This is a love story.
It is wrapped in tragedy, but a love story, nonetheless.
This version ponders when love is too much, and yet, love is love.
“She’s doing so much. What is above love?” questions Pastor Kevin Person from Fresno, CA. “That’s the most powerful force on earth.”
This love story between Lisa and Gerald McClellan, over 30 years in the making, is still growing.
In 1995, gas was $1.15 a gallon, Bill Clinton was in the earliest months of his first term as the 42nd President of the United States and Super Bowl XXIX between the 49ers (winners) and the Chargers happened 37 days before (Jan. 20, 1995) from the “incident” when love blossomed.
On February 26, 1995, before a raucous crowd of 12,500 in the London Arena, hard-punching American Gerald “G-Man” McClellan, the former WBC middleweight champ was moving up in weight to challenge Nigel Benn “The Dark Destroyer” for the WBC super-middleweight crown.
Gerald fought the fight of his life knocking Benn out the ring in the first round and dropping him again in the eighth.
All the other rounds belonged to Benn in a fight that can only be called extreme controlled violence. There were haymakers thrown on both sides.
Gerald would lose the fight by kayo in the 10th round and almost his life in the process. He survived, but at one hellacious cost.
“Gerald is very stubborn,” says his 55-year-old sister Lisa, from the home she shares with her brother in Freeport, IL. She takes care of him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. She’s been his primary care giver since he came home from the “incident.”
Do the math … that’s 30 years on February 25, 2025, and counting.
Hence, the “What is above love?” reference from Pastor Person, a Lisa advocate.
She doesn’t work anymore, and her marriage died because she takes care of her brother.
“I just got health insurance eight years ago,” she declares.
The aftermath of the Benn fight put Gerald in a coma for two months. Today, he is blind and somewhat deaf. He can hear you, but you have to repeat your words to him over and over so he can process what you are saying.
Lisa takes care of her brother by doing things that would make most of us cringe, but it must be done. It comes with the territory.
“When Gerald had his brain injury, ten years later his colon stopped working,” Lisa announces in a slow, even pace. She has to clean and reconnect his colonoscopy bag every day. “We do it in the bathroom and he’s very stubborn.
“The other day he just didn’t want his colonoscopy bag changed. It took me four hours.”
Even being Gerald’s sister has not spared her from inadvertent damage at the hands of her now 57-year old ex-fighter brother.
“I just had my dental implants put in because Gerald knocked out two of my teeth,” says a very calm Lisa about the incident last June. “He cried for two weeks when I told him what he had done.
“He broke my arm two years ago.”
Maybe it’s the aggressive fighter still alive inside the broken body because he doesn’t mean to do it.
“He’s frustrated,” reveals Lisa.
Even her 36-year old daughter is not immune from her uncle’s misguided power.
“When I went to the Boxing Writers Awards dinner in June [to receive the “Courage in Overcoming Adversity” award along with boxing photographer and cancer survivor Ed Mulholland], my daughter, who was looking after Gerald, told me that this was my last trip,” Lisa states. Seems that Gerald hit his niece, but not on purpose. “Her face was swollen.”
* * *
Gerald “The G-Man” McClellan was a scary good fighter because he had unbelievable power. Posting a record of 31-2 with 29 knockouts, Gerald knocked out John “The Beast” Mugabi in one round to win the WBO middleweight crown in November 1991.
He stopped Hall of Famer Julian “The Hawk” Jackson in five rounds for the WBC middleweight belt in 1993 and proved it was no fluke by stopping him in the opening round in a 1994 rematch.
It’s hard to believe McClellan lost back-to-back decisions to Bronxite Dennis “The Magician” Milton and Ralph Ward in 1989.
Gerald entered his bout with Benn amassing 14 straight knockouts with 10 coming in the first round and he had never been past eight rounds.
The fight had an avalanche of violence not seen today. The chilling fight is still up on YouTube.
Many referees would have stopped the fight after Benn went through the ropes and Alfred Asaro’s count was close to 13 seconds, yet the fight continued.
The eighth round was all Gerald. A slugfest if there ever was one as Benn went down for his second trip to the canvas. Benn came roaring back but lost his balance throwing a punch that seemed to head-butt Gerald who took a knee, though Benn hit him repeatedly on the back of the head.
In round 10, Gerald took an uppercut from Benn and took a knee again and stayed there until Asaro’s count reached ten.
“I’ve never seen a guy quit in the corner like that,” says Showtime’s late broadcaster Dr. Ferdie Pacheco during the telecast. Many of the TV broadcasters also thought McClellan had indeed quit.
Showtime took only the feed from England with Pacheco and Steve Albert with the call. The fight ended and the usual interviews were being done with Benn and his team while McClellan was on his back, on a stretcher, wearing a neck brace with an oxygen mask strapped on his face.
Benn also went to the hospital after passing out heading to his dressing room. He also suffered a broken nose and was urinating blood after the fight.
After two months in a coma and the removal of a large blood clot on the brain, the result for Gerald was severe brain damage.
“He’s never been in a vegetative state,” reveals Lisa. “When he came out the coma, he knew who everyone was. He was confused. Everything was kind of distorted.
“When he first woke up, he knew who his mother was, his dad, his siblings, his children. He remembered all of that.”
Today there has been slow improvement especially while Gerald is on a new drug protocol
“He’s sharper,” Lisa declares about the new treatment started early last year. She gives him injections of testosterone, peptide and oral hormones and vitamins. “He’s using more of his internal brain. His thoughts are deeper. His thinking capacity is larger now. His memory bank is larger.”
* * *
It’s easy to feel sorry for McClellan when you see his present condition and argue just ban the sport.
But that won’t happen. There’s too much money to be made from a blood sport regardless of what happens to the fighters.
“There’s a lot of aggression in his brain,” states Lisa, “I have to deal with that part.”
Boxing is a fickle lover. When you ain’t fighting or get seriously injured, the fans, the media and the sports world turns its attention away from you and on to the next fight.
The sport trudges toward its future while the infirmed boxers, the collateral damage of the sport, stay silently out of sight and eerily forgotten.
In Gerald McClellan’s case, he may be forgotten and is damaged, but there’s still love coming from a sister doing all the cheering, hugging and even the cleaning.
When you do all that, every day, what is above love?
Support for the McClellan family can be directed to the Gerald McClellan Go Fund page.
