15 years ago today in Memphis, a must-see heavyweight collision took place, and going in nobody really knew what to expect. What we did see when a still-in-his-prime Lennox Lewis met former champ Mike Tyson was the utter annihilation of a once great fighter; in many ways a spectacle that was equally as sad to see as Rocky Marciano’s retirement of the one great Joe Louis.
Only Tyson never retired after Lewis butchered him to his own eighth round defeat. The two men may not have been that different in age – Tyson being 35, Lewis being a year older – but the two superstar heavyweights were worlds apart in terms of how much they had left in the tank. As it turned out, Tyson showed the millions of fans watching (The fight of June 8 2002 remains the biggest pay-per-view heavyweight fight in history) that he had next to nothing left; at least compared to the ferocious fighter he had been 14 years ago.
Tyson-Lewis almost never happened; “Iron Mike’s” career, and life, being a veritable car crash at the time. The two heavies, who had sparred once as young men, got into a nasty skirmish in January of that year when, at a presser to announce the fight, Tyson slung some punches at a Lewis bodyguard as the two were supposed to meet head to head on a podium in New York. Tyson then allegedly bit Lewis on the leg during the ensuing brawl. Tyson, basically going nuts, was later refused a license just about everywhere – apart from Memphis. The fight was back on.
After a bright start, Tyson winning the opening round, the one-time “Baddest Man on The Planet” faded, then took a beating, then took a compete hammering. Cut above both eyes, outboxed, out-punched and out-muscled, Tyson was no match for Lewis. Finally laid out, flat on his back in the 8th, Tyson looked like a finished, never to fight again former champ.
There was brief talk of a rematch, Tyson, incredibly asking his conqueror for “the chance to fight him one more time.” Thankfully the repeat beating Tyson would have received, for nothing but another pile of cash needed to settle his vast financial troubles, never happened.
What we saw 15 years ago today should have signalled the end of Tyson’s electrifying, fascinating, at times shocking and controversial career, but it didn’t. Tyson fought on, managing one win and then being KO’d a further two times by fighters who today readily admit they would not have stood a chance with the peak version of the fighter they climbed into the ring with.
Lewis didn’t have too much left to offer either, as it turned out. Escaping a humbling loss to Vitali Klitschko in his career finale a year after he’d punished Tyson, Lewis barely made it through the battle; aided to victory as he was by the horrific cuts Klitschko suffered. To this day fans argue how Lewis should have granted Klitschko a rematch, and they also debate what would have happened if the cuts Klitschko’s face was torn by had not been opened.
But the fight that took place today in 2002 left no doubt. What was looked at by many as a dangerous fight for both men going in turned out to be a gross mismatch.