When one of the best heavyweight champions in history retired in 2004, not many noticed; even fewer thought it a milestone to be celebrated; and no one seemed very emotional about the end of Lennox Lewis? fourteen-year professional career during which he lost only twice, reversed both setbacks, and dominated the big men?s division for several years. Saying farewell when he did, Lewis thus became only the third heavyweight champion to leave with his title. Gene Tunney, during the Coolidge administration, was the first. Rocky Marciano had been the last. Both were justifiably praised not merely for being undefeated champions but as shrewd gentlemen who departed before they had to be carried out of the ring. Lewis, by contrast, was dismissed by many as a minor heavyweight champion who failed to thrill the masses. Even Lewis? sometime trainer, Emanuel Steward, publicly complained before big fights that his winning by decision or unexciting knockout wouldn?t be good enough.
Of course it wouldn?t. What boxing fans really want is to watch one man destroy another or, even better, two men demolishing each other. Brace yourself and look at Muhammad Ali, the ultimate warrior and once incomparable talker. He can?t really speak anymore. But that?s okay. He and Joe Frazier gave us the Fight of the Century, an astonishing display of power and brutality. And they tripled that violence in the Thriller in Manila, the greatest prize fight ever. Muhammad Ali, the Louisville Lip, the king of glib, the charismatic young Cassius, can?t take care of himself anymore. And before the third Frazier fight, he?d beaten big George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle and won his title back. He should have quit then. Instead, he fought Kenny Norton a third time, and Norton continued to pound Ali as he had in their first two fights. Then Ali ate numerous right hand bombs from powerful Earnie Shavers. Later in his heroic charge into invalidism, Ali, in a strategic sense, gave away his title by leaning back on the ropes and letting an overmatched Leon Spinks flail him for fifteen rounds. Then he won the title back again ? his third ? and should have stepped (by then rather feebly) away. But he preferred to go out on his shield, and he did. Larry Holmes carved him up. In boxing, the more extreme the suffering, the greater is the celebration of the hero.
Lennox Lewis never wanted to be a hero badly enough to completely sacrifice his body. He wasn?t going to be bloody meat for the salivating spectators at the Coliseum. Instead, he was going to win fights scientifically, using his 6-foot-5-inch frame and enormous reach to pound people from afar with jabs and overhand rights. He was going to beat them like a superpower beats people with bombs and missiles. As safe and far away as possible, that?s what he wanted. But in boxing that?s not sufficiently dramatic. So after beating Vitali Klitschko, the skillful young giant from Ukraine, Lennox Lewis, one of the best who ever entered a ring, walked away, rich and healthy. But, according to many of those beer-swilling studs at ringside, what Lewis achieved was ultimately pretty damn disappointing.
