Should I stay or should I go? Lewis' heavyweight dilemma

By James McDonnell

30.07 - A recent interview with Lennox Lewis had him once more entertaining the notion, however briefly of retiring from the sport. In an interview for the Daily Mail, Lewis gave the strongest intimation yet that he might hang up his gloves rather than fight Klitschko.

Strangely just when he is on the verge of what potentially could be as big an earner as his win over Mike Tyson, Lewis is thinking of hanging up his gloves for good, or is perhaps enjoying the clamour for him to fight again.

At this stage of his career, Lewis isn't fighting for money, but rather for pride, and he is only interested in fights that will enhance his reputation, and fortify his legacy. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Lewis is doing the boxing equivalent of fishing for compliments. Perhaps there is just an element of wanting the public to implore him to continue.

However at his age every fight is a risk, and it was universally accepted that Lewis had looked vulnerable and fallible at several points in his fight with limited but game and strong Vitali Klitschko. Whether you were one of those in the camp that said that Lewis would have stopped Klitchsko in the next couple of rounds, or those that say Lewis was ready to go, there was no question that Lewis looked old, tired and hurt at several points in the fight.

Lewis has always been a thoughtful and intelligent fighter, and outside the ring has managed his career very astutely indeed, not least of which was hiring the trainer of his conqueror Oliver McCall to guide him back to the heavyweight title, probably the most pivotal decision of his career. So it should only be expected that Lewis is thinking long and hard about the conclusion of his career.

Anyone who is ready to leap down Lewis throat as soon as he expresses his doubt about continuing should bear a few things in mind. For one, I think people forget sometimes just how unusual it is for a heavyweight of Lewis' age to still be competing at top flight. Lewis' safety-first approach to many of his fights has been heavily criticised throughout his career, despite having several devastating knockouts to his credit.

However, this approach is to my mind the only reason Lewis is able to compete at such a high level still. The two men most often cited as the greatest heavyweights of all time, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali, were shells of what they were at their peak by Lewis age. Joe Louis was mercilessly beaten by Rocky Marciano at this stage of his career, and Ali was just months away from taking a sustained and painful beating that sickened Larry Holmes and the boxing world alike.

Lewis has avoided taking heavy punishment throughout most of his career, his fight with Ray Mercer is the only fight which I would consider a war of attrition. Aside from his shaky showing against Klitchsko, Lewis really hasn't taken much punishment, rendering supposedly destructive opponents like David Tua so impotent that he hardly took a single heavy shot. Perversely, seeing Lewis taking his licks as well as dishing them out against Klitchsko, threatens to earn a career high purse for him.

Were it not for the enduring criticism he has endured from many quarters, and especially from the massed voices of a largely envious US boxing fanbase, I think he would have retired over his one-sided win over Mike Tyson. It was the most defining fight of his career, and the most crushing defeat of Tyson's career. It would have been the perfect moment to retire.

Just as Ali could and probably should have retired after he beat George Foreman, or possibly after his final win over Joe Frazier, so Lewis had his perfect moment to retire, still at the top of his game and with a win which for most people secured his legacy. Now, every fight he undertakes threatens to only undermine his legacy.

I don't think anyone can discount either, the fact that for the first time in his career he looked and felt truly fallible in the ring, as if certainly for the first 4 rounds, this fight may be beyond him. Not since Lewis was being soundly outpointed (before taking his opponent to pieces) by Frank Bruno as a young and relatively inexperienced pro, long before the world title fights, was Lewis ever behind at that stage of a fight.

Sure, he got blown away twice by McCall and then Rahman, but one was a fight where Lewis was still a little green and amateurish, and leading up to the latter lackadaisical in his approach and foolishly arrogant.

On both occasions, Lewis and those in the know (I'll give myself a pat on the back here) knew that Lewis would reverse those losses emphatically. It was a case of Lewis not displaying his full talents rather than being in against a better man, though one wonders what a fully prepared and drug-free McCall could have done in a rematch.

Now, displaying feet of clay, looking spent and vulnerable, and behind on points, Lewis has been forced to display the most popular attribute of any great champion, heart, to pull out a come from behind stoppage win. The unsatisfactory nature of the finish, allied with the prospect of a highly dramatic fight, has the public clamouring for one more last hurrah. Some might well be watching just to see Lewis potentially lose, but they are not in the majority.

But Lewis for his part in not yet certain whether he wishes to continue, the lessons of the past are surely on his mind when he looks back at what happened to Ali and Louis as a result of too many brutal bouts.

It's important to remember that at such an advanced age, and indeed throughout various points in their careers, Ali and Louis received what many considered soft fights, gift decisions, or lucky escapes. Ali had fights with varying amounts of controversy against Doug Jones, Ken Norton and Ernie Shavers, and his second reign was peppered with fights against the likes of Alfredo Evangalista, Richard Dunn, Jean-Pierre Coopman, as well as a further controversial win over Jimmy Young and not to mention losing his title to 7 fight novice Leon Spinks.

