By Terence Dooley

Over seven years have passed since Lennox Lewis retired from the sport of boxing taking the linear, undisputed title with him.  Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko have since stepped into the void, the two brothers control the division yet there is still a distinct sense that the Klitschkos stand behind the likes of Lewis, Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson in the all-time rankings especially given the fact that Lennox’s final fight saw him overcome Vitali, considered the more formidable of the brothers, via a sixth-round TKO.  Lennox caught up with BoxingScene to mull over his career, outlining the seven important steps that were successfully negotiated during his fourteen-year fighting career.

Tyson Fury recently drew praise for stepping up against British and Commonwealth kingpin Dereck ‘Del Boy’ Chisora.  Although both men held similar records, 14-0 apiece, Dereck’s wins over Danny Williams and Sam Sexton meant that he was considered the more accomplished of the two pros.

Lewis was 14-0 going into his first big test, a European and British title annexing fight with the vastly experienced, 35-0, Lonsdale titlist Gary Mason in March 1991.  Lennox’s amateur career, two Olympics yielding a Gold Medal in 1988, and numerous tournament wins, held him in good stead going into the bout, he also revealed that he had unerring confidence in himself as the first bell loomed.

“No, I didn’t,” mused Lewis in response to the question of whether he had any doubts going in.  “Actually a lot of people thought that particular fight was a bit too early for me.  I knew [Frank] Bruno was the man at the top right then and a lot of the punters always wanted to see Gary against Bruno but Frank and his handlers didn’t want that fight to happen.

“After only fourteen fights people thought it was too early for me, that I’d get beat.  I loved that aspect of the fight because people like [The Sun’s] Colin Hart went against me and he was the main man at the time for the boxing reporters.  Any time Colin said a guy was going to win the others would follow him.  I said to myself, ‘What is going on?  This guy doesn’t know too much about boxing, especially when it comes to me’.  Any time there was a big fight he’d go against me so it was my duty to prove him wrong.

“Gary’s record showed he was a real force to be reckoned with.  I felt that I could beat him with my boxing ability, the Muhammad Ali style I had at the time as a boxer, puncher and mover.”

Dominant going into the seventh and final round, Lewis did not feel the need to rush anything.  Stating that he had Mason on the hook.  Saying, “I could see as I was fighting him that his eyes were getting smaller and smaller on both sides [Mason’s eye damaged promoted the stoppage at 0:44 of the session].

“I had to show the patient aspect of boxing on my side to get through it all.  He was very tough.  It wasn’t a case of catching him with one good punch because no one was knocking out Gary or stopping him – I wanted to be the first one to attempt that.”

Lewis went onto win every available title on the world scene.  Mason had suffered a detached retina in his decision win over Everett Martin in 1990, after a short retirement he came back only for the loss to Lewis to prompt another break.  Mason attempted a US-based comeback in 1994, picking up two stoppage wins before calling it a day for good.  Sadly, Mason passed away in January, a bicycle accident robbing the sport of one of its nicest guys.  Lennox’s one boxing regret is that he lost touch with Gary during the hustle and bustle of his own career. 

“I flew over for Gary’s funeral,” recalled Lewis.  “The reason I did that is because he really was a nice guy who should have got a lot more acclaim than he did.  Even if he didn’t have anything himself he would still try to help others – I always appreciated that about him.  I felt bad that we never really kept in contact after the fight.  I never saw him after that so that is why I flew over.”

2: Grab a former world titlist’s scalp at the first possible opportunity

Within four months of the Mason win Lewis journeyed to Nevada for a tough assignment against former world champion turned trial horse Mike Weaver.  Weaver had shocked the world in 1980 by dethroning highly heralded WBA boss John Tate via a fifteenth round KO.  Mike’s upset wins over undefeated prospects James Pritchard and Johnny DuPlooy presented Lewis with fair warning ahead of his test against ‘Hercules’.

“Again I was boxing a guy that people know and who has experience but he was there for the taking,” admitted Lewis as he recalled the sixth-round KO triumph.  “I was in better shape than he was.  I was the young gun coming up but the experience of Weaver was great.  He taught me a couple of things, in fact that was the first fight where I got cut.  His jab and the way he delivered it was a lesson, and the dry atmosphere of Nevada as well, it really affects your skin and cuts.”

3: Find a boxing style that is suited to you

Mark Breland fought Julian Samaha further up the same bill.  Ironically Breland was a fellow Olympic gold medalist yet the New Yorker failed to translate massive amateur success into sustained professional attainment. Lewis explained the importance of tweaking his amateur style whilst warning against completely overhauling a boxing approach that had brought medals galore.

“Well, it is interesting because my trainer at the time was John Davenport and he didn’t like that amateur style,” revealed Lewis as he looked over his early wins.  “John said I looked amateurish and used to tell me to stop jumping around.  I think he took away my Olympic style of boxing and tried to make me into a slugger style of boxer, a guy who would stay in the pocket and come back with punches over the jab.  That worked for a little bit but I resorted back a little to my old Olympic style of boxing when I went with Manny Steward.”

