Benn/McClellan

Terrible fight for the way it ended but my god, what a war.
Benn, what frigging heart that man showed!

 

The most brutal fight I’ve ever seen. Benn showed incredible heart but the fight was horrific. The way Gerald slumped over at the end is bone chilling.

 

He was getting the best possible treatment in London. Steve Dunce made a huge claim on his podcast regarding what caused McClellan's permanent injuries;

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As horrific as the end results turned out it was still one of the most memorable wars of the 90s. Both guys were trying to knock each other out from the opening bell. How Benn was able to make it back up from G-Man’s initial onslaught from the first round is still incredible.

It’s great to see that G-Man is doing better these days.

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I remember reading that Gerald was already blinking during camp, and at times didn’t look right in sparring. Aside from those two factors though, there really isn’t much anyone can do. In a sport where the head gets targeted as hard as possible there’s really only so much that can be done about safety.

 

It was a mixture of cutting a lot of weight, sparring wars, and taking punches from Julian Jackson. Facing another heavy puncher like Benn definitely made matters worse.

 

It was a barbaric fight. Some speculate he was injured in the fight with Jackson. It could have happened in sparring and didn't escalate until the Benn fight.

I've always thought, that when a person is living their life wrong, or has the wrong intentions in life, it culminates to something bad happening at some point. As much as I would never wish this on anyone, I think Gerald created his own demise. We can blame it on Benn, the trainers, the ref, whoever.... but whatever "mission" he was on in life played itself out that night.

Something bad was going to happen with him at some point in some shape or form.

 

Just world fallacy.

 

Yes I had seen or read this too and also that there had been several reports of headaches/migraines that Gerald suffered quite a long time (as in a couple of years) prior to his bout with Benn.

 

Your father, who presumably wasn’t at ringside and I’m guessing wasn’t a medical physician, could see what the Fright Doctor Ferdie Pacheco couldn’t even though he was there commentating at ringside.

Blinking like that is literally listed as a sign of brain damage. Yet DOCTOR Ferdie, who was right there, was oblivious to it — he basically called McClellan a coward and dismissed the blinking completely, saying something like, iirc, ‘I don’t know why he’s blinking like that when he should be fighting.’

And some hail this guy as a saint. If he used basic medical knowledge he could have called it out, run over between rounds and alerted the ringside physician that the fight needed to be stopped to get Gerald to the hospital asap. But he saw nothing (even though it was right in front of his eyes) and did nothing.

 

I was there that night. Something I will never forget.