Inside and outside the boxing ring, Oliver McCall has pretty much seen it all, from the peak of being world heavyweight champion to the abyss of being in prison and in a mental institution.
At 40, the Chicago-born former champion looks at the heavyweight division as less than daunting. “I feel right now that I can beat these guys,” he said.
But first he will have to beat Przemyslaw Saleta on Saturday night at the United Center. McCall is replacing injured Polish-born Chicago heavyweight Andrew Golota as Saleta’s opponent in a prelim to the Hasim Rahman-Monte Barrett heavyweight main event.
For McCall, originally scheduled to fight lower on Saturday’s undercard, it is a step up to a televised bout on the Showtime Pay-Per-View telecast (8 p.m., $39.95).
And he sees it as a step back toward the spotlight that once bathed him.
On a September night in 1994 in his opponent’s home arena in London, he stood looking down at one of heavyweight boxing’s all-time great champions. McCall had just floored Lennox Lewis with a crushing right hand. Lewis rose, wobbly and woozy, and McCall became heavyweight champion on a second-round technical knockout.
On a February night in 1997, McCall stood looking across at Lewis with tears in his eyes. In one of the heavyweight division’s most bizarre title fights, McCall lost on a fifth-round technical knockout when referee Mills Lane ruled the weeping McCall was no longer competing in his rematch against Lewis.
In between those fights, McCall was arrested several times on drug-related charges. In Chicago, police pulled him over as he was driving his bright red sports car down a bike path near Lake Shore Drive and found cocaine and marijuana in his possession. In Nashville, he was arrested for vandalism, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after tossing a drink glass and a Christmas tree in a hotel lobby.
Just before his 32nd birthday in April 1997, McCall was ordered into a mental institution in Danville, Va., on the basis of a doctor’s evaluation.
Counted out by most but kept in the stable of promoter Don King, who often praised him as his “Yankee Doodle Dandy” for upsetting Lewis in London, McCall was back in the ring by year’s end. He ran up an unbeaten string of 14 bouts, including a stunning upset knockout of Henry Akinwande in 2001. To fight Akinwande in Las Vegas, McCall needed to get a four-day parole in Virginia, where he was on probation after being imprisoned on a drug charge.
“Oliver was amazing,” said Sean Curtin, former Illinois boxing commissioner. “If he could have stayed away from drugs, he could have been one of the greatest champions of all time.”
Long before McCall turned pro, even before he won youth organization and park district tournaments, then the 1985 Golden Gloves tournament that moved to Milwaukee while Chicago’s was reorganizing, Curtin said, “Oliver had raw talent and power.”
He also had a proclivity for trouble. As a teenager, he was convicted of burglary and spent three months in prison.
Asked what he considered the pinnacle and the nadir in his roller-coaster life, he pointed to moments involving his family, significant occasions for which he was either sadly absent or joyfully present.
He recalled being jailed in 2001 for a probation violation after an earlier assault conviction as “definitely the low point in my life. My father passed away while I was incarcerated.” Again paroled just long enough to go to the funeral, he said, “I got about four hours’ sleep until I went to his burial.”
His father, Henry, was an avid boxing fan who inspired him to be a boxer. “He suggested my nickname, The Atomic Bull, and I liked it right away,” McCall said.
Surprisingly, what he named as his high point had nothing to do with becoming heavyweight champion of the world.
“My highest point was being there when my eldest daughter, Tawanda, hit the game-tying shot with three seconds left in a 5th-grade basketball game,” McCall said. “It’s the only time I can remember jumping higher than I did when I beat Lennox Lewis.” Her team won in overtime.
The most recent of his eight losses in 52 bouts was on a narrow decision last year to DaVarryl Williamson, who is a highly ranked heavyweight contender.
McCall talked briefly of retirement thereafter, but instead came back to win three fights against lesser opponents this year.
“My preparation for that [Williamson] fight wasn’t right,” he says now. “I’m feeling much better.”
He said he pulled a muscle under his left armpit halfway through the 10-round bout and “it altered the way I had to fight. It caused me to get hit more than usual.”
McCall has 31 knockout victories while never being knocked out, or even knocked down, despite facing solid opponents such as Lewis, Akinwande, Williamson, Buster Douglas, Orlin Norris, Bruce Seldon and Tony Tucker in their prime.
That solid resume is tarnished by the technical knockout loss to Lewis, a performance that still haunts him.
“I feel bad that I did it,” said McCall, who was in drug rehabilitation and psychotherapy before the bout. “I let myself down and I let my fans down. It was a black eye for the sport.”
He declined to say what emotions overwhelmed him that night, only that “my family wasn’t there and I let things get to me.
“Some of that stuff still happens, but not in the ring,” he said, adding that he still goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings but no longer sees a therapist.
McCall, who lives in Collinsville, Va., has been married for 20 years. He and his wife, Alethia, have seven children. Whatever happens to his career from now on, he said, “I’m so excited about fighting back in Chicago.” He believes if he is impressive against Saleta, stays active and keeps winning, he can get another title shot.
“I’m not setting any timetable,” said McCall, who was once a sparring partner for Mike Tyson. “I’m just trying to keep my head together, stay strong, say no to drugs and alcohol. It’s not easy. When I deviated from that, I really deviated. I really hurt myself.”
His goal is to no longer inflict pain on himself or others outside the ring, but to confine the pain to his opponents inside the ropes.
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mhirsley@tribune.com
