If this marked the end of the road for boxing as a big-time global sport — and it just might — then the devilish old game went down in a blaze of something remarkably close to glory. As did its most devilish son. The morality tale took its course. Lennox Lewis, polite society’s instrument of vengeance, savaged Mike Tyson in an awesome, breathtaking fight last Saturday night to retain the world heavyweight championship as determined by pretty much anyone who cares or matters.
It took two to make it awesome. Almost any other person would have crumpled in minutes against the ferocity of Lewis’s assault, and it would have been remembered merely as a mismatch. Tyson stood there and took it. It was the eighth round before Lewis finally unleashed connecting punches number 191, 192 and 193 — according to the official stats — and the cumulative charges of dynamite did their work.
Tyson lay on the canvas, shielding his face with his glove while blood gushed from at least three openings, and his cornerman started to hug him like a baby. And then, somehow, he rose. Suddenly he was no longer Tyson the Terrible. He was just a pantomime villain leaping out of character at the end of the show to reassure the children, beg their forgiveness and join in the closing singsong.
Compared with Lewis’s 193 punches, Tyson landed 49. The shrewdies were proved right. The great boxer of the 1980s died in jail a decade ago, if not before, a fact successfully concealed by the various hiatuses and horrors of his career.
Against an opponent as skilled and strong and relentless as Lewis, he had nothing to offer. And he knew it. Tyson did all his fighting at the press conference in New York months ago. He may still be a threat in taxis, hotel rooms and other confined spaces, but this marks the end of Tyson as a serious sportsman. From here there is only retirement or descent into some kind of novelty act: the World Wrestling Federation will probably be on the phone.
Those who depend on boxing were desperate afterwards to talk up Lewis. ”There’s never been a heavyweight this good,” insisted George Foreman. ”Never.” Oh, come off it. The horrible truth is that this was a bonanza for everyone in the fight game, and nobody can envisage the next one. Lewis has never been much of a box-office name, but the rest of the heavyweight division would get few takers if the fights were broadcast even on we’ll-pay-you-to-view.
And so boxing may have to turn away from the wider public and talk to itself for some time. But the memory of this night may be remarkably sustaining. Here was evidence that boxing does not have to be a sham or a farce. Tyson’s last stand went on seemingly forever. By the seventh round both of his eyes were slits and he resembled some ancient statue of Buddha. Still he stood there, an improbable role model for non- violent resistance.
This was Lewis’s night and, as everyone can now see, it was always going to be. But in a curious way he was not the hero. The hero was that strange and ignoble man who has raged against the dying of the light longer and louder than anyone in sporting history.