Lewis's date with destiny

Published on Sunday 2 June 2002 01:00

ECCENTRICITY and madness may offer contemporary sparkle in the world of athletics, but over time they fizzle. That’s why the weekend showdown between Lennox Lewis and ‘Iron Mike’ Tyson is unlikely to burn itself into heavyweight history with the kind of intensity that is remembered over generations.

With the fight less than a week away, as many as half the seats remain unsold, but when the television money comes in, it could still end up being the richest prizefight ever. That has more to do with the changing economics of sports media than with what is at stake between these two fighters.

It is, of course, Tyson who fascinates - but not because he’s great. He isn’t. He retains his aggression, his pathology of street war, but not his former skills. Tyson, who might have been among the finest heavyweights, threw away his future with a series of terrible choices that led him into the darkness of jail and strip bars instead of prizefighting lore.

At 36, he has come to personify the worst possible thug at the end of the darkest, most sinister alley - a pitiless brute who might harm you just for fun.

Today’s Tyson is famous less for his fighting skills than for being a one-man train wreck, a Roman circus. In and out of the ring he’s vicious and unstable, a convicted sex criminal who attacks referees, bites, tries to break elbows.

Some day prizefighting may shed its corruption and anarchy (but never its greed) to the extent that it will demand a mentally unbalanced foulmaster like Tyson finds treatment. But meanwhile, our short 21st-century attention span has helped to make him a global hit, even though he has ducked world-class opponents for years.

Next weekend he alters his script. Rather than pit himself against a fat old Dane or a pug who sells ads on the soles of his shoes, Tyson will merge his freak show with serious heavyweight boxing. Lennox Lewis, a true champion, is the best in the division. A talented but flawed giant, for years he has stalked Tyson and dreamed of beating the fighter forged by the late, great Cus D’Amato.

Knowledgeable insiders say that Tyson, when he was champion, once paid mandatory challenger Lewis more than $4m to step aside and let him fight a lesser opponent first. But the criminal justice system put Tyson away before Lewis could get the promised fight.

Lewis, a tall, powerful opponent with a crushing jab, shares traits with Buster Douglas, who knocked Tyson out in 1990. He is the kind of opponent that Tyson’s handlers wanted to put off as long as possible. But Tyson, whose finances are as absurd as his ugly diatribes, must have a constant stream of millions to pay for all his homes, cars, toadies - and lawyers who keep him out of jail. So his unbalanced books cornered him and his entourage into taking the fight. Unfortunately, in all the years that intervened, this contest lost much of its meaning.

Lewis is a year older than Tyson, but his conditioning is excellent, and in many ways he has improved his game in his latter years. But he manages to be formidable without being terribly aggressive, imposing his will almost passively.

In his two defeats, both by knockout, he lost concentration and showed that, like many big punchers, he can be rendered unconscious too easily. It’s the glass-chin syndrome - embarrassing, but real. Although decent and intelligent, Lewis is colourless. He lacks even a defining nationality, and he and Tyson are not true enemies.

Tyson exudes a generic hostility that lacks a nemesis he can name. When he talks of eating Lewis’s heart and children, he shows his fear, not hatred, though fear and hatred get mixed up in the mind of a bully like Tyson. As for Lewis, he sees Tyson as a goal, not an enemy.

Beyond this there are no great, overriding issues in this fight. Those that exist are carnival issues, lowbrow theatre, exemplified by the bite that Tyson took out of Lewis’ leg at their press conference early this year. Such issues cannot compare to what was at stake in heavyweight fights that defined our history.

For example, when Jack Johnson won the title in 1908 by knocking out Tommy Burns, Johnson, a black American, turned the world upside down, particularly the American world. The nation had ended slavery only 43 years earlier.

Sporting impresarios brought the fierce Jim Jeffries out of retirement to put Johnson in his place. But on July 4, 1910, America’s Independence Day, Johnson knocked out white hope Jeffries in the 15th round.

Jack Dempsey’s two battles with the dapper Gene Tunney, in 1926 and ’27, were billed as old-school brutality versus what was believed at the time to be a futuristic, more sophisticated pugilism. Tunney read classics and sounded more like a banker’s son than a prizefighter. Naturally, fans were wild about Dempsey.

But Dempsey lost both ten-round decisions, hindered the second time by what remains famous 74 years later as the referee’s "long count" in the seventh round.

Each of the golden periods in boxing’s history have a fight which springs easily to the mind, one that contained the two essential elements of fight legend - two indisputably great fighters at their peak, and with a score to be settled. But does Lewis’s coming contest with Tyson satisfy those prerequisites? Clearly not.

