Kellerman
Heres a copy of the story from several months ago:
<TABLE class=bdy cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=770 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD>Butler is winning the bigger fight
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Sam Kellerman / FOXSports.com
<!-- Meta Tag For Search --><!-- meta name="modDate" content="August 12, 2004 04:34:46 GMT"-->Posted: 69 days ago<SCRIPT> // front-end hack to remove postedTime from Rumors page until a better way can be determined if (document.URL.indexOf("/name/FS/rumors") != -1) document.getElementById("postedTime").style.display = 'none'; </SCRIPT> </TD><TD width=10> </TD><TD align=right><!--this is for sponsorships or brandings--><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><!-- workingCategoryId: 209--></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><TABLE class=bdy cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=770 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD height=5></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><TABLE class=bdy cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=770 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD width=5></TD><TD width=450><!-- search:</noindex> --><!-- esi: /nugget/4000_2658234-->Two and a half months after the 9/11 attacks, James Butler made a rather large donation.
<!-- esi: /widget/story/videoAndPhotoGallery?contentId=2658234-->Also known as "The Harlem Hammer," Butler was one of 16 boxers on Lou DiBella's Nov. 23, 2001 card at Manhattan's Roseland who agreed to donate 50 percent of their earnings that night to the Twin Towers Fund. The fund helped the families of firefighters, police officers, EMS workers, and other uniformed service people who died or were seriously injured helping others when the towers collapsed.
"A grand or two is one thing, but this was 10 grand. That's half my purse, and I'm giving it to people I don't even know," Butler said in a phone interview Tuesday night after his split-decision loss to Omar Sheika.
"But the husbands and wives who worked in the World Trade Center — the breadwinners — how are their families and their kids going to eat? How are they going to survive? If I'm the breadwinner, and something happens to me, I would want someone to do it for my family."
I watched from ringside when Butler fought Richard Grant that night and I thought he won by at least two points. My brother Max, who called the fight for ESPN2, thought Butler lost. The judges saw it Max's way, and awarded Grant a unanimous decision.
After the fight, Butler expunged any memory of his generosity when he punched an unsuspecting Grant in the face with his bare fist, knocking Grant unconscious and breaking his jaw. Butler was arrested on the spot and served four months in Rikers Island for second-degree assault.
He knew his terrible mistake had destroyed his good name, maybe permanently. But while he was in jail, Butler also began to realize that he had a bigger concern than restoring his reputation. He had to restore his mental health. Something was wrong with his mind.
"People don't understand mental illness," Butler told me when I visited him at Rikers in the fall of 2002. "They think I was frustrated and just said 'F' it, and hit him. It wasn't like that."
Before going to jail, Butler was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He sought confirmation of that diagnosis after being released and enrolled in behavioral therapy classes.
"Bipolar disorder is hereditary," Butler said. "It came to me in my DNA. My neurotransmitters were not working correctly. Like a sparkplug to a car, if the sparkplug doesn't do its thing, the car won't start."
Butler began to search, along with specialists, for medication that could help him.
"Sometimes medication that worked for another person doesn't work for you," he said. "It can take months, or years, of experimenting with different medications to find one, or a combination, that works for you."
Having moved to Florida last year to train for a comeback under the tutelage of Buddy McGirt, Butler feared that the intense heat, combined with strenuous training, made taking any drug a dangerous proposition.
But his two years away from fighting, during which he made huge progress with his psychological well-being, emboldened him enough to give it a go without medication.
"I've taken the classes, read the books; I know what to do," he said. "You can reach a level where you don't need the medication anymore, you just have to be strong-minded."
Butler joins the ranks of tough-guy athletes like Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw (depression) and recently retired running back Ricky Williams (social anxiety disorder) who aren't ashamed to publicly acknowledge they struggled with mental illness, and who now reach out to others that suffer.
"Not getting help is a terrible thing," Butler said. "People are embarrassed to talk about mental illness. But when you go through it, it's painful. It hurts, man. It's even physically draining. And you also end up hurting people you love. They try to help you, and you flip on them for some small thing. If you get help for yourself, you won't hurt your loved ones."
Fighting in Sheika's home state of New Jersey on Tuesday night, Butler featured a hard, accurate left jab, and landed flush power punches now and then. But Sheika was able to absorb the blows, and by the late rounds, Butler was too depleted to mount much of an offensive. Sheika stayed away most of the time, occasionally flurrying, losing most of the early rounds and winning most of the late ones.
On my scorecard, James won by one point because he landed almost all the hardest punches. Moreover, his jab connected strongly and cleanly when nothing else was happening on either side — which was, unfortunately, most of the time. The final Punchstat numbers showed that the two fighters landed almost exactly the same number of punches (Sheika 110, Butler 108), but Butler connected at a 13 percent higher rate.
One of the judges had James winning by two points. But the other two judges scored for Sheika by margins of two and four points respectively, giving Omar the win.
"They are both fighting now just to remain viable as contenders," my brother Max said. "Five years ago, you thought that if everything works right for Sheika and Butler, then in five years they would fight to establish the top contender in the super middleweight division, and it'll be an explosive, power-packed fight. It didn't pan out that way for these two guys."
They did both succeed in remaining viable. It was not a good fight, but a few good things happened. Sheika showed some hand-speed and stood up well to Butler's power. For his part, Butler displayed what is becoming one the better power jabs in boxing.
But more important for him than the outcome of the boxing match, or his viability as a light heavyweight contender, is James' viability as a productive, happy, well-adjusted person. His behavior was exemplary last night, and generally has been in the recent past. He apologized publicly and privately to Richard Grant, who accepted those apologies.
"True bipolars, who are having episodes, don't have patience," said my father Dr. Henry Kellerman, a psychoanalyst in New York City.
"They may try to rectify a disappointment immediately, which could explain Butler's impulsive move toward Grant. The fact that James has been seeking avenues of remediation is in itself a sign of increased patience. He has shown considerable inner strength in trying to manage whatever impulsivity he was experiencing."
Said Butler, "The bad incident happened in 2001. In my entire life up till that point, I never had a big episode like that. So if I maintained for all those years, then I can do another thirty years. Reading, going to support groups, without medication. Hey — Abraham Lincoln was bipolar."
Sam Kellerman is a frequent contributor to FOXSports.com.
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