“Absolutely,” his answer when asked whether staying in the pocket can be a hindrance, “that type of boxing causes a lot of hand injuries because you’re in there throwing punches and even hitting the guy’s elbows when getting shots blocked.  You’re not really a tactician going for the openings so I remembered the old way of fighting where I would wait for opportunities.”

4: Make big knockout statements to underline you credentials

Lennox’s showdown with big punching fellow Canadian Donovan ‘Razor’ Ruddock saw Lewis return to London, the city of his birth, for a big Earl’s Court graduation night.  Lewis had put in the hours, passed his preliminary tests and was now one step away from the WBC world title held by Evander Holyfield.  Lewis blew Ruddock aside in two rounds.  Evander went onto lose his titles to Riddick Bowe.  Bowe’s refusal to defend against Lewis saw Lewis crowned by virtue of his punctuation win over the Jamaican-born brawler.

Ruddock’s big selling point was a combined nineteen rounds of toe-to-toe action with Mike Tyson.  Donovan was highly rated; there was lingering suspicion of Lewis’s credentials in some quarters.  Perfect ground, then, for the Commonwealth titleholder to make a statement.

“Yeah, fighting Mike Tyson is different than fighting me,” joked Lewis as he recalled the mystique surrounding Ruddock by virtue of his two defeats to ‘Iron’ Mike.  “I had spent many hours sparring ‘Razor’, he had actually helped me prepare for my first Olympics [in 1984], he was a young pro and I was a young amateur, we had great sparring sessions together.

“It really pissed me off when he came to England and said he still had my blood on his boxing boots.  That was real fighting talk right there, it roused me up and made me think, ‘You really think so?’, and made me want to take him apart.  I knew that I had to really scare Riddick Bowe and Holyfield over in America.”

Indeed, Lewis built up a reputation as a careful counter puncher during his 44-fight career, 41-2-1 (32), however he knew when to let his hands go and produced a number of demolition jobs, telling me that early wins over Ruddock, Andrew Golota and Michael Grant rested on a belief that he was leagues above his opponent.

“I would say it was down to superiority”, answered Lewis as talk turned to the reasoning behind his bombing raid performances, “because Golota wasn’t good enough to stay in with me.  Although he had those fights with Bowe I felt he couldn’t deal with me and went out there with gusto.  Grant was put in too early in his career, I don’t know who was pushing him, then I see Evander Holyfield walking him out to the ring singing and I said to myself, ‘I am going to knock this guy out’.  I wondered if they knew who I was, Evander had steered clear of me for years but I beat him.”

5: Learn how to take defeat on the chin and bounce back

Lewis twice had to take in the bitter taste of defeat, WBC title reverses to Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman in 1994 and 2001 respectively teaching ‘The Lion’ that sometimes a fighter has to lick a few wounds before coming back and putting things right. 

Lennox relaxed considerably both as a fighter and as a person after the loss to Rahman in 2001, in redressing the balance at the first attempt later that year the three-time world champion believes he came to terms with the rigors of the sport.  The former fighter advises other fighters to maintain dignity in defeat, recently telling deposed WBA heavyweight titlist David Haye to play down his broken toe when analyzing his decision defeat to Wlad Klitschko.

“Making excuses doesn’t do anything for the boxer himself,” stressed Lewis.  “I actually learned from my losses that if you lose you should take it in your stride.  Just say the other fighter was the better on the day and say anything you have to say about the reason for the defeat later.  Ruddock blamed losing to me on the cold and stuff, that may have been the case but if it was he should have gone over [to the UK] a little bit earlier.

“Things can affect a fighter, even the greatest ones, but no one wants to hear about it after the fight.  What I would have done if I was Razor is make sure to get another fight to guarantee that what he felt went wrong doesn’t happen again.  A lot of boxers make the mistake of not getting acclimatized to where they are fighting.  Some guys can come over four days before (a fight), spend eighteen hours on a plane and still win; there are others who need to get acclimatized, to get used to that place.

“I loved to get to the places where I fought six weeks ahead of time where possible.  Especially places like Las Vegas where it is very dry, hot and can get humid, it affects your body in ways that you’re not used to, and so you have to avoid that.”

6: Plough your own furrow

McCall’s bowling right hook knocked Lewis out of the heavyweight picture in September of 1994.  Lennox had to defeat Lionel Butler, Tommy Morrison and Ray Mercer in order to net another crack at the WBC belt, he ignored the overtures of Don King during this period, King controlled the comeback of Tyson during this time, maneuvering Mike into a WBC title shot and making it difficult for Lewis to get his hands on the famous green belt. 

Lennox eventually gained another shot at the title after Tyson vacated the WBC crown in order to defend the WBA strap against Holyfield in 1996.  Lewis met McCall in a rematch with the vacant belt at stake, Oliver’s mid-fight breakdown took some of the shine away though Lewis was once again a titleholder and still controlled his own destiny.

“It proved a lot,” stated Lewis, his mind turning to those tough years.  “This is why I feel good today.  You cannot be great without overcoming certain obstacles that come in your way.  They threw a lot at me: small rings, bad judging, or just muddling you around before a fight so you get physically tired or mentally drained.  A lot of things will affect a fighter if you allow them, so it takes a lot of strength to keep a step ahead of these things.