Louis' list of adversaries was so bad at times, that he dubbed it his 'bum of the month club.' Men like Tony Galento, considered great comedy value, but nothing approaching great fighters, even put Louis on the seat of his pants, and light heavyweight Billy Conn came within a rush of blood of beating Louis. Louis was also the recipient of a dubious decision over future champion Jersey Joe Walcott near the end of his reign as champion.

This is not to say that either of these men weren't great heavyweight champions, but rather illustrates that even the greatest champions have their share of off nights, gift decisions and easy rides.

I watched an old fight a couple of weeks ago shown on terrestrial TV, which I thought, was an interesting counterpoint to the Lewis v Klitchsko fight. It was the final fight of Floyd Patterson's career, when he took on Ali 7 years after their first contest. Ali was 31 at that point and Patterson 37, and it was a surprisingly competitive contest.

In fact, Patterson surprised everyone at ringside that night, in taking the fight to Ali and pressing the action all the way, perhaps trying to erase the memory of his terrible showing in his first fight against Ali. The fight was eventually stopped on cuts, after Patterson hade made Ali look like the listless old man that night. Leading on points, and still very much in the fight, he was forced to retire by the doctor at the end of the 8th round. Ali was beginning to come on strong in the final two rounds, but the fight certainly wasn't in the bag.

The cut Patterson sustained was far less severe than the jagged injury suffered by Klitschko, and Patterson was further ahead at the time of the stoppage, yet nobody booed Ali at the fight's conclusion, and this fight rarely gets mentioned at all, and neither do the many other nights on which he looked old and spent in his second reign as champion.

Perhaps over time, history will as kind to Lewis as it has been to Ali and Louis, who are revered despite their worst nights. Right now however, the clamour for him to fight Klitschko again, is as loud as the resounding boos which stung Lewis at the fight's conclusion , when their fight was quite rightly stopped.

Perhaps Louis and Ali are remembered so favourably because both men were seen as tough guys, men who were called upon could take punishment and come back to prevail. Whatever other qualities they might have possessed, flashing speed of hand or thought, ring generalship, a great chin, or devastating power, it was never in any doubt that beneath their chests beat the heart of true warriors. Their reigns were punctuated with life and death struggles, and they were tested to their limits in their greatest battles.

I think realistically Lewis knows that he should either face Klitschko or retire. To avoid him altogether, and take a fight with Jones would always leave a big question mark about his reign and his credentials as a future great. Personally I don't think Lewis needs to prove anything further at this stage, no matter how intriguing a rematch might be, it's a bridge I wouldn't insist he crossed, and I don't believe anyone else has any justification to either.

Unfairly, Lewis has always had his detractors who claimed he could not handle a dogfight. These are probably the same people who said he would lose to Tua, Grant, Briggs, Tyson, tick as appropriate. Finally, those people have gotten their wish, as they witnessed Lewis having to dig deeper than ever before to turn a fighting in which he was being outpointed on all cards prior to the stoppage.

Perhaps, despite protestations to the contrary, Lewis really does doubt whether re-dedicating himself to his training can reverse his decline evident in the first fight with Klitschko. Even if he can find the hunger, and that's a big if, will his 37-year-old body respond to the rigours of training as it once did, it's simply biology, and no amount of training can deny that. If Lewis is in irreversible physical decline, is there enough left of the fighter he once was to overcome Klitschko. Will Klitschko bolstered by the confidence from their first fight make an even harder night's work second time around?

There are so many imponderables to this fight, and self-assured as Lewis has always seemed, I find it impossible to believe that these same thoughts haven't crossed his mind. For all fighters the fear of failure is always there, and those fears are amplified when the fighting is done on the global scale that heavyweight title fights are. It's not cowardice to contemplate such things, only the foolhardy or plain stupid don't entertain them, but it takes a brave man to overcome them. Lewis has to entertain the notion of defeat at this final stage of his career, because it is a very real possibility that he is no longer in total control of his faculties as a fighter, the ravages of time are gnawing at his skills and physical attributes.

In addition Lewis knows that there is a contingent out there that will use a loss to Klitchsko as a stick with which to try and beat his legacy like a piñata. People who were claiming that Klitchsko was going to batter Lewis into submission in their first fight, will insist that Lewis should never have lost to him if he loses the rematch.

At the end of the day though, I think it's a fight that I think will happen, Lewis is a man who has thrived on challenges his whole career, and has answered his critics inside the ropes for approaching two decades, and has enjoyed proving his detractors wrong.

The risk doesn't outweigh the reward for Lewis, I don't think he can resist the chance to shut the gallery up one more time, and close out his career with one last big slap in the face for all of them.

Personally I think Lewis has earned his retirement if he wishes it so, and that he has done enough to secure his legacy as an all-time great champion. I don't think he can be criticised for choosing to retire at an age when every other dominant heavyweight champion in history was long past his best, but my instincts tell me that this is a fight he won't be able to turn down.