He's far more popular in retrospect than he was at the time. I was 11 when Bruno fought Lewis and some of the coverage was pretty damn anti-Lewis. Some of the more undignified elements were calling Lewis a traitor for representing Canada, and Bruno had that affable persona that the dumb Brits lapped up (whilst ridiculing him on the sly), whereas Lewis - like Nick Faldo or Steve Davis or Graham Gooch - had stone cold winner type mentalities that the public in their infinite stupidity didn't warm to. That's basically the history of it. The country only fully warmed to him when he paggered Mike Tyson
Was popular just took a while.more popular than AJ .I don't know any one regardless of race who thinks much of him .Seems to be a media creation. People see through it
I think the big turning point for his popularity was the Holyfield fight. He might not have been particularly charismatic but everyone knew that was a stone cold robbery which he didn't deserve.
The build up to that fight was ugly but because Lennox was the sky fighter he was getting the exposure , Lennox called frank an Uncle Tom and sell out and throughout and behind the scenes wasn’t particularly a nice person . It was so personal lennox’s half brother Dennis’ Dad was actually in Bruno’s corner . I think his aloofness , the fact at the time he seemed as British as zola budd made him not an easy sell despite his boxing ability
Think he just had a personality people couldn,t really take to tbh. Not much more complicated than that. The bruno fight never really done him many favours either....bruno wasn,t far away from being a national treasure. Lewis upset him in the build up then paggered him in the fight itself. Hardly endearing to the british fans who had bruno as the peoples champion. Tbf to lewis he forced his way to popularity by being great. That and probably just got sold better from better promotion as his career continued.
Tyson's fans were louder and more obvious. A lot of them were wannabe gangster types, not all but many of them.
Spot on. Plus Lewis had the aura of a winner which back then was still strangely repellent to the British public. They cherished a plucky loser in just about every sport.
Good accurate post. Do you remember Lewis snarling in to the tv camera before the mason fight .? Lol it really wasn’t his style, cringe. It took years for people to like Lewis, an imo it was to do with his skills more than his personality, the opposite was thought of Big Frank, he was loved by every British household the length of the country win lose or draw
Nah the brits just showed more compassion to a loser imo...Lewis flew the flag for Canada at the olympics, had a Canadian accent and no personality to boot, what country apart from Canada would welcome him with open arms ???? That’s one hard sell mate
The only thing British about him was maloney an them raving Union Jack suits lol And Pepe Correa shouting “ he is British, an he is bad !”
Tyson almost closed down airports when he came to the uk, Lennox couldn’t close a bus stop bless him.
I was a fan of Lennox back in the day, I appreciated his quiet confidence and I could see he was the real deal, he came back very well from that first defeat as well. I did find myself rooting for other fighters when he fought them though, such as Bruno and Tyson. I was gutted for frank because he did so well, as for Tyson it was clear he had no chance, but still hoped for that one punch. Lennox had a clinical way of showing how good he was, difficult not to respect that. Guess he was a bit of a nowhere man in terms of his fan base, he kind of admitted that himself. I always felt the UK thing seemed pushed on him a bit, he didn’t seem completely into it to me.
