{"id":644070,"date":"2026-06-17T20:16:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T20:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/644070\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T20:16:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T20:16:21","slug":"counting-down-10-unforgettable-moments-in-boxing-no-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/644070\/","title":{"rendered":"Counting down 10 unforgettable moments in boxing No. 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

7. Staying at altitude too long makes you start to feel Goofi: Lance Whitaker vs. Jameel McCline (watch it on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n

History has taught us there are mixed results when a celebrity legally changes their name, mid-career.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When heavyweight champion Cassius Clay announced he would now be known as Muhammad Ali, at first the public bristled. But by the time the fearless wisdom of his principled stance against the Vietnam war fully came to light, the world embraced the man and his new name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Things can go wrong too, though. Garth Brooks\u2019 1999 attempt to rename himself as rock singer Chris Gaines was a hilariously huge flop, and the country star quickly abandoned the new persona.<\/p>\n

And then, there\u2019s Goofi.<\/p>\n

In late 2001, heavyweight contender Lance Whitaker, 23-1 (19 KOs), was a summiting commodity. At the time, the towering six-foot, eight-inch Southern Californian had only lost once (to eventual Mike Tyson victim Lou Savarese) and was coming off a career-best second-round knockout over respectable Russian heavyweight contender Oleg Maskaev.<\/p>\n

Up to this point, the towering Whitaker had gone by the apt nickname \u201cMount.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lance \u201cMount\u201d Whitaker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But having teamed up with former Riddick Bowe manager \u201cRock\u201d Newman, the pair launched the bizarre rebrand before Whitaker\u2019s HBO-televised showdown against appropriately nicknamed fellow up-and-coming contender Jameel \u201cBig Time\u201d McCline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whitaker\u2019s new nickname was supposedly meant to describe his fun-loving personality away from the ring, as he considered himself a jokester.<\/p>\n

As you can probably guess by now, Whitaker told the world with a straight face that he was changing his name to GOOFI.<\/p>\n

The unusual spelling was reportedly to stave off a lawsuit from the folks at Disney. And not one to do things halfway, Whitaker crossed the Rubicon of sanity by LEGALLY changing his name to Goofi.<\/p>\n

Who knows what Newman and Whitaker thought would happen because of this stroke of marketing genius, but the result was an unintentionally hilarious night of HBO\u2019s Boxing After Dark.<\/p>\n

It started with Goofi\u2019s ring walk, where the giant heavyweight, looking a little sheepish, led a procession of children (presumably paid crisis actors) holding up signs over their heads that said\u2026 you guessed it\u2026 Goofi, while chanting his new name on a loop. Whitaker smiled occasionally and rubbed one of the kids\u2019 heads to show he was\u2026 I don\u2019t know. Something.<\/p>\n

The HBO crew had a tongue-in-cheek good time with the name as well, making countless borderline sarcastic mentions of the new moniker during the broadcast that included commentator Jim Lampley saying things like, \u201cLarry, let\u2019s take a closer look at\u2026 uh\u2026 Goofi,\u201d or \u201cGoofi looks discouraged.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the fight itself, Goofi had reason to look discouraged, as he lost a clear unanimous decision to McCline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Undeterred by the setback, Whitaker fought on under the name for 15 more fights, including losing a WBO Heavyweight title eliminator to Luan Krasniqi in May 2005 before retiring in 2010.<\/p>\n

Not one of boxing’s classic nights, but certainly an unforgettable one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"7. Staying at altitude too long makes you start to feel Goofi: Lance Whitaker vs. Jameel McCline (watch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,6102,10078,217040,1636,217041,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-644070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-boxingscene","tag-goofi","tag-hbo","tag-lance-whitaker","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}