After you Lennox. No, after you Frans
Heavyweight fights are like military engagements – brief and brutal – but the preliminaries last forever. Naively, I arrived for the Lennox Lewis v Frans Botha “head-to-head” press conference on the dot at 11.30am. More experienced boxing journalists started wandering in half an hour later; Botha turned up shortly afterwards, wearing a white suit and co-respondent shoes that were the height of fashion (in Chicago 70 years ago); Lewis finally arrived just after 1pm. Botha, moaning about a lack of respect, had left 20 minutes before in what was presumably a carefully orchestrated manoeuvre. So much for the head-to-head.
Amid the tub-thumping pre-fight theatricals this week, you had to remind yourself that Lewis is a great heavyweight. “Respect” is the key word in boxing, more important than all the tacky belts, and he has it: undisputed – ignore the World Boxing Association – heavyweight champion of the world; the man who has proved he is afraid of no one.
Emanuel Steward, Lewis’s shrewd, smooth-talking American trainer, got to say his piece before Lewis responded to questions. And quite a piece it was. “Lewis has been fighting for six years in hostile territory, and the more I have watched him the more my respect for him has grown,” Steward said. “He has so much courage. I have more respect for him than for any heavyweight except Ali and Louis. People here in England should be very proud of him. He might not be appreciated now, but history is going to be very good to him.”
Steward, whose weathered face, silly hat and lyrical take on the sport make him an echt boxing figure, put his finger on the dilemma at the heart of Lewis’s career. We, the British public, have never quite taken to him; believed in him. He was simply never British enough for our liking; he has been far too successful for a start.
There were a couple of hundred curious City workers outside Canary Wharf at Wednesday’s press conference, and they applauded Lewis when he eventually arrived, but it was small beer compared with Tyson’s visit to the UK in January, when the Manchester Arena was sold out in hours and Brixton was brought to a standstill by the fallen champion’s walkabout. It is the difference between the fighter and the phenomenon, and it must be galling for Lewis.
Asked last year what nationality he felt, Lewis said “a bit of all three – Canadian, British and Jamaican”. “In Canada they used to tease me for my Cockney accent,” he added, “and I started punching people as a defence. In London I was mocked for my American accent – well, Canadian, but no one spots the difference – and I suppose I just kept punching.” Best not raise the issue, perhaps.
Lewis is likeable but remote, and retains that irritating habit of referring to himself in the third person. “Ali is the boxer who got Lennox Lewis involved in boxing,” he told us at one point. He always will be a global sportsman, a transatlantic traveller. This is his first fight in the UK since he was stopped by Oliver McCall at Wembley Arena in 1994, and even so he has preferred to train in America, blaming the lack of decent sparring partners over here (“I run through them pretty quickly”).
Yet his relationship with Britain has thawed. His pugnacious manager, Frank Maloney, told me that in the early days Frank Bruno’s popularity made it hard for Lewis to make an impact, but his talent was always recognised by the cognoscenti and in recent years his support has widened.
Fighting in the United States for the past six years has checked his popularity on this side of the ocean, but the money is better there and, as Maloney mentions at least three times, Lewis has taken a pay cut to come home. As Lewis starts to eye retirement, it is unlikely he will fight here again unless Tyson agrees to a match that would fill Wembley, Hampden and most of the stadiums in between.
The following day, the much-anticipated Lewis-Botha head-to-head finally happened, though it was more a torso-to-torso as the two adversaries stripped off in Covent Garden’s piazza for the weigh-in. A thousand-strong crowd had gathered: bemused tourists who must have thought this was some quaint English ritual; hard-hatted builders; and blokes with big bellies and designer tracksuits who looked like hardcore fight fans.
Some of the crowd shouted “Lewis, Lewis”, others “Lennox, Lennox”, and one “C’mon Len!”, which didn’t sound right at all. A group of young black men excitedly waved a banner, on one side of which was the Jamaican flag, on the other the British. That seemed about right.
The weigh-in for a heavyweight fight is entirely ritualistic – there is no upper limit and even Andrew Flintoff would be allowed to take part. Quite why Botha had to remove his natty red blazer and black slacks and Lewis his obligatory hooded tracksuit was unclear. They stood side by side on the makeshift stage, appropriately in black boxer shorts, flexing their muscles and looking mildly ridiculous.
The point of it all was elusive, not least since it was never established exactly what Lewis weighed: 17st 4lb was announced initially, then corrected to 17st 12lb. Like me, perhaps he sometimes weighs himself with one foot on the floor; or maybe he was wearing his sunglasses for the later count. Botha was a stone lighter, four inches shorter, and flabbier around the middle.
They avoided eye contact, but as they left the stage they had to decide who should go through the door first. Both paused and engaged in that gentlemanly act of encouraging the other through, a simple courtesy that mocked the antics of the press conference. Botha went out first, with Lewis loping after him. However uncivilised the action tonight, there will be two civilised men in the ring.
History, as Steward suggests, will surely be very good to Lewis, a great champion who didn’t always insist on the challenger holding the door open for him.
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