Their life, our entertainment

15 years ago today London was buzzing. Just coming out of winter there was a heat in the streets that could only be generated by a big event. That event was the super middleweight bout between Nigel Benn and Gerald McClellan.

Anyone who was anyone would be in the London Arena that night to see an aging Benn defend against the favourite McClellan but by the 26th when everyone had cleared the arena and gone about their lives as normal one man would leave a large part of himself as well as his career there in the ring.

A heavy handed middleweight titlist, McClellan was expected to brush past Benn, take his super middleweight title and then face Roy Jones Jr in a big money fight, a man whom he already held a victory over in the amateur ranks. But Benn had other ideas and after being knocked out of the ring in the first round, Benn would stop McClellan in the 10th round. Yet whilst Benn celebrated he did not notice that McClellan who looked troubled for large parts of the fight had slipped off his stool and lay in his corner of the ring.

After spending 6 weeks in a UK hospital he was air lifted to a hospital in Milwaukee, 6 months later he returned home to Freeport, Illinois but when he returned home he was blind, 80% deaf and unable to walk unaided. His short term memory had also been severly affected to the extent that he does not know how he ended up in the position he is in now. Brain damaged and in a coma for 11 weeks its a miracle that McClellan is now able to walk assisted now but he still lives in a world of darkness.

Even sadder is the fact that as this happened to him it seems people forgot about him. McClellan’s promoter, the ever reprehensive Don King, was said to have been chasing after Nigel Benn straight after the fight rather than checking on the well being of his fighter and as the money dried up and the phone calls of concern stopped, McClellan and his sister Lisa, who cares for him around the clock, now rely on donations to continue to care for him.

Boxer’s don’t get a pension like many other professions so when they are in the ring punishing another person’s body and in return receiving punishment the big checks they receive seem paltry fees. McClellan was meant to get $250,000 for the fight but for the $62,920.75 he received he pretty much lost a large part of his life. So remember whilst we sit and cheer and boo these men in the ring, they are playing with their lives.

Gerald McClellan Trust, c/o Fifth Third Bank, P.O. Box 120, Freeport IL 61032

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