09.02.04 – By Matthew Hurley: The retirement of heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis has provoked a rather strange reaction among boxing fans. Rarely does a heavyweight champion, often described as the preeminent sports figure on the planet, leave the playing field so misunderstood. He never did anything spectacular but there he was, doing his job – bout after bout. Lennox Lewis represents every person who didn’t quite fit in but somehow succeeded and was then denigrated for being ordinary. And a heavyweight champion cannot be ordinary.
Lewis’ history, at least among boxing fans, is common knowledge. He came after the reigns of two of the most dynamic heavyweight champions in modern times – Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. Both transcended the sport, and their shortcomings only added to their appeal. Tyson was a ferocious puncher with a violent back history and, depending on your opinion, a tragic figure or a product of his time. Holyfield represented all that seemed good about the sport. His will to win seemed indomitable. And the fact that he was smaller than nearly everyone he fought lent an almost David and Goliath charge to every match he was involved in. And then there was Lewis. Huge, cumbersome and more often than not, boring. So many of his matches were so pedestrian that people just didn’t respond. And he wasn’t quite the wit either. Neither was he the demonic character that could attract attention. In fact his aloofness bordered on arrogance, and many people simply disliked him.
So Lennox follows two exciting, crowd-pleasing champions and becomes overshadowed by their achievements and lost in the criticism of sportswriters and hardened boxing fans because he is a boxer who fights, most often, on the side of caution. Unfortunately the sport of boxing revolves and frowns on caution. It is a sport that revolves around violence. And when he loses in shocking fashion against Hasim Rahman and Oliver McCall, his critics pounce and finger-point at his apparent mediocity. When he beats them in rematches, it doesn’t matter. An albatross is hung around his neck and Lewis himself seems unwilling to fight against it. He becomes even more emotionally distant and arrogant. And then, unprepared, weary and closing in on forty years of age, he engages in a life and death struggle with Vitali Klitschko. He wins, but in spite of the heroism of his effort, in many courts he’s denigrated as a fraud.
What must he have been thinking? He gives the fans, and his critics, what they want – a brawl that proves his worth – and still they scoff.
What must he have been thinking?
He was thinking, the hell with it.
Lennox Lewis will never be remembered in the bright, passionate light of a Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis or Jack Dempsey. Those fighters transcended their eras. They were larger than life figures who came to represent the turbulent times they lived and fought in. He also won’t be remembered as fondly as Mike Tyson of Evander Holyfield. Those fighters transcended the sport at a time when boxing had lost it’s hold on the world of sports. Lewis will be remembered much as Larry Holmes is remembered. Holmes, lost in the shadow of Ali, became a great professional fighter and a dominant heavyweight champion – but a forgotten champion. What fight fan can forget Gerry Cooney, the proverbial “white hope,” being introduced last in his title fight with Holmes in 1982? The champion is always introduced last, but Holmes, unpopular, simply wasn’t accorded the respect deserved of a champion on the biggest night of his life. Most of it had to do with race, some of it had to do with the fact that he simply wasn’t liked. But it was an unconscionable mistreatment of a fighter who so craved respect. It wasn’t Cooney’s fault, and he fought valiantly that night. But every true boxing fan nodded their head in appreciation when Holmes, a great, underappreciated fighter, beat his challenger down and knocked him out in the thirteenth round.
So Lewis’ final fight is a sloppy, thrilling battle against a big, tough guy and he wins. Somehow that doesn’t seem so bad. His critics will forever question him and his credentials seem questionable when you consider that the best fighters he fought were either past their primes or not quite that good to begin with. But the fact remains, he lost only twice throughout his professional career and he beat both of those fighters in rematches. Even the staunchest of critics must give Lewis credit for that.
Was he a great heavyweight champion? That question is open to debate. Was he an exciting fighter? It always depended on his opponent and his mood. Is he worthy of the boxing world’s respect? You’re damn right he is. Like him or not, Lennox Lewis proved himself to be just good enough to survive as the best heavyweight of the last decade. And that says a lot because he beat some damn good fighters. He can walk off into the sunset a rich man with all his faculties intact. Yet he will never be remembered as fondly as some of his predecessors simply because he was too much like the rest of us – an ordinary man just doing his job.