Boxer Has Emotional Breakdown During A Fight

Oliver McCall underwent a mental and physical examination yesterday after what both camps, and even Referee Mills Lane, described as an emotional breakdown during a fight against Lennox Lewis on Friday night in Las Vegas, Nev. His $3 million purse was held up pending the outcome of the examination.

At a news conference yesterday, McCall gave a rambling, 40-minute explanation of his actions in the ring, which led to his disqualification for refusing to fight even though the World Boxing Council title was on the line.

''My strategy was -- and I know it sounds kind of absurd -- was a kind of rope-a-dope,'' McCall said. The rope-a-dope was the strategy Muhammad Ali adopted in his victory over George Foreman in Zaire in 1974, when Ali leaned on the ropes and allowed Foreman to punch himself out.

McCall acted distracted during the bout on Friday night, wandering around the ring aimlessly during and after the third and fourth rounds. When he was hit, he often gyrated weirdly, bobbing his head.

A tearful McCall, the former W.B.C. champion, was disqualified in the fifth round for refusing to fight Lewis, who regained the vacant title. But it was the way McCall stopped fighting that perplexed ringsiders at the Las Vegas Hilton.

''I didn't quit; I came to win,'' McCall said yesterday. He explained his crying by saying that he had wanted to get himself into an emotional state.

Dr. Leonora Petty, a psychiatrist, said she evaluated McCall for almost 90 minutes before the news conference.

Asked whether McCall had suffered a mental breakdown -- which Lane and the W.B.C. commissioner, Jose Sulaiman, had suggested -- she said, ''I think his mental state is just fine.''

But McCall said she had also recommended that he see a psychiatrist, and he conceded he needed psychiatric help.

McCall's manager, Jimmy Adams, said that he would send the fighter to a rehabilitation center in Nashville. Prefight drug tests were negative for McCall. Post-fight results are expected tomorrow.

In the fourth round on Friday night, McCall simply stopped throwing punches. And every time Lewis tagged him, McCall's actions grew stranger -- he would shake his head, mug to the crowd, paw out a punch.

After the fourth round, when he started to walk around again rather than sit on his stool, Lane asked him if anything was wrong. McCall had to be cajoled into continuing, and then 55 seconds into Round 5, Lane waved off the bout. McCall sobbed.

As McCall went back to the dressing room, he told his entourage: ''I hope you're all happy. You all got what you want.'' Then he turned to Tony Tucker, the former fighter, and said, ''I suppose they'll put me in prison now.''

This was a quite different McCall from the one who, in the minute before the fight, told Adams: ''I want my title. I'm fighting for my life.''

McCall, who has a well-documented history of alcohol and drug problems, was arrested in December in Nashville on charges of vandalism, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after a dispute at a hotel bar. He was also arrested twice last summer on drug possession charges.

McCall's manager, George Benton, told reporters McCall ''definitely was not using drugs,'' but regardless of his condition, he is usually high-strung when he enters the ring. Indeed, when McCall leaped onto the ring apron Friday night, he looked as excited as he did in 1994 when he won the title from Lewis.

This time, though, Lewis kept McCall off balance, and whenever the 237-pound McCall tried to charge him, the 6-foot-5-inch, 251-pound Lewis backed up or tied him up.

''I've seen guys quit,'' Lewis's trainer, Emmanuel Steward, said yesterday, ''but I've never seen it to the extent that they let the whole world know they didn't want to fight.''

A few hours after the fight, Steward and Benton had drinks together.

''We were both disgusted,'' Steward said. ''George was totally frustrated. He said that a guy in his mental condition shouldn't have been fighting. I never realized there were problems before the fight. That was news to me.''

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