LAS VEGAS – The road back to respectability and recognition as the world heavyweight champion is an easy one in Lennox Lewis’ eyes. More attention to detail, a sharper focus, and a little more intensity. That’s all he says it will take to defeat Hasim “The Rock” Rahman Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Events Center and regain the WBC, IBF and IBO belts.
It also would help to stay away from Rahman’s right hand, the one that landed on Lewis’ chin last April in Johannesburg, South Africa. Ten seconds later in that fifth round, Rahman had knocked out the reigning champ, scoring one of the biggest upsets in boxing history.
If “underdog becomes champ” is one of boxing’s best stories, the worst parts of the sport soon followed as promoters squabbled over ownership of Rahman, lawsuits were filed like junk mail, and the fighters embarrassed themselves by showing more immaturity than manhood by brawling during a televised interview on ESPN.
Now with the inevitable rematch approaching, Lewis is confident that only a sharpening of his skills will be needed to win back the belts.
“We’re looking at putting a bit more intensity and focus into it,” said Lewis during a press conference yesterday. “And hopefully it will come out the way we hope.”
Lewis and his manager Emanuel Steward have pointed to other great champions like Muhammad Ali and Floyd Patterson, who regained their titles after stunning losses.
“These things happen,” Steward said. “Other fighters have gone through it where something has happened and the fighters come back and recovered their titles. Lennox is the more talented fighter and with more focus and intensity he should have a great victory.”
While it’s likely Lewis was as confident as Apollo Creed in Rocky I – even taping a movie while training – his ability to take a heavyweight punch was a question before his impressive fights against Evander Holyfield. The Rock’s landing of a virtual one-punch knockout has restored those questions about Lewis’ chin.
“I believe he thought he would win the fight,” Rahman said. “He may have been a bit overconfident, but I definitely think he trained. He set up camp very early. He got to South Africa and ran five miles in the altitude. He looked wonderful in sparring. All the reports said he was going to blow me out early. Then he gets knocked out and it’s, ‘He didn’t look good. He wasn’t taking the fight seriously,’ . . . I feel like I was going to knock him out whatever shape he was in and I’m going to substantiate that on Nov. 17.”
Lewis (38-2-1 with 29 KOs) hadn’t lost since ’94 when Oliver McCall knocked him out in London. Lewis won his WBC title back from McCall in ’97 and has held some version of the heavyweight title since. Rahman (35-2 with 29 KO’s) was a heavy underdog having lost to David Tua in ’98 and a mediocre Oleg Maskaev in ’99. But while Rahman arrived in South Africa two months before the fight, Lewis didn’t get to the 6,000-foot altitude until 10 days before the fight.
Steward insists Lewis was ready for the first fight, but simply got caught with a freak punch.
“We just accept this as part of boxing, particularly heavyweight boxing,” Steward said. “Here’s a guy (Lewis) who was winning every round and just got hit at a time when he was bouncing off the ropes, with his legs twisted up in a bad position. He saw it coming and tried to get his hands up, but his body was in such a bad position that the punch came right at the split second where it was most effective. We just have to deal with it, forget it happened. We are just fortunate enough that we were able to get a rematch.”
