, which is a little more than $3 million, pending the results of a post-fight drug test, which will be available Monday, and a commission meeting to discuss the events of Friday night.

McCall, an admitted drug user who was arrested twice last year on drug charges and a third time for a public breakdown in mid-December that included throwing a Christmas tree across a hotel lobby and spitting on a police car, had been on a drug rehabilitation program in Nashville until five days before the fight.

He arrived in Las Vegas with his drug counselor, Ruth Ferguson, on Monday and passed a commission-ordered drug test Tuesday.

In the first two rounds of his fight against Lewis, McCall, who had knocked Lewis out in their first meeting nearly 2 1/2 years ago, put up a fight, although Lewis clearly had the edge.

By the third round, McCall claimed Saturday, he was tired of Lewis’ holding tactics and decided to go into a rope-a-dope strategy.

“Why couldn’t I have had this opportunity?” asked McCall, pointing the finger at Lane for stopping the fight even though, McCall pointed out, he was not hurt. “I know someone who did have this opportunity: Muhammad Ali [who successfully used the rope-a-dope against George Foreman in 1974]. But Ali was a great, legendary champ. I know Oliver McCall is nothing.”

But Ali never acted like McCall did Friday. McCall refused to fight, throwing only three punches over the final four minutes of the fight and connecting on only 26 punches in the whole bout. McCall didn’t hang on the ropes like Ali, but instead walked away from Lewis. And between rounds, McCall refused to even go to his corner and talk to his handlers.

Why not?

“I didn’t want to hear what my corner was going to say,” McCall explained.

Although he was warned by Lane during the fourth round and again at the end of that round to start putting up a fight, McCall, who had burst into tears by that point, continued his unorthodox behavior.

He said he had entered the ring without the emotional lift he needed to win the fight. By letting Lewis tee off on him, McCall said, he was getting fired up.

“Give me some more,” McCall said he was thinking as Lewis hit him. “Give me something to make me angry enough to knock you out.”

McCall, who has six children, says he thought about his seventh, a stillborn daughter, during the fight, and that also helped to bring the tears and the emotion for which he had been searching.

The mention of that daughter, who had been named Olivia McCall, caused her father to break down at the press conference.

McCall’s grief turned to anger when he discussed the theory that he had thrown the fight.

“You saw him [Lewis] hit me with a punch dead on the chin,” McCall said. “I could have gone down if I had wanted to. I don’t do that.

“I was able to defend myself. Why do I have to explain myself?”

McCall said he plans to return to Nashville, take two weeks off, go back into training, take a tuneup fight or two and then push for a third match against Lewis.

A commission official estimated that, even if McCall remains drug free and responds well to psychiatric treatment, he won’t be allowed to fight for at least six months.

“I believe in Oliver,” Sulaiman said. “I will recommend that he place himself in the hands of professional help. When the process is completed, we will have our doors open for this former WBC champion.”