What is the saddest story in boxing ?

Gerlad McClellan
Bobby Chacon
Iran Barkley

 

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atsch

 

Not my definition of a quiet spoken young man nor an example of a sad story. In fact, you could argue that he got exactly what he deserved.

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Kevin Mitchell
Sunday November 4, 2001
Observer Sport Monthly

In Las Vegas in 1994, when Gerald McClellan was preparing for his rematch with Julian Jackson, the one-eyed hitter he'd stopped the year before to win his world middleweight title, he was in his hotel room. He was bored, anxious. He got a video out and slipped it in the machine. The fight was only a few hours away. It was the biggest of his career. There was nobody about and the world champion settled down to get his kicks.

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As the tape rolled, Stan Johnson, McClellan's coach, knocked on the door.

'He's some guy,' Stan recalls. 'I think he'd be in his room before a fight, gettin' a little ***** or somethin' before he go to the fight ...well, Gerald be in the room this time watchin' tapes of dog fights. I thought he be watchin' a sex movie. But I goes into the ****in' room, Gerald's got a tape of himself watching the dogs with a stockin' over his head where you can't see who he is - in case somebody find the tape no one know it's him!'

This is how Stan saw Gerald and the whole dog thing: 'So he got this black Labrador, just went to the dog shop, told the man, "I need a dog to take care of, I'll take this Labrador home," and the man say to the dog, "Yeah, you got a good home now," and Gerald takes the dog home. He takes the dog down his basement and tapes the Labrador's mouth, takes his pit bull Deuce and says "Get him!" He lets Deuce start eatin' the dog up while he's timing it on a watch, see how long it would take his dog to kill this dog. And I said to Gerald, "Hey, Gerald, this Labrador wouldn't beat Deuce, no way, so why did you tape his mouth shut?" And he said, "Coz I just wanna see how fast my dog would kill him, for one, and, for two, my dog's a championship fighter and you don't need no dog scratched up and bit up by no dog, by no accident. This is like sparrin' for my dog, this is like my dog need to taste blood every day. My dog need to kill somethin' every day, Stan. Just like a fighter need to spar every day, he don't need nobody bustin' him up when he got a big fight comin' up. He just need to bust somethin' up hisself. Right?"'

It was impossible not to be mesmerised by the rhythm of the telling, and by the tale itself. It was a kind of rapping, old-style ghetto cool-speak, all mixed up like a cheap stew, bits of profanity chucked in to pepper it up. Comfort language served up by a badass dude.

Gerald got his comfort between the sheets. Any time of the day or night.

'It was nothin' for him to get some ***** just time afore he go in the ring, even, you know? So that was the main problem with Gerald, it was girls was his problem. But Gerald had a dark side to him, because he was a violent, violent, violent, violent, violent person.' I had to check: that was five 'violents'. Stan was just making sure.

'His whole life was about fightin' and all, pit bull dogs, he pay lotsa money on dog fights, he took money from his fights and he bet. It weren't nothin' him go down the projects in Chicago and bet $10,000 his dog beat your dog. And a bunch o' gang bangers with guns and drugs all come down to watch...'

Donnie Penelton, the Black Battle Cat, he remembers the dogs. He was there too on those dark nights.

'Yeah, Gerald's my first cousin. We grew up together. I'm older than him, and from the age about three, four, he hangin' around buggin' me from about then, yeah. He was a nice, young scary kid. He was a maniac with the pit bull dogs, man. He was like one hisself. Very aggressive. Very crazy. He had like a yard full of pit bulls. We'd mostly take 'em to Detroit with us, to the camps. I didn't like watchin' them dogs fight like that, I guess ...Kinda difficult, but them dogs, they goin' to fight naturally anyway. You know what he say, though? He always say, "Goddam, if I gotta fight for a livin', I be damned if them dogs ain't gotta fight for a livin' too. I gotta buy 'em their food. If it's a big fight and they win, they oughta be buyin' their own damn food."

'He brought Deuce down to fight this guy's dog in Chicago one time, and me and Donnie, we went down there with him ...Gerald was drivin' his Mercedes Benz, a green car with caramel-coloured seats and he had this big, beautiful truck behind where he carried his dogs in cages. So Deuce, he winnin' this particular fight and all of a sudden the dog got on him and he started rippin' Deuce's throat out. So I'm kinda, like, lookin' at Gerald and I was seein' the 'spressions on his face, you know, and just as his dog was gettin' beat, Gerald told the dude, "Stop the fight!" And the dude said, "No, man. No, man, you started the fight." And Gerald says, "You stop this mother****in' fight! Stop the fight! I quit, here your money."

'Gerald had a nice green leather suit on, he picked his bloody dog up, threw his dog across his shoulder, blood run all down his ****in' coat. Instead o' puttin' him in the truck, in the cage, he put him in the back seat o' the Benz, mad as hell, rubbing his dog, cryin' up and down the road, tellin', "I ain't never gonna do this **** no more, I don't know why I did this, I keep a mess o' snakes afore I put a dog through this again." You know?

'Yeah, Gerald he had some companionship about this particular dog. He'd raised this dog, and this dog, he'd killed a few. This ****ing guy, man, once his dog lost a fight and he was $7,000 down. He turns around, he looks at me, and the other guy says, "Hey, you want to wash your dog off before you put him in your truck?" Gerald just pulls a nine-millimetre out of his back pocket, aims it at the dog's head, busts a cap to the dog's head, and says, "Put that mother****er in a plastic bag. I don't need 'em if they can't fight no better than that. I don't need no mother****in' dog that can't fight." This the kinda guy he was...'

I knew before I started that some of this story wasn't going to make easy listening, but this kind of information was confusing. It was not just hard-core boxing stuff; it was the sound of streets I didn't really know. But Gerald and Stan felt at home there. So did Tyson. Listen to Iron Mike's angrier outbursts: he is shouting at the largely white world and he is saying, I'm going home to the streets and you can't come. It's the place that Don King calls home. He's another big hitter comfortable with the argot.

Gerald wasn't a million miles from Don King in his attitude to humanity. King had brought grief - and money - to a lot of lives. He was cold too. Gerald hadn't killed anybody, as King had, but he had that streak in him, an icy vein of ruthlessness. He had to have it. He knew what was demanded to survive in the 'baahxin' bizness'. If you didn't have a hard outside, they'd eat away at your insides and spit you out. That's one thing he learnt from King.

 

Not a sad story? If a person's an Arsehole do they deserve to end up like that? Jesus christ. :dead

 

Holy ****, is that true?? That's depressing as ****!!

 

There's so many:


Duk Koo Kim
Gerald McClellan
Edwin Valero
Vernon Forrest
Tommy Morrison
Muhammad Ali
Iran Barkley
Arturo Gatti
Trevor Berbick

Probably dozens more.

Roy Jones Jr is just begging to make the list with his fondness for getting ktfo.