Sports

GERALD MCCLELLAN WAS ONCE ON TOP OF THE WORLD, NOW HE’S . . . THE FORGOTTEN CHAMPION

“HOW . . . long . . . I . . . was . . . a . . . champ . . . for, Teddy?”

“About two years, G-Man. About two years.”

“How . . . long?”

“About two years, G-Man. A little less than two years.”

“I’m . . . fighting . . . again?”

“No more fights, Gerald. No more fights. You’re retired.”

“I . . . retired?”

“Retired, G-Man. No more.”

The man in the wheelchair’s face went slack. His head dropped to his chest. He didn’t speak for a long time.

“I don’t think he wanted to hear that,” said the man’s sister, whose life has become a 24-hour-a-day routine. Taking care of G-Man. “He didn’t like that.”

“C’mon, Gerald. McDonald’s,” she said. “McDonald’s.”

“Yeah,” said the man in the chair, brightening. “Let’s . . . go.”

“McDonald’s can bring him out of anything,” said the man’s sister.

Except his wheelchair. And his blindness. And the deafness that forces listeners to shout into his ear and the brain damage that causes him to ask the same questions over and over, day after day.

Gerald McClellan has no memory of what happened to him on February 25, 1995.

But the sight of him today should remind everyone that while boxing is a sport, it is never a game.

When boxers are hurt as badly as Gerald McClellan was that night, they generally die.

If they are lucky.

Boxing sentenced McClellan to life in the prison of his own useless body.

Seven years ago, the G-Man went into the ring with Nigel Benn, the super-middleweight champion.

He came out on a stretcher, his brain nearly destroyed by 10 rounds of furious give-and-take. He spent two months in a coma, six months in various hospitals.

He will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, unable to see or hear or care for himself or hold a normal conversation.

His three sons, ages 13, 12 and 7, will never know who their father was. Only what he is.

And his sisters, Lisa and Sandra, and his Aunt Lou, are as shackled to him as he is to that chair.

At 34 years old, Gerald McClellan is a living wreck of a human being, ruined by boxing and by a courage that made his body continue to fight long after his brain had had enough.

Said Teddy Blackburn, a freelance fight photographer who is McClellan’s friend and the keeper of his legend, “No other sport would allow this to happen. Can you imagine if something like this happened to Derek Jeter in a ballgame? Do you think George Steinbrenner would allow him to go home to Kalamazoo, Michigan and forget about him?”

Blackburn hasn’t forgotten, nor have a handful of others. Roy Jones Jr. has donated parts of several fight purses to help defray McClellan’s medical expenses. Lou DiBella ran a benefit that raised nearly $100,000 for him. Showtime paid for his hospital stays. Don King, who promoted the fight that ruined Gerald McClellan, eventually came around with some dough.

But the rest of the fight world would rather not look at what happened to Gerald McClellan. It is too painful. Too frightening. Too damning.

Last Thursday, Gerald McClellan left his home for the first time since being released from the hospital seven years ago. On Friday, he made his first public appearance since the Benn fight at the annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America, where Blackburn received a Good Guy Award for his work with McClellan.

Today, he returns home to Freeport, Ill. He likely will carry no memories of his brief trip to New York.

But no one who encountered Gerald McClellan over the past four days will ever forget him.

“I wish God had given me another talent,” said Bernard Hopkins, after visiting McClellan at his Manhattan hotel room Thursday night. “It’s worse than I ever could have imagined. It makes me sad, and it makes me angry.”

And a little bit scared. “It’s a wake-up call,” he said.

Hopkins, who now holds the middleweight title that once belonged to G-Man, joked with McClellan, with the encouragement of McClellan’s sister, Lisa.

McClellan once knew Hopkins, but now no longer remembers him. Several times, he asked if Hopkins was a fighter. Repeatedly, he asked his height and weight. He asked if they had ever fought.

“I’m champion of the world,” Hopkins told him. “Just like you were, brother.”

“Show Bernard the G-Man’s money-maker,” Lisa said.

McClellan balled up his once lethal right fist.

“Make a fist,” he mumbled into Hopkins’ ear.

Hopkins obliged.

“Now tap me,” he mumbled. “Tap me.” He placed Hopkins’ fist against his chin.

“I ain’t gonna tap you too hard, brother,” Hopkins said. “I don’t want you to go to sleep on me.”

“How much you weigh?”

“A hundred sixty.”

“How tall are you.”

“Six foot.”

Gerald McClellan turned his gaze in the direction of his sister’s voice. “Sounds . . . like . . . this . . . guy . . . and . . . G-Man . . . gonna . . . get . . . together . . . and . . . make some money!”

Everyone laughed.

Then the G-Man’s head dropped back to his chest.

“No . . . man,” he mumbled. “I . . . have a . . . hell . . . of . . . a . . . lot . . . of . . . work . . . to . . . do.”

But G-Man’s work is done.

“It’s like he’s a baby,” said Hopkins. “And it’s like he’s a hundred years old.”