Take some of the greatest fights in history, and just ask whether the Memphis circus can stand comparison. On top of Johnson-Jeffries or Tunney-Dempsey, I would single out fights such as Joe Louis’s round-1 knockout over Germany’s Max Schmeling in 1938, a fight which questioned a whole political philosophy when it holed Hitler’s notion of a German super race below the waterline. It should be noted that Schmeling was himself never a Nazi: he had a Jewish manager, and they got along famously. Max and Joe respected and ultimately learned to like each other, but the fight had genuine edge.

Or what about Muhammad Ali’s first victory over champion Sonny Liston in 1964, a fight which changed boxing and race relations forever? It gave Ali a podium. He used it more skilfully than any heavyweight champion, before or since.

Liston was looked upon as an unbeatable behemoth, but the magnificent speed, reflexes, talent, and courage of Olympic champion Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) were widely overlooked until a beaten Liston quit, rooted to his stool after the seventh round.

Ali’s first bout against Joe Frazier, in 1971, remains perhaps the greatest spectacle in sport. Ali, robbed of his title and his boxing licence for refusing to serve in the army, had notched two wins after returning from three-and-a-half years of banishment. Champion Frazier, the epitome of ferocity, was supposed to chase Ali from the sport once and for all.

It was an athletic event held against the backdrop of race, war, religion, and theatrics. Celebrities begged for the chance to buy a ticket in sold-out Madison Square Garden.

This fight gave birth to the age of satellite TV hook-ups. Hundreds of millions of people saw it around the world, and Frazier’s hard-fought decision victory set up the greatest heavyweight trilogy. Sport never saw a rivalry as intense as Frazier versus Ali, whose love-hate relationship burns in tragedy and triumph down to this day.

The most die-hard Ali fans thought he had no chance against George Foreman, who had won the title in 1973, knocking down Frazier six times. In those days, Foreman modelled his persona after Liston. He was a quiet, seething, unstoppable nightmare.

Ali, at 32, had lost his dazzling footwork and speed, and the younger Foreman was definitely the bigger puncher. Drawing upon other-worldly fortitude and raw courage, Ali simply outlasted Foreman, with his rope-a-dope tactics, before knocking him out in the eighth round. It was a victory for guerrilla warfare, and Ali prevailed because he would not quit, go away, or stop fighting.

Probably the only way Tyson versus Lewis can gain the historical significance of those great fights is if Tyson commits some reprehensible act as terrible as biting off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear. If Tyson versus Lewis is representative of this tumultuous time, then our time shall not fare well in history. For the world is about to gather around a very sick man engaged in a prizefight, largely because no-one knows what he might do next.

Yet if we manage to avoid one of Tyson’s circus endings, we might yet see a fine, possibly magnificent, prizefight between two men who should have done this several years ago.

Ivan Goldman is the West Coast Correspondent for America’s The Ring magazine

Heavyweight war of words

Lewis on Tyson’s upbringing:

"Tyson is always playing on this thing about being a victim of circumstance, being made the way he is because of the tough upbringing he had. Well, I didn’t grow up in a particularly nice place, yet it hasn’t stopped me ending up a decent person."

Tyson on what he thinks of Lewis’s manners:

"I was out with my wife, and he looked at me in disrespect as if he was gonna beat me up. But he’ll pay for that with his health."

Lewis displays his word power:

"[Tyson is] ignorant, arrogant and kind of an imbecile when it comes to certain comments."

Tyson shows an anti-intellectual streak:

"His [Lewis’s] mind is not going to hit my mind. I will say anything to get under his skin. But on June 8, flesh will not be enough. I will take Lennox’s title, his soul, and smear his pompous brains all over the ring."

In reply, Lewis drops the syllable count:

"The man’s an idiot."

Lewis on the battle at the press conference:

"You could say he [Tyson] drew first blood, and now he is going to have to pay for it in the ring."

Tyson’s verdict on that ‘fight’:

"At that press conference, if I had the right crew, he should have died that night."

Tyson denies he actually bit Lewis:

"I said I bit Lennox because that is what everyone wanted to hear."

Lewis disagrees:

"The bite made it more personal. You didn’t need to motivate me after that. This is definitely a puppy with some problems."

Lewis reflects on Tyson’s misdeeds:

"When he was incarcerated he said he was reading books. He must have been reading comic books."

Tyson analyses Lewis:

"I don’t think Lennox is afraid of me. I think he thinks I’m afraid of him. I’m going to show him differently."

Lewis tries psychology on his opponent:

"Anyone that finds it necessary to fight outside the confines of the boxing rules is looking for the unfair advantage, and that is a reflection of their deteriorating skills."

Tyson’s contrary views on Lewis:

After his fight against Lou Savarese - "I want to rip out Lewis’s heart, and feed it to him. I want to eat his children."

Last month in the US:

"I love Lewis. He has the dignity of any fighter."

His most recent interview:

"My objective is to be professional but kill him."

Lewis’s final considered view:

"He’s nothing but a cartoon character. I want to rid boxing of the last misfit."