This may be a ridiculous question but did Gerald McClellan have a blood clot in his brain before the nigel benn fight and fought that crazy fight with a preexisting injury? or did it develop during the fight as a result of too much punishment?
Possibly. Might've started in the first Jackson fight (the blinking) but I don't think he was aware. Manny Steward didn't want to train him anymore. Can't remember the reason.
And like I said maybe he did but there's nothing concrete. Fact is when you dehydrate yourself to make weight like he did you're running the risk.
manny steward apparently quit training him due to excessive blinking in sparring following the jackson fights (as flea alluded to) he knew something was wrong and urged mcclellan to retire (what i read anyway)
Yeah, that was probably what I was trying to remember. Fact is G-Man was huge and had an iron chin. He walked through Julian Jackson. I'm not sure the human brain is supposed to do that. Not with Julian Jackson when you're a day removed from severe dehydration, regardless of your size.
McClellan definitley had a prexisting condition. One of his sparring partners hit him with a jab that hurt him very badly in sparring. He said he stopped training for the day and came back and blew it off. Gerald definitely had something going on but didnt know it until it was too late. Im sure you can find the article on it somewhere on the web.
According to this bullshitter's blog; http://uppercutlefthook.com/?p=92 "A few months before the fight with Benn, McClellan’s trainer, Manny Steward, decided that he wasn’t healthy enough for a fight so soon. While training for the fight, McClellan complained of blurred vision and headaches after a sparring session. Steward had a suspicion that something was not right with his young charge, and recommended McClellan take some time off boxing and maybe think about calling it quits. McClellan wasn’t hearing it. Not now after he was so close to super stardom. He told Steward he would fight on, regardless of the headaches and blurred vision. Subsequently Steward left the camp, vowing not to be a part of the damage McClellan was causing to himself." McClellan was already back with Stan Johnson before the Jackson rematch .
I have all the old magazines from that era, and in one interview, after the first Jackson fight where Gerald said that he still had headaches from the Jackson fight. Pretty chilling
:roll: McClellan dumped Steward you ****, not the other way around. McClellan wasn't happy with the $$$ etc.
I saw McClellan knock out Julian Jackson twice. A friend of mine was watching the rematch with me, which if memory serves was on the undercard of Norris vs Brown II. I picked Jackson to come back and beat Mclellan and for Brown to duplicate his first win against Norris.... I lost a case of beer on those bets.