The big interview: Lennox Lewis

great interview

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article3295356.ece

Then the rumours began to circulate: Lewis is back in the gym, he’s planning to come back, he needs the money, the heavyweight division is nothing and he believes he can clean up. For the first time Lewis is keen to address these issues in detail, so that he can put them to bed for good.

“Yes, I did consider making a comeback,” he reveals, despite issuing a denial last year. “I thought about it whenever I watched the other heavyweights out there, but I talked myself out of it almost in the same breath. ‘Do I really need to do it? I’ve accomplished all that I need to accomplish, so I don’t need to do this again.’ Some people said I should have fought Klitschko again, but what for? I beat him and there will always be somebody out there, someone else to fight, but I’ve created a legacy, so why put it all at risk? I’m one of only three heavyweights ever to retire on top [Gene Tunney and Rocky Marciano also retired as reigning heavyweight champions] and that’s important to me. That’s history.

“Every time I trained it seemed like I was training for a fight, so I needed to get that out of my head. I had to realise that I was doing this to stay in shape and not to fight. At one point I stopped training altogether, then I went back to the gym and most of my training was fight training. But I figured soon enough that I didn’t need to train like a boxer any more. I could play tennis and I could learn to play golf and other sports just to stay in shape and this is what I’ve been doing. The rumours of money problems aren’t true. I had a problem with my old promoter [Panos Eliades] and that was solved. There were other situations where people were trying to cause problems but they were caught. Another rumour that [former business manager] Adrian Ogun ran away with my money isn’t true.

“My money went straight into the bank and it’s not like he could just go into the bank and get his hands on it. I never allowed that and I always aimed to avoid the same fate as Joe Louis, who was the classic rise-to-the-top, fall-to-the-bottom fighter. He ended up with no money, owing the IRS (Inland Revenue Service) more money than he could ever have paid them back. I protected myself and at this point that could never happen to me.”

Just a mile away the people are gathering at the big top. “Champions are like volcanoes. They erupt every once in a while,” Lewis says, smiling. “We are just waiting for the eruption of the next great heavyweight.” From the lips of the last great heavyweight, this is an encouraging prediction but he, too, is off to see the circus and soon they will send in the clowns.



about Tyson: Lewis’s understated dignity is in sharp contrast to the menace that his former foe still effortlessly exudes. But Tyson is bankrupt and apparently lost, drifting from place to place like a nomad, so that Lewis feels sympathy for his predicament.

“You can’t help but sympathise. I mean, when you look at his life you really wouldn’t want your life to be like that, never,” he admits. “But a lot of it he’s brought upon himself. People took advantage of him and they may have affected the outcome but there’s a part of you that has to self-teach. Once you know right from wrong you have to build on that and you have to take responsibility. He got seduced in the old-fashioned way when people threw money in his face and told him that he could have it here and now. ‘I can get a car,’ he thought. ‘Hey, yeah, I can get a fleet of cars and girls, too. This is great.’

“He got caught up in that. With me, my attitude was that all of the rewards were still going to be here once I’d accomplished my goals in the boxing ring. I faced the same pressures, the same temptations that Tyson did, but the difference was in my upbringing, the fact that I had a mother in my life and that I was afraid to upset her. I didn’t want to mess up at school, knowing that I would have to go home to face her. I even chose the strap once at school after getting into a fight with another kid, rather than have the principal call home to tell my mother – of course, he told her anyway and she shouted at me a lot.

“Tyson never had that strong mother figure and when the person who cared for him [Cus D’Amato, Tyson’s former trainer and guardian] died, the man who stepped in to rescue him [promoter Don King] had fuzzy hair and his own agenda. Tyson was in trouble from that point. I heard that he’s looking like a bit of lumpy custard, is that true?”

“He is looking old and podgy,” I tell him. “But his life was always going to end in a bad way.”

“Actually, Tyson, for me . . . how I knew him . . . I don’t know him as he’s been portrayed,” Lewis asserts. “I know him as a nice person, humble and polite with good manners, that’s how I know him. But when you put gloves on him and he’s across the ring and comes at you like a madman . . . later on I got to understand why: he was afraid of the other guy.”