Published by on April 20th, 2008
Print This Post
| 
Email This Post
| 
RSS 
(from 2004)
By Scoop Malinowski
Lennox Lewis has proven he is the dominant heavyweight champion of this era.
His career accomplishments and distinctions are sufficient enough to have elevated him to a status among the elite pantheon of the all-time great heavyweight champions.
“Never allow yourself to be swept off your feet. When an impulse stirs, see first that it will meet the claims of justice; when an impression forms, assure yourself first of its certainty.” – Marcus Aurelius
I am sure.
It is not a very popular assertion these days, to say Lennox Lewis is one of the best ever. The general consensus is that Lennox Lewis is “just a very good heavyweight in a weak era.” I have thought long and hard on this subject. And with that bit of Marcus Aurelius wisdom in mind, I will proceed with the attempt to prove this humble opinion: that Lennox Lewis is truly one of the finest champions in heavyweight history.
First to be addressed are the two most glaring errors on Lewis’ record – Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman. How can Lennox Lewis be called “great” when he lost by KO to journeyman opposition?
Well, It happens. It happens to all the greats of sport. The greats don’t always win. It’s just about impossible to be at your very best every time out. Tiger Woods lost at The Masters this year. Pete Sampras lost to Richard Kra
jicek at Wimbledon in 1996. He also lost Roger Federer and George Bastl at Wimbledon the last two years. Serena Williams lost twice recently to Justine Henin Hardenne and Amelie Mauresmo. The Lakers went crashing out of the NBA Playoffs to the Spurs. Dale Earnhardt is considered the best racer in NASCAR history. It took him almost 20 years of losing until he finally won the biggest stock car race in America – The Daytona 500.
Sure, Lennox Lewis at his worst was not such a great fighter. Neither was Ali, Louis, Tyson, Holmes, Johnson or Dempsey.
There is no such thing as absolute perfection in anything, and especially not in such a brutal and dangerous and difficult endeavor as a career in boxing. So it’s unfair to put too much emphasis on the worst moments of Lewis’ career.
Let’s look at the highpoints of Lennox Lewis. Lewis has achieved a career which has moved such former greats as George Foreman and Muhammad Ali to both recently call him “the greatest.” They would know, wouldn’t they? Foreman said after Lewis beat Tyson last year, “Lennox is beyond doubt the greatest heavyweight of all-time. He is not second any more. He is there at the top of the tree. He reminded me of a young George Foreman and an elusive Muhammad Ali. He has everything you want in a fighter.”
Also consider these credible facts which are often overlooked or ignored altogether when analyzing Lewis. What we have in Lennox Lewis is a champion so supremely dominant that he has even scared away all his top competition. Today Mike Tyson says publically he doesn’t want a rematch with Lewis because he can’t beat him now. Think about that. You have Iron Mike Tyson – The Baddest Man on the Planet – confessing to the world he doesn’t want to fight Lennox Lewis again! Is that not amazing evidence in itself?!
Tyson has been offered another chance to win the richest prize in sport…and he declines the opportunity. Can you name one other heavyweight champion who has so intimidated his most formidable challenger?
Or should I say “challengers.” People seem to forget (or never knew) that Lewis did the same to Riddick Bowe and Evander Holyfield. They both showed great reluctance to fight Lewis. Bowe never did – apparently he knew better than to re-live his two-round thrashing at the hands of Lewis in the 1988 Olympic gold medal match.
Consider this fact published in the book “Lennox Lewis: Champion” by Ken Gorman. Team Lewis was still trying to make a Bowe fight happen in the mid ’90s. As it turned out, Bowe’s manager Rock Newman got caught in one of the worst boxing bluffs ever made. Newman proposed a “winner-take-all” superfight with an estimated $32 million gross. The loser would get nothing but training expenses. Former manager Frank Maloney consulted with his man Lennox. “Lenno
x was eager to go ahead with it,” said Maloney. “The next day I faxed an acceptance to Newman’s office. I never heard a word back from him.”
Even Holyfield, “The Warrior” himself, demonstrated some uncharacteristic evasiveness when it came time for him to fight Lewis. Back in 1997 Holyfield said his price was $15 million to fight Lewis. Months passed, then finally HBO came up with the money. Suddenly, Holyfield then raised his fee to $20 million, saying the fight was bigger now. Another bluff. This delayed the fight even longer. They finally fought in March of 1999. Lewis was 33 when he finally got to take part in a Superfight.
And of course, back in 1996 Tyson paid Lewis $4 million (still the boxing record) in step-aside money so he could fight Bruce Seldon instead of Lennox. Also part of the agreement was that Tyson would fight Lewis next after Seldon. Of course, Tyson renegged on that promise and next fought a man who he deemed a safer opponent – Holyfield.
Steve Brunt, a fine columnist at the Toronto Globe & Mail, summed up how Lewis was frozen out of the big fights in the 90’s era, frozen out of having the chance to demonstrate his extraordinary powers.
“Lennox Lewis is the dominant heavyweight of the moment, perhaps eventually to be recognized as the best of his generation, and yet the paying public – especially the American paying public – doesn’t really give a hoot.
There are a variety of reasons for Lewis’s lack of star quality, but to understand it fully, you have to go all the way back to a series of fights, the Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield trilogy. Those bouts, two won by Bowe and one by Holyfield, were indeed memorable moments for the sport. They defined both champions and made their reputations.
