Above: The bond between Gerald and Lisa McClellan has endured through staggering challenges. (Photo courtesy of Lisa McClellan) 

AFTER 30 YEARS OF SELFLESS DEDICATION TO HER STRICKEN BROTHER GERALD, LISA MCCLELLAN IS USING HER EXPERIENCE TO HELP OTHER BOXERS IN NEED  

Nearly 30 years ago, Gerald McClellan’s life changed forever. The same goes for his sister, Lisa, who has never left his side since a fight with Nigel Benn on February 25, 1995, turned tragic.

At the time, McClellan was one of the most feared punchers in the game, a middleweight champion chasing gold eight pounds north in the super middleweight division. If he beat Benn in London Arena, he was in line for a megafight with someone he beat in the amateurs, Roy Jones Jr.

But knocking down Benn two times wasn’t enough, and when McClellan dropped to his knee twice in the 10th round, in clear distress as he blinked his eyes repeatedly, the fight, his career and life as he knew it were over.

The Freeport, Illinois, native would spend 11 days in a coma, and when he returned to the United States, it was as a young man who couldn’t see, could barely hear and walk, and who would need 24-hour-a-day care for the rest of his life.

Benn (left) and McClellan. (Photo by The Ring Magazin)

And for a long time, people cared. They made donations to a trust fund established for him, stories were written, his name thrown out as a great champion who needed our help. But as the years flew by, McClellan was largely forgotten, the side of boxing that few wanted to know about. It was okay to watch the big pay-per-view events and enjoy covering those big fights from ringside, but when McClellan’s name was mentioned, it was in hushed tones and accompanied by head-shaking, yet no answers.

A young and healthy Gerald with Lisa. (Photo courtesy of Lisa McClellan)

All the while, Lisa McClellan was there. And she’s still there, almost three decades into a life put on hold – not just Gerald’s but her own. Yet she wouldn’t think of not being there.

“I think if I think about it, reality might set in, and I’d run like hell, so I don’t even think about it,” Lisa said. “I just take each day as it comes.”

It’s not easy for the mother and grandmother, both mentally and physically – though the mental part is more secure, simply because she might be the toughest fighter in the family. But physically, McClellan admits that taking care of her brother when she was 25 is a lot different than doing it now at 55. 

“Even my ability to be able to lift him in and out of the bathtub as a young woman at 25, it wasn’t as difficult as it is today at 55,” she said. “I can tell. Right now, my rotator on my left arm is completely torn, and I have a cyst on my wrist that I deal with everyday that’s very, very painful.”

I tell her she needs to get that taken care of. She says she can’t because there will be no one there for her brother while she recovers.

This is the way it’s always been: Gerald first, Lisa second. And she doesn’t complain. When she talks about her ailments or the issues that come up in everyone’s life, she does so in a matter-of-fact fashion, as if it’s just something to add to the list. She soldiers on, fiercely protective of her brother … and of all boxers.

“I think if I think about it, reality might set in, and I’d run like hell, so I don’t even think about it.”

It’s why she co-founded the Ring of Brotherhood Foundation in 2023, determined to make sure that boxers not only get help, but are never forgotten.

“We started this to provide help to those that were suffering and that nobody cared about, or it appeared that no one cared about,” said McClellan. “We want to help assist this underserved community, which is boxers that were suffering and that needed help, be it housing, counseling and treatments to help protect their brains and to help with brain care.”

(Photo courtesy of Lisa McClellan)

Add getting awareness and funding to the “it ain’t easy” list, but Lisa and her partners continue to fight. And there has been some progress. Mauricio Sulaiman and the WBC, along with Paco Valcarcel and the WBO, have been helpful with donations and getting the word out. Ailing hall of famer Wilfred Benitez and his family have received important help, and Gerald has had some progress in his own situation after being treated by the renowned Dr. Mark Gordon, even starting to remember key details of his final night in the ring. 

