|
 A Streamlined McCline Seeks A Return to the “Big Time”
 by Thomas Gerbasi (March 30, 2003) Photo © HoganPhotos.com
 Send this page to friend Give us your feedback
Jameel McCline has had quite an interesting journey in his last couple of years in the fight game. From obscurity to celebrity, from a public trashing after a high profile loss to his current state of rebuilding, the New Yorker has gotten a public education in what to do and how to do it at the sport’s highest levels.
And now he’s back.
“I’ve changed my approach dramatically because now we understand what it takes and what it doesn’t take,” said McCline, who is fully recovered from Lasik surgery for a slight retina tear. “The main thing we learned is that it doesn’t take 14 weeks to get ready. It doesn’t take killing yourself to get ready. It doesn’t take hours and hours of preparation per day to get ready. It just takes smart work to get ready, as opposed to long and arduous work.”
McCline, he of the high-tech training methods and a cast of thousands to assist him, has taken a decidedly low-tech approach to his return, which will take place on ESPN2 on May 9 against a to be named opponent, and tentatively to be followed by a ShoBox date on June 19. It’s his first bout since being stopped in ten rounds by Wladimir Klitschko last December, a five-month layoff that McCline admits will “have to work for me because I don’t have a choice.”
“I am rebuilding this thing,” said McCline. “I brought Buddy (McGirt) in. I got rid of my strength and conditioning coach and two other guys who were on the team. I scaled it down, and broke everything down to bare bones. We’re just working hard and keeping it as simple as it was on the way to the top as opposed to as complicated as it got when we were at the top.”
With his team streamlined, and with McGirt now aboard to assist longtime trainer Jimmy Glenn, he’s away from the hustle and bustle of New York City, and settled comfortably into his camp in Vero Beach, Florida.
“What a difference,” said McCline, 28-3-3 with 16 KOs. “It’s so much more tranquil and I’m so much more at peace. There’s so much more time to focus. I got ready in New York for a while and it was fine until I hit the marquee. Then when I hit the marquee, getting ready in New York, for some reason, all of a sudden got a little more demanding.”
A first round stoppage of comebacking Michael Grant in July of 2001 shot McCline, then fighting in the obscurity of Cedric Kushner’s Heavyweight Explosion cards, straight through the marquee. A 6-6 giant blessed with a stiff jab, athleticism, and power, “Big Time” followed up the win with near shutouts over Mount Whitaker and Shannon Briggs, and the sky was the limit.
Enter Klitschko, the heavily hyped heir apparent to the heavyweight title, and a golden notch for McCline’s belt – if he could win.
So McCline trained, and trained, and trained some more. The affable “Big Time” shut out the media for the most part, and though confident, he decided to train away any lingering doubts.
It backfired.
Lethargic from the opening bell, McCline was unable to pull the trigger on Klitschko, and “Steelhammer” did enough to score an emphatic but unimpressive ten round stoppage win.
“Was I intimidated?” asks McCline. “Absolutely. It was the magnitude of the situation, and we all know the famous words of Vince Lombardi: “Fatigue makes cowards of men.” In my heart I knew I didn’t have it. I knew I was in the oven for two to three weeks too long and I lost a lot of confidence in knowing that my wind was as suspect as it was. If you know me, or my past, I get my confidence through my conditioning. Going into that fight I knew I was overdone. I was intimidated, not by Klitschko, but by being in a situation where I knew that in ten minutes I wouldn’t be able to defend myself the way I knew I could.”
But for McCline supporters, more discouraging than the fact he lost, was the way it happened, with a whimper, not a bang. McCline assures that it will never happen that way again.
“I’m not here to make excuses,” said McCline. “I lost the fight, I overdid it in training and I didn’t show up. But another thing I learned about the fight game is that going into that fight I knew that I was weak. In the future, if I ever go into a fight feeling like that, I’ll just lay it all out on the line in the first three rounds as opposed to just trying to last. It just doesn’t work. You know you’re going to go, so just lay it all out in the first three rounds and let the chips fall where they may, as opposed to trying to box and use the jab. That’s one thing we definitely learned.”
And if he’s forgotten, McGirt is making sure that the cautious McCline that showed up against Briggs and Klitschko doesn’t make another appearance anytime soon.
“With Buddy we’ve been working more on sitting down and just letting them rip from a flat-footed position, looking for bigger shots,” said McCline.
That’s in the ring. After his loss in December, more lessons were to follow – outside the ropes. McCline, with his thoughtful manner, great story and accessibility, became the toast of the boxing media after the Grant fight. But post-Klitschko, the tide turned on him just as quickly.
“It doesn’t bother me that you guys are fly by night,” said McCline. “It took me a long time to get where I was, and you guys only saw me for four of those fights. It doesn’t bother me because in the end I know I’m coming back. I know I’m going to do what I have to do in order to get back to the top and when I get back to the top I will have a different perspective on things. I’ll understand how things work better. From what I understand from the people around me, I totally got dogged out in the media, but hey, that’s just the business. I’m not upset about it because it will be just the opposite when I start knocking these guys out again.”
He’s right, especially in the heavyweight division, where one punch can change a fighter’s fortunes overnight. Just ask Corrie Sanders, who sent McCline’s conqueror, Klitshcko, to a recent knockout defeat.
“I had a couple of different thoughts on that fight,” said McCline of Sanders-Klitschko. “One is that Klitschko is a very, very good fighter because he’s been able to keep everyone off of that weak chin of his. You have to give him credit for that because his chin is so suspect. I say that because the shots that he hit me with throughout the fight, he wouldn’t be able to take.
The other thing I thought about the fight was…good for Corrie Sanders.”
McCline laughs and he sounds a lot different than he did before the Klitschko fight, where he was tightly wound and not his usual self. Maybe it’s because of Savannah, the daughter recently born to McCline and his wife Tina (he also has a daughter from a previous relationship); maybe it’s because the pressure is off a bit; or most likely, it’s because he knows how to correct what he did wrong the first time, and that with a couple of impressive wins, he’s back in the mix.
“We’re trying to do back to back shows, so that way when we come out for the third show, it will be three shows in six months and it will be exactly what we did to get here,” said McCline. “That year we fought Ipitan, Cole, Grant, and Goofi, all in 13 months.”
After those wins, Jameel McCline was being groomed for a title shot, and when it came, he went. He is determined not to make the same mistake twice.
“I’ll definitely own a title as soon as I get a chance,” said McCline. “Without a doubt.”
E-Mail Thomas Gerbasi at tgerbasi@mindspring.com
Thomas Gerbasi's Archives Click Here
|
