Oliver McCall

CTL-E-6849 · Person · other · contemporary

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07721 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6849.

Oliver William McCall (born April 21, 1965, in Chicago, Illinois) is a heavyweight boxer whose second-round stoppage of Lennox Lewis remains one of the great upsets in heavyweight history. BoxRec, named here as a source, records his birthplace as Chicago, his birth name as Oliver William McCall, and his ring alias as 'The Atomic Bull'; The Ring's account adds that before his title shot he was best known for sparring countless rounds with a prime Mike Tyson. On September 24, 1994, at Wembley Arena in London, the 5-to-1 underdog McCall dropped Lewis with a right hand early in the second round, and when Lewis rose unsteady the referee stopped the fight — McCall took the WBC heavyweight championship and handed Lewis the first defeat of his professional career, as BoxRec recounts. He defended the title with a twelve-round unanimous decision over Larry Holmes on April 8, 1995, then lost it to Frank Bruno in London, and his February 7, 1997 rematch with Lewis in Las Vegas ended in a bizarre fifth-round stoppage after McCall disengaged in the ring. A Chicago-born champion who won his crown in the champion's hometown, McCall anchors the city's 1990s heavyweight story.

The record

• Also known as: Oliver William McCall, The Atomic Bull

Notes

Sports Encyclopedia roster CTL-SPE-0515. Firsts disposition: No first claimed. Chicago birthplace verified from sources: BoxRec gives birthplace Chicago, Illinois, and The Ring gives born in Chicago on April 21, 1965 — the roster's Chicago-born note is confirmed. Curator's Judgment (DRAFT): McCall's career resists a tidy arc — a sparring partner who knocked out an unbeaten champion in London, then a rematch that became one of boxing's strangest nights; the record carries both, sourced, without sensationalizing the 1997 breakdown. Photo: CLEARED — Oliver McCall.JPG, CC BY 3.0.

Relationships

• Chicago — from
  Oliver McCall's birthplace is Chicago, Illinois — per BoxRec (Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois, USA) and The Ring (born in Chicago on April 21, 1965).

Sources

• BoxRec. "Oliver McCall." BoxRec Wiki. Accessed 2026-11-03. https://boxrec.com/wiki/index.php/Oliver_McCall (primary source · build store)
• The Ring. "Best I Faced: Oliver McCall." The Ring, via Sportsweek. Accessed 2026-11-03. https://sportsweek.org/en/boxing/news/239978664/ (build store)

More person records

• Lee Daniels
• Lee Elder
• Lee Haney
• Lee Johnson
• Lee Michaels
• Lee Moriarty

Browse the full directory: all entity records

Record CTL-E-6849 · Combined Graph record U-07721 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 2 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

Cite this record

Citation guidance for teachers, journalists, and funders: How to Cite Us.

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.