They also, inadvertently, had an effect on the guy left looking on from the outside – Lewis, who won the World Boxing Council portion of the world title after Bowe had discarded that belt in a trash can.
The television people, who for all intents and purposes run boxing, weren’t really interested in having the Canadian/English Lewis as part of the mix. They didn’t push for what would have been his own career-defining fight against his old Olympic rival, Bowe, or against a Holyfield closer to his prime.
They accepted Lewis as their primary meal ticket only after Bowe was gone, only after Tyson had self-destructed and after Holyfield had begun to slide. And even then, they did so reluctantly: it has seemed often that the interest wasn’t in building Lewis, but in finding the next box-office attraction, the guy to beat Lewis, whether that was going to be Michael Grant or Wladimir Klitschko, or even David Tua.”
“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift
Many forces seemed to conspire to block Lewis’ ascent. Don King. The WBC. Even the media played a role as they created and perpetuated a negative stigma against Lewis. Reporters from the New York Times, N.Y. Post, Boston Globe and USA Today used to repeatedly write that Lewis had no heart and that he was amateurish. Imagine the absolute absurd audacity of middle-aged journalists – most who probably never once competed in a single fight in their lives – criticizing and questioning the heart of a man who was junior world champion at age 17, Olympic champion at 23 and WBC Heavyweight champion at 27. Lewis became champion at every level of the sport. It’s ridiculous and yet disturbing how misleading and ignorant the media elite can sometimes be.
“Prowess without an adversary shrivels.” -Seneca
All the years of waiting to fight the best indeed took a toll on Lewis. When his heart and soul were set on competing against Bowe, Tyson and Holyfield, he instead had to fight against the likes of Mavrovic, McCall, Briggs, Butler. It is hard to get all your spirit and energy up for a fight everyone expects you to win easily. Imagine if Ali did not get to fight his best oppostion – Liston, Frazier or Foreman – until he was 33? It could change perceptions a lot. The greats want to fight the best. You only become great by beating the best.
So Lewis lost by knockout to McCall and Rahman. But how Lewis responded in those rematches leaves little doubt that Lewis – at his highly motivated best – is just about unbeatable. He has conquered every man he has ever fought. Only Rocky Marciano equalled that achievement. Lewis has won every big fight of his career.
And even though Lennox had to overcome so much conspiracy against him for so many years, he has always been a gentleman. He’s always conducted himself with class and dignity, like the ultimate champion of the sport would. No criminal record, no out-of-the-ring controversies, no cruel public tauntings of his opponents. Lewis has been a wonderful, class champion and example for the youth of the world to emulate. And how he bounced back from shock defeat to reach triumph again…Is that not the stuff that legends are made?
“The faults of a gentleman are like eclipses of the sun and moon. If he does wrong, everyone sees it. When he corrects his fault, every gaze is turned up towards him.” – Confucius
“To live each day as though one’s last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing – here is the perfection of character.” – Marcus Aurelius
Style-wise, Lewis has the arsenal to match up well with anyone in history. He has the perfect hybrid style…size, strength and smarts. He’s a masterful boxer with a dominating jab plus knockout power in both fists. He’s able to control range with his height, reach and athleticism, which permits him to control a fight’s pace. No man has ever been able to penetrate Lewis’s defenses and force him to fight inside (well maybe Ray Mercer did). David Tua, Mike Tyson and Andrew Golota could not knockout Lewis. They barely hurt him. Lewis was at his best in those fights. He’s a different fighter when he feels threatened by a dangerous rival.
Most impressive may be the fact that Lewis has never had to suffer a prolonged beating in a fight…he is just too good, too smart and too dominant to allow that to happen.
Lewis has in his corner the top trainer in the sport today (and one of the best of all time) – Emanuel Steward. Steward has been turning talented young men into champions for almost three decades. When he took over training Lewis in 1994, he had this to say: “My idea is to make him into a larger version of Sugar Ray Robinson, not Muhammad Ali. Because I truly believe Lennox can be better than him. He can do things Ali couldn’t do. Lennox can box. But he still has that tremendous, raw-boned punch power.”
Steward has played a commanding role in nurturing the greatness inside Lewis to bloom to its fruition.
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Adams
I know it is an impossible task to analyze person-to-person matchups like Lewis against Ali, Dempsey, Marciano, Louis and Holmes. They all were dominant and unbeatable at their best. No one can say with any certainty who is the best of all, or who would have won this or that hypothetical fight, or how the fights would have played out. And no one can say this era was stronger than that era. How do you measure so? The best is the best. The best in the world of today is equal to the best of any time period. The best is simply the best.
Also, it is imaginable that Lewis – at his very best – may actually possess all the elements to possibly beat any man’s style. Perhaps even Ali’s style could have been defeated. Ali was 35 pounds smaller and three inches shorter than Lewis. It is conceivable that Lewis could control the range with Ali. Ali would have had to force the fight, take the risks. And since Ali never p
unched to the body, it is not hard to envision Lewis controlling Ali, even frustrating him. Ali was known for besting power puncher types like Frazier and Foreman. He never had to deal with such a complete boxer with a champion’s heart and KO power like Lewis possesses.
You see? If you really think about it, Lennox Lewis really is a great fighter. Maybe one of the greatest ever. Maybe even…
