McCullough hits out over treatment

"People keep saying I'm `in denial'," Wayne McCullough was saying. "I'm not in denial. I'm angry. "

McCullough is awaiting final confirmation from a team of experts at the UCLA Medical Center, but unless their medical opinion markedly differs from the evidence already at hand, it seems likely the 1992 Olympic silver medallist and former World Boxing Council bantamweight champion has thrown his last punch in anger.

The Belfast man has gone to personal expense to confirm the presence of a cyst on his brain - but his anger relates to what he sees as shoddy treatment by the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC) when the finding first came to light.

On his own initiative, McCullough had flown to Los Angeles to confer with a respected specialist, Dr Neil Martin, and provided him with copies of the brain scans taken in Belfast and Dublin last month, as well as a 1995 EEG taken prior to McCullough's world bantamweight title fight in Japan.

Martin assembled a "dream team" of fellow neurosurgeons to study the information and was due to report back to McCullough. It wasn't a question of hoping to hear what he wanted to hear, said McCullough. He was just looking for somebody to give him, for once, a straight answer.

McCullough's position is clear: "I'm not a fool," he said. "I'm a man with a family. If this report tells me it would be too dangerous, I'm prepared to accept that."

Despite reports to the contrary, McCullough has not undergone a third scan. After failing one in Belfast prior to his scheduled bout on October 20th against Hungarian Sandor Koczak, he had an MRI done at Dublin's Charlemont Clinic, which, he was told, revealed "nothing of significance".

An enhanced reading of the Dublin MRI in the US revealed the same thing as the first: the existence of a small cyst in McCullough's brain. The 1995 test was subsequently unearthed, and a more sophisticated reading revealed the identical condition.

"That means I've had it for at least five years, and it hasn't grown since then," pointed out McCullough. "I may have even been born with it. I could have been fighting for the last 22 years with it."

McCullough is still fuming over what he considered shabby treatment by the BBBC and in particular the organisation's chairman, Simon Block. "I had the first test done - at my own expense, mind you - on October 12th," said McCullough. "The hospital told me later that they'd forwarded the results to the BBBC in Oxford the following day, but it was six days before I found out about it - and even then it wasn't from the BBBC."

On October 18th, Wayne and his wife Cheryl reported for a scheduled meeting with Billy Murray, the promoter of the Ulster Hall card. Murray asked to have a private word with Cheryl. McCullough remained in the car with Wynona, their two year-old toddler, and when his ashen-faced wife returned the first words out of her mouth, while meant to be disarming, frightened the daylights out of him.

"It's not life-threatening."

Once he had been apprised of the result, McCullough contacted his US promoters at America Presents, only to discover they already knew about the failed test. He was urged to seek a second opinion. The next morning he was on his way to Dublin and the appointment with the MRI tunnel.

"Here's what really pisses me off," said McCullough. "Somebody knew these results for six days, yet they let me keep training. The British doctor warned me `one punch could kill you', but if that's true, why did they let me go through two hard sparring sessions before they told me?

"It seemed like everyone in the world knew about it before I did. My wife's sister phoned from Australia, and that was before I'd been informed myself," said McCullough.

When McCullough tried to reach Block, the BBBC boss was displeased at being telephoned at home. Following the Dublin test, he was told "you'll never fight in Britain again".

"When I met with Dr Martin (in California), he started asking me all these questions: Have you been fainting? Do you ever feel dizzy? Have you ever been knocked out? `No' to all of them. I told him I'd never even been knocked down in 22 years of boxing." "Amazing," marvelled the doctor.

McCullough is now an almost serene figure, seemingly resigned to the likely outcome. "My health comes first," he said. "My health and my family, that is. I think I can accept this." For all that McCullough says: "if I got the all-clear, I'd fight again. Sure I would." What seems more likely is that McCullough will finish his career with a 23-3 professional record (the three losses coming to world champions Daniel Zaragoza, Naseem Hamed, and Eric Morales), following two Olympic appearances and more than 200 amateur fights.

At 30, he has enough money put aside that he doesn't need to box. "I'm not sure what I do want to do," he admitted. Television commentary is one possibility and he has also done a course in sports nutrition. "We just bought a new house (in Las Vegas). It had a four-car garage I'd converted into a gymnasium. I'd planned on using it myself, but perhaps I could train other boxers there. And I like working with kids, so who knows?

"Maybe this has all been a blessing in disguise," said McCullough. "Just think: If they'd seen this back in 1995, I might never have become a world champion, and I'd never have made all the money I did over the last five years. At least now I have some choices."