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Pastimes : Boxing: The Sweet Science -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LPS5 who wrote (3075)	4/16/2001 5:35:06 PM
From: LPS5	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10489

Uncertainty hangs over Lewis's greatness April 14 2001 at 04:25PM by Gordon Prentice Jeff Ryan is an amazing man. The Ring magazine columnist got it spot on when he summed up the career of Lennox Lewis, the current world heavyweight champion. "Urrgh, let me get back to you on that one," he wrote. Ryan might have been talking about the definitive moment of Lewis's career thus far - but he might just have well been talking about the state of the heavyweight division. It is hardly a picture painted by Michelangelo. The fact is, until Lewis meets the former undisputed heavyweight champion and now manic depressive Mike Tyson, the uncertainty over who rules the heavyweight domain will remain. Until then, the likes of Americans Hasim Rahman and Michael Grant, the Klitschko brothers - Wladimir and Vitaly - and another Ukrainian in Oleg Maskaev and, God forbid, Corrie Sanders will continue to think they actually have a say in the heavyweight division. From a purists viewpoint, today's so-called contenders should not be involved in what used to be called the greatest prize in sport. Unfortunately, the "juniors" of the heavyweight division are involved at present and they probably will be after both Lewis and Tyson are gone. What the fight public demand and deserve, is a fight between Lewis and Tyson. Nothing more, and nothing less, will quench the thirst of a public who have been deprived of serious heavyweight action since the glory days of the seventies. Can one seriously compare the heavyweights of today with Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Kenny Norton? Many purists agree that even those of the seventies who never made it to the top - huge men, and not necessarily in weight, like Earnie Shavers, George Chuvalo, Jerry Quarry and Jimmy Ellis - would wipe the floor with most of the heavyweight chumps who now masquerade as champs. Whether or not they would beat Lennox Lewis is another matter but the men of the seventies would sort out the boys of today. Perhaps even Tyson, who seems to have regressed from a juvenile delinquent to an infantile delinquent in recent years, can be included on that list. In South African terms, the Lennox Lewis-Hasim Rahman fight next Sunday is massive. It is, and could be for many years to come, the biggest fight in the history of the sport in this country. The promoters of this fight have been punting this bout as "the biggest in Africa's history." Of course it is not. Just ask Ali or Foreman. Their epic "Rumble in the Jungle" of 1974 is by far the biggest boxing event to be staged on this continent. On the world stage, the Lennox Lewis-Hasim