Boxing: Lewis still a worthy favourite to regain title

Former manager backs British heavyweight to erase memory of folly in South Africa and take revenge over Rahman in Las Vegas

The idea of Lennox Lewis as a gun-shy, hubris-riddled ingrate heading for an ignominious denouement in Las Vegas on Saturday night has been gaining ground quite rapidly in this land which not so long ago so intemperately celebrated the minor achievements of, for example, Frank Bruno and Naseem Hamed.

It is, when the full scale of his extraordinary career is considered, a travesty of fair assessment, and for this reason it is good to be able to report the agreement of a man with plenty of reasons to kick the remnants of Lewis's reputation into the dust.

His former manager, Frank Maloney, who is currently preparing a legal action which will demand proper compensation for the termination of his services, is the unlikely (given the ways of the rapaciously self-interested world of pugilism) supporter of Lewis's hopes of winning back his World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation heavyweight titles at the Mandalay Bay Resort. Says Maloney: "I have a problem with Lennox's organisation, and I'm disappointed about the way things have finished up between us, but no one should think I'm at war with him, or that I will do anything but cheer him on when he fights Hasim Rahman. I expect Lennox to win, and I hope he does because no one has done more for British boxing in all the time I've been in the game.

"I worked with him for 12 years and all that time he had this unswerving ambition to be Britain's first undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. He had all kinds of setbacks and frustrations, but he got there without ever ducking an opponent. You look around and see the praise that is heaped on some fighters, and the knocks received by Lewis, and you wonder what it's all about.

"Lennox had to fight the Bruno syndrome, all that adulation of a guy whose career was manufactured all the way to his title shots, and he had to pay for the fact that his mother took him to Canada when he was a schoolboy and that he won an Olympic gold medal for Canada. But that's in the past now, along with our association. The fact is that Lennox has the chance to win back a world title for a second time, and I think he will do it. I don't know if he will do it in style, or box cleverly and safely, but the fact is he is a good favourite.

"Our biggest point of contention was that he neglected to prepare properly for the first fight with Rahman in South Africa, but the truth is I was already on the way out. He has a new crowd around him, but as far I'm concerned that doesn't wipe out the past. I believe there is just a couple of fights out there for Lennox at 36, and I want him to win them. He deserves to go out on a high."

Lewis may be more grateful for such an endorsement now than at any other point in his career. The rush to bury him, especially in America where his willingness to fight all opponents did not prevent one Boston columnist writing that he had a broad yellow streak running down his back, has never been more apparent. There is no doubt that he has behaved badly in the matter of Maloney, but such break-ups in boxing are the norm rather than the exception and the disappointment in the case of Lewis and Maloney is that the relationship of the big and generally amiable son of the Caribbean and the intense little South Londoner was so long marked by a large measure of mutual loyalty.

Nothing, though, was more disappointing for admirers of Lewis than his untypical abandonment of professional values in the build-up to the fight in Johannesburg. They may draw some encouragement, however, from evidence that Lewis may finally have come to terms with the scale of his folly in South Africa. Last week he said: "It was difficult to persuade myself that the fight should be treated as life and death. If the England football team have to play Mexico, they are not going to be as up for it as they would be if they were taking on Germany. It's wrong but it's human nature. Naturally I'm properly focused this time. Athletes often become great by losing, then redeeming themselves. Redemption is a big element of greatness."

It is an argument that is bound to be resisted, and with special force by those who have always seen in Lewis's huge natural gifts the flaw of a suspect will. It is true that Lewis has always had difficulty with the idea that he should surrender his advantages and mix it with less talented but dangerous opponents, most notably the hard-punching but limited David Tua last November and Evander Holyfield in the fifth round of their first fight in 1999, when Lewis appeared to have his opponent at his mercy. Lewis argued, with some formidable evidence, that Holyfield was always most menacing when apparently in danger of going under at the ropes, and that, anyway, he was winning the fight as he pleased. That opinion was shattered when the judges, outrageously even in New York eyes long familiar with cynically adjudicated events at Madison Square Garden, scored a draw.

When he left the arena Lewis said: "I knew they would try do pull something, but nothing as bad as this." Now he fights to heal self-inflicted wounds. It is the crusade of an essentially good man who, no doubt, made a few mistakes on the way to a unique achievement in 20th century British sport. It means surely, as Frank Maloney has been decent enough to remind us, that cheering Lennox Lewis's redemption will be a challenge for only the meanest of spirits.