MEMPHIS – There’s clearly a difference in the atmosphere when Mike Tyson enters a room as opposed to Lennox Lewis. When Lewis weighed in at 249 1/4 pounds in the early afternoon it was absent of the tension and edginess that filled the Cook Convention Center when Mike Tyson tipped the scales three hours later at 234 ½ pounds.
Perhaps it was symbolic that Team Lewis arrived in a fleet of white SUVs, while Team Tyson traveled in a caravan of either black or dark blue. The themes of Good vs. Evil, Right vs. Wrong, Politically Correct vs. Criminally Prone continue to fuel the promotion. You could feel it at the weigh-in.
Lewis, wearing gray boxer shorts, smiled and pointed his index fingers in the air to proclaim himself No. 1. Tyson, clad in white trunks, scowled and chewed gum like it was a tough streak. While Lewis was calm, Tyson was fidgety, either shadow boxing or running in place.
“I’m just ready to get it on and crush this guy’s skull and show who the real World Champion is, the best fighter in the era,” Tyson said.
Otherwise, there were no incidents, no vulgarities, nothing out of the ordinary, which is just the way Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton hopes things go tomorrow night when Lewis and Tyson meet for the WBC and IBF heavyweight titles.
It’s Herenton who made this fight possible for this city when other sites either shied away because of a lack of financing or Tyson’s volatile behavior. An amateur boxer in his youth and a fight fan who was in Madison Square Garden for Lewis-Holyfield I, Herenton says he’s not, “intimidated,” by the sport’s dark side.
“It’s always been my belief that this fight is bigger than Mike Tyson,” Herenton said yesterday. “I never get caught up in talking about Mike Tyson. For all those people that want to make moral judgments, we have religious institutions and legal systems that do that. That’s not my business. I’m in the business of promoting and marketing my city and this fight will do that.”
So far, so good, but no one is about to exhale until the final bell sounds. With no more public appearances scheduled, the long-awaited and sometimes doomed fight is looking like it will happen in a setting few would have considered last summer. Playing host to this fight is a coup for Memphis, a city that has longed to be taken seriously.
A beautiful minor league ballpark has revitalized the downtown area and the arrival of Jerry West as the new boss of the NBA Memphis Grizzlies has given this southern city more to be proud of than barbecue, Beale Street and Graceland. With the third-largest gaming area developing in nearby Tunica, Miss., Memphis is hoping a successful Lewis-Tyson promotion will lead to other major bouts.
“A lot of people feel there’s a lot of risk in hosting this event given some of the personalities involved,” Herenton said. “But we think it’s a great opportunity for us to demonstrate we have the ability to host a significant sporting event. I think many of the cities that were critical of the fight, in the aftermath are jealous of Memphis. I think they wish they’d had taken the risk.”
Of course, that depends on how things turn out tomorrow night. A large security presence, involving local, state and federal agencies, will surround the Pyramid inside and out. What they can’t control is what happens between the two fighters inside the ring. Tyson appears ready to fight with gloves only. “I just pray [Lewis] doesn’t die from a heart attack,” before the fight, Tyson said in a brief television interview.
So does Herenton.
