Obviously McCall had a father. What I meant is wouldn’t it be more likely for Frank to comment on McCalls dad if he was visible or part of McCalls camp? I honestly think he was talking about Lewis’s dad. Are you aware of any famous quotes from McCalls dad or photos of him?
You said 'Frank probably knew him more than Frank did' which is unquestionably an odd thing to say. It's like saying 'I'm taller than I am.'
I have edited that typo. I am still surprised it could possibly confuse anyone. Obviously I meant frank probably knew Lewis’s dad better than Lewis did especially since Lewis had grown up in another country to his father.
Idk To be honest with you man I'd just assume McCall was just trying to come up with hype on the spot and it confused bruno
Bruno did get odder. His behaviour on the way to the ring for Tyson 2 , was that of someone with OCD , anxiety issues. Sympathy for anybody suffering with it. Its usually the start of depression etc. Frank started to have that detached faraway look about him, even now you can tell his mind is somewhere else , when hes talking. Shame .
I recall finding his behaviour in the post-fight interview unsettling at the time. It's a while since I've seen it, but he was very emotional and made several references to not being an Uncle Tom. He seemed to have a lot of insecurities about being perceived as a sell-out, and was not comfortable by then with his lovable pantomine figure portrayal in the media. It was a different era, and the media at the time expected black athletes to ham it up and be the non-threatening type that white audiences would be comfortable with. After Linford Christie won the Olympic 100m title, the Sun wanted to talk more about the size of his genitalia than how fast he could run. When Christie refused to play along, he got slaughtered by the press. Bruno went the other route which helped him commercially, but may have cost him elsewhere. Even though they only came through a few years later, Benn and Eubank were able to establish their own identities, partly because they had each other to play off.
Your right Gordon, by the second Tyson fight he was so different from the Bruno of earlier years. Even when he lost to Tyson in 1989 he seemed jovial to a degree after been stopped. It was a "well I tried my best"type attitude . But after Mccall he definitely changed. It is sad but let's hope he's in a better place now.
Yes this is very true. The 1980s was not long ago for the people who were there but anybody coming after it cannot understand how it was. Things were different then. And when there was only three TV channels an entire nation knew who was on TV. And Frank was not just on boxing programs. What happened was On one hand you have an athlete who wants to get on...and in the other hand there is the burden of expectation for a positive black role model after the Tottenham and Brixton riots put on his shoulders. He was in a white environment so there was probably a separate expectation from two different communities. And because it was the 1980s he was probably expected to behave the way mainstream personalities were expected to behave.