“It is important because when Don King was around he controlled the heavyweights at the time and wasn’t allowing any fighter to fight any of his heavyweights unless they had a promotional deal with him.  I didn’t really want a promotional deal with him because I felt he wasn’t good for me and just wanted to use me so I really wanted to stay independent, it really helped me because it kept me out there, kept me winning and he realized he couldn’t get me.

“Even when we struck a deal where he could promote two of my fights, not three, I knew the guys he would put in with me would get knocked out anyway so I could get rid of Don quickly.”

7: Make sure you clear the field

Lewis beat everyone he possibly could give or take Riddick Bowe; a fight with ‘Big Daddy’ slipped him by earlier in his career forcing Lewis to ensure that the other big names did not get away.  His ledger includes wins over Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson and Vitali Klitschko.

Still, one or two fans bemoan the lack of a return with Klitschko, arguing that Vitali was leading on the cards when the fight was stopped and had looked strong in the early going.  Lewis, though, can point to the horrendous cuts he inflected on ‘Dr. Ironfist’ during the fight’s fierce exchanges when arguing that he had taken care of business.

“I’ve got two answers for that,” his proclamation on the final fight of his career.  “If the fight would have continued I would have knocked him out and the other is that boxing can come down to survival of the fittest, you have to have the stamina, the chin, the ability to fight on the inside and outside, and you have to avoid getting cut – it is simple as that.

“I wasn’t fighting to win on points; I was boxing to knock him out.  If you watch my fights you see that this one is the one where I took it to the trenches to try and knock him out.  HBO had said this was the icing on the cake fight so I wanted to ice the cake, it wasn’t a pretty fight but I still won.”

“It did cross my mind but by that time I had just had it,” his thoughts on the calls for a rematch.  “It is because some people felt Vitali never got a fair shot at it.  But he didn’t say or do the things that motivated me.  Vitali is a very nice guy, we’re obviously from different eras and I basically trained for him for ten days because I’d been training to fight Kirk Johnson and a year had passed since the Tyson fight.

“Tyson was my main fight, now I was coming back and these guys wanted fights with me, I had Vitali set up for the end of the year with Johnson as a warm up fight but they put Vitali in with me at short notice when he’d pretty much been thinking of me for two years.  Even though he had prepared for me for years and I hadn’t really considered him at that time, the win shows that had I settled down and trained just for him then I’d have knocked him out so it didn’t really make sense for me (to take a rematch).

“My main nemesis was always Mike Tyson, he had threatened to eat my kids, bit me on the leg and I just wanted that fight, everyone wanted to see Lennox Lewis against Tyson because the Americans loved Tyson and there’d always be that argument of who was the best.  Until they saw us in the ring to see who the best was, I couldn’t have been satisfied.  Just like the fights with Evander.  In the first fight people who had asked who the best heavyweight in the world was could now see it.”

Tyson showed the softer side of his personality after losing to Lewis in eight largely one-sided rounds.  The Brooklyner delicately clearing the sweat from his opponent’s temple before burying the hatchet on their simmering feud in a move that left many flabbergasted, Lewis amongst them.

He said, “I was pretty surprised until I realized that people like that aren’t going to give you respect until you beat it out of them.  Mike mentally didn’t have respect for me going in but when he was in the ring he could see that respect for me as a fighter.”

As for the one that got away, the aforementioned Bowe, Riddick was at the top of his game during 1992 and 1993 only to fall dramatically and suddenly as the years ticked by, his erratic form and personal life nixing any talk of fights with Lewis and Tyson.  A chronic lack of focus cost Bowe, a brilliant specimen of a fighter when in his pomp, the chance to avenge his Olympic final defeat to Lewis and make a lot of money in what could have easily become a trilogy of contests.

“Absolutely, he is the one who really made a mistake,” confirmed Lewis.  “I’ve spoken to him and he is disappointed that it never came about.  Bowe kind of blames it on [former manager] Rock Newman, he felt that he didn’t get the fight because he was the gravy train and Rock didn’t want anything to upset that train.

“Somebody beats you in the Olympics and you want that chance (for a rematch).  I was going for my gold medal on the podium and he says, ‘I’ll see you in the pros’, so I’m thinking to myself, ‘Yeah, it will be a good fight in the pros’.  His style of fighting was better suited to being a pro fighter.  When he got trained for the pros he had a good pro trainer, Eddie Futch, who trained him to fight that way.  I felt we would meet in the professional ranks but we never did.”

The ‘Seven degrees of Lewis’ all add up to one thing, a career that took in two Olympics, 1984 and 1988, A Commonwealth Games gold, three world heavyweight title wins, unification, defeat and redemption, a storied ledger that may not be replicated or matched for a few years.  Lewis, whilst respecting the work of the two Klitschkos, fears that we may have a bit of a wait before the division is big news again.

“I would say things are for the moment,” his answer to my question of whether the division is going to be a bit quiet over coming years.  “I am the last great heavyweight, I am like fine wine, getting better with time, and we’re looking for the eruption of the next big heavyweight.”

Visit the Lennox Lewis 2.0 website: http://lennoxlewis.com.

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