14.09.07 – By Fernando Arboleda: Sometimes we watch a great fight and wonder why a referee might step in prematurely to take the glory away from the fighters by stopping it. We curse the ref for not allowing the victor to do it on his own. Just a couple of weeks ago we had controversy in Barranquilla, Colombia when an American referee decided to call a sudden halt to the championship boxing fight between Kendall Holt and Ricardo Torres.
Torres had been hurt but made a dramatic comeback by knocking Holt down with a great left hook, then continued with a wild barrage which compelled the ref to step in early. And other times, the controversy is made by a referee who does not step in early enough, allowing a fighter to be destroyed beyond the reasonable limit.
We can criticize the third man in the ring all we want, but must acknowledge that it is, at times, an extremely difficult part of the “sweet science.” Whether or not the referee in the McClellan- Benn championship fight of 1995 was inept, is up for discussion. In boxing, as in other sports, referees are like players. We get good ones and we get bad ones. Today, Gerald McClellan is blind, partially deaf and can barely walk with irreparable brain damage. This was the result of his fight against Benn, in London on February 25, 1995.
They called Gerald McClellan the “G-Man.” He was arguably the greatest right-handed KO puncher in middleweight history. In the early to mid-1990s, this product of Manny Steward’s Kronk gym in Detroit was a vicious finisher in the ring. People can speculate one way or another since, in that era alone, there were a number of horrific middleweight punchers. The most prominent included Julian “The Hawk” Jackson, Mike “The Body Snatcher” McCallum, John “The Beast” Mugabi and Nigel “The Dark Destroyer ” Benn.
Gerald’s story is a tragic one that needs to be told and retold, even if it “aint easy listening.” The G-Man would violently knock out Mugabi in only one round in 1991, then go on to knock out the undefeated Jackson in a classic five-round brawl in 1993 ( in a ’94 rematch he KO’d Jackson in one round). Then in 1995, moving up to challenge Nigel Benn’s Super-Middlewieght title, he met his fateful end as a boxer.
McClellan had a lifetime passion for pit bulls. Gerald was no different in the ring. He attacked as soon as he could to destroy his opponent with combinations, always aiming to land his finishing right cross. He did so frequently, scoring knockouts in 29 of his 31 victories, rarely fighting more than a few rounds. In fact, before the Benn fight, Gerald had never been past eight rounds. Nigel Benn also was an awesome knockout slugger.
His style consisted of little boxing movement, but a lot of straightforward pursuit, and ominous right hands. In the first round McClellan knocked Benn clear out of the ring. Nigel would recover via the ref’s long count. The fight turned out to be a vicious one, a savage brawl. Many observers in London testified to it as wickedly frenetic, intense and ferocious, full of violent exchanges.
It is ironic that a man who so loved watching fighting dogs in action would meet such a tragic end. But, as his friends confirmed, G-Man’s mentality was that of a pit bull. He sought to destroy his opponents in the shortest time possible. Gerald claimed he would rather be killed than knocked out. When, in that round ten finale, Benn landed crucial right-handed bombs to the head and to the back of the head, G-Man fell to one knee.
He would get up and fight some more. But Benn (who earlier had seen a hypnotist) seemed a man in a violent trance, unstoppable in his barbaric pursuit. He would land more punishing blows and the G-man would eventually slide back to a knee again, and be counted out.
As bedlam took over the hectic, confused London ring, The Dark Destroyer was in a crazed celebration. Gerald was a beaten man, a blood clot developing in his brain. Author Kevin Mitchell, who was in attendance, described the look on G-Man’s face as his trainers wiped him down. He said “there was only a blank resignation on the beaten man’s bruised features…and what looked like the cold fear of resignation.” And so, in this manner, the fighting life of a once proud warrior had come to a shocking end.