Boxing: Lewis merits place among the greatest heavyweights

Victory in mismatch with Tyson does not make world champion the best of all time but few can better his claim to a place in history

Lennox Lewis produced a beautiful performance here beside the Mississippi the other night but relating it to the mainstream of classic boxing history, as George Foreman did so enthusiastically at ringside, was fool's work. Or something worse.

Big George may play the clown, but he knows upon which side his sourdough is buttered. The multi-millionaire former world heavyweight champion works for HBO television. Lewis, who was anointed by Foreman as the best heavyweight in the history of boxing after he had first hog-tied, then battered Mike Tyson to defeat, fights for HBO.

Not only were the clients hustled out of $54 (£37) for watching the sad but enthralling interment of the last vestiges of Tyson's once ferocious reputation, they were asked to swallow Foreman's assertion that Lewis had proved himself the all-time champion heavyweight. This meant that he was better than Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Joe Frazier, and Foreman himself.

That these claims were made in the wake of the Tyson demolition was particularly bizarre. What happened at The Pyramid here this weekend was not a great heavyweight collision. It was superb police work by Lewis. It was the equivalent not of Ali and Frazier's near-to-death struggle in Manila, Ali's defiance and defeat of Foreman in Zaire, Dempsey's despairing battle with Gene Tunney or Foreman's ransacking of Frazier, but of a nerveless cop going into a hostile bar and marching its most difficult customer off the premises. Lewis deserves much credit for what he did, and the tremendous technical ability he displayed while doing it, but lifting him above all other heavyweights because of his mastery of what was essentially a mismatch was grotesque in its flippancy.

Lewis, a former Olympic champion, dominant heavyweight of his era, is deserving of plenty of support when his achievements are measured against the very best. But Foreman cheapened both his sport and himself when he waded in with the hyperbole.

It was certainly refreshing when Lewis, even though assailed by the effects of a celebration party which went on well past sunrise on the Mississippi, displayed a much sounder grasp of what happened through all the days that preceded his entry into the ring against Tyson.

After Foreman's thunderous endorsement of his own gifts, the World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation champion offered his own top five. It read: 1 Ali; 2 Louis; 3 Foreman; 4 Johnson; 5 Frazier.

Said Lewis: "Ali had style and character and fabulous ability. He was bigger than boxing. He is still my idol. He brought me into the sport. The world was fascinated by the sheer charisma of the man. Joe Louis had the knack of instilling fear in his opponents. He came straight at you throwing big right hands. No one could withstand his power and shifts of movement. George Foreman had an unorthodox style and rode over opponents with his strength and determination and the weight of his punches. Jack Johnson was a big man with a sweet style. He went into the the ring always with the purpose of getting the best out of himself. He was called arrogant but it was just pride in himself. Joe Frazier was so fast and strong and brought such determination from the ghetto part of town."

It is perhaps not an encyclopaedic sweep of the qualities of the great heavyweights, but it does hint at something in Lewis that for many has been his most admirable trait, a view of boxing which has always been informed by a belief that at its best it is not only about the ragingly violent imperatives of the man he whipped so comprehensively here.

"I do have a rage to win," he insists, "but for me that should never replace the need to think deeply about what you're doing and trying to develop all your skills. Violence will always be a big part of boxing, but it has beauty too, I like to bring that out a bit. I've never wanted just to be known for a big punch. I want to show some style, and I suppose that makes me a disciple of Ali."

Not a bad one, either. When Lewis outboxed Evander Holyfield so brilliantly in Madison Square Garden three years ago his artistry was buried beneath the criticism that he had crucially failed to produce the necessary aggression when he appeared to have his opponent at his mercy in the fifth round. He was guilty of letting the decision rest with the judges when he could have delivered his own verdict. He could have pounded away at Holyfield.

"It's a lot easier to say that when you are outside the ring than in it," says Lewis. "Perhaps some of those critics missed the point that Holyfield can be most dangerous when he appears to be hurt. I didn't want to take the chance of being caught by one of those ambushes. I'd worked for a big part of my life to be in that position, dominating a fight for the undisputed world heavyweight championship. I wasn't just going to throw it away."

But then one man's calculated caution is another's sign of trepidation, and the second view is always going to work against Lewis when it comes to placing him in the league table of heavyweights. He is, it has been clear enough these last few days, acutely conscious that history might be as ungenerous to him as those judges in Madison Square Garden. On the morning after his chastisement of Tyson, and three months away from his 37th birthday, he returned to the question of the timing of his retirement.

He said: "Basically, I do believe it is definitely a good time for me to retire. I can see that. But preparing for Tyson was not the time to give it too much thought. I didn't have time for saying 'what if this', or 'what if that'. I have some more thinking to do.

"Nothing is going to happen in the next two weeks or so which can change anything. I'm still going to be the greatest boxer in the world for a little while. I know there could be no better time for me to go, after beating the man who had overshadowed me for so long without fighting real fights for 10 years. But then I also think: 'Maybe I don't need to go just yet. There is a lot of money to be earned out there while fighting people I know I can beat.' The good thing is that I'm now free to retire any time. Beating Tyson has given me that option."

What it has done for his historical ranking is of course another matter. Reality says it should not be too much. The judgement on Lewis has to take a broader sweep. It has to analyse his size and his skill and, not least, his confident willingness to fight any opponent. He has never ducked a challenge, and, as Foreman pointed out in one of his more coherent reflections, has ultimately beaten every professional he has fought, sweeping aside as he did Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman after initial defeats which came, no one can seriously dispute, from rare lapses of application on the road and in the gym.

When you take that broader view Lewis must inevitably march into the inner circle of great heavyweights, and when you take the further debatable step of speculating on how a midget like Jack Dempsey would have fared against the mountainous Foreman, or Lewis, surely the latest conqueror of Mike Tyson is getting very close to the mountain top. My own instinct is to place Lewis, not least for reasons of natural armoury, behind Ali, Louis and Johnson in a top 10 list which would be completed by Foreman, Frazier, Holyfield, Holmes, Dempsey and Tunney. Tyson, perennially troubled by big men, disqualifies himself. He never truly began to control and develop the fury which was never more than a forlorn eddy when it died under the weight of Lewis's conditioning and talent.

George Foreman thoughtlessly overstated the case for Lennox Lewis. But, when you think about it, perhaps not by as much as some would like to imagine.