“He started talking about the Nigel Benn fight one day. And I was keeping in the tears, because we’ve never had this conversation before. We’ve talked about the fight, and what Gerald remembers now is just what I’ve told him over the last 29 years, but this was different. He said, ‘Do you know why I took a knee in the Nigel Benn fight?’ And I said, ‘No, Gerald, why?’ He said, ‘Lisa, everything went black, and I couldn’t hear anything. That’s why I took the knee.’ For him to be able to remember that time blew me away.”

That’s progress, and yes, it’s great work and important work that the ROBF are doing, but it only scratches the surface when it comes to those retired fighters who need aid, whether it’s medical or simply getting a lead on finding housing or a job. And while McClellan and Benitez are big names in the sport, there are countless others that the casual fan doesn’t know and who can use a hand. 

To get the word out, Lisa has a team making short films and interviewing those in and around the business to let the boxing world in on what they don’t want to see but need to know. Because the stereotype of an ailing fighter is one who sits in a corner, docile and unassuming, content to quietly let the world pass him by. 

McClellan won the WBC middleweight title by stopping renowned KO artist Julian Jackson in May 1993. McClellan then knocked Jackson out in the first round of their rematch a year later. (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images)

It’s not like that. Calls to the McClellan home are punctuated by Gerald yelling in the background, and as one of the ROBF videos posted to Instagram demonstrated, there is still a lot of fight and a lot of anger in the former middleweight champion. And Lisa has often felt the brunt of that.

“Yeah, he punched me in the mouth and knocked out my teeth,” she said of an incident four years ago. “I’ve since got dental implants, and then he damaged my rotator, my deltoid and my bicep. He tore the tendons in my arm.”

(Photo courtesy of Lisa McClellan)

Yet she never left his side, determined to exhaust all possibilities in search of something that would bring him back – even just a little – to the way he was before he traveled to England all those years ago.

That will take time, research, money and help. Because she’s not alone in caring for a loved one who suffers from the ravages of the fight game. But in a sport where millions are tossed around like Monopoly money, no promoter or network has offered to put a percentage of a percent of their profits, or even a dollar per ticket or pay-per-view buy, into a fund for those who risk their lives for our entertainment. 

It’s still the dirty secret of boxing. And while McClellan talks of progress, she also runs into roadblocks from active fighters who don’t want to publicly address what might happen to them.

“As far as the response that we’ve been getting back from the fighters, it has not been good,” she said. “And I think the reason it’s not been good is because who wants to think about this when they’re in the midst of their careers?” 

(Photo courtesy of Lisa McClellan)

The most famous example was Jones Jr., who aided his former amateur rival financially after the Benn fight but wouldn’t visit him in Freeport or even discuss his plight on the record, admitting once that if he saw Gerald, he would never fight again.

“That is the same reaction we’ve been getting from the fighters,” said Lisa. “The fighters do not want to have this conversation. But my answer to that would be, put me in a room with those fighters for five minutes, and if I explained to them what I’ve had to go through for the last 29 years, they would be willing to listen. The active fighters are the ones that can make a difference and who could help me bring awareness the quickest, because they’re in the spotlight, versus the retired and injured fighters who don’t have the voice that the active fighters have. But initially getting to the fighters has not been easy at all.”

If you haven’t caught on by now, nothing has been easy over the past three decades for Lisa and Gerald McClellan. The fight continues, though. I ask her how she feels about boxing.

“We grew up with boxing,” she said. “When Gerald was fighting, it was a family thing. So we were always involved in it. And most of the time, the one television we had in our house was on boxing, or it was a VHS tape where my dad was always showing old footage of fights and teaching Gerald and [our brother] Todd from that. So boxing grew to be a big part of our lives and I still love it. I do. The only thing that I have a problem with is that there’s not a lot of people in the boxing world that care about these fighters once they get hurt.”

That needs to change. Now.

For more information on the Ring of Brotherhood Foundation, including donation information, visit https://ringofbrotherhoodfoundation.org/

Read “Nigel Benn recalls triumph, tragedy of McClellan fight” (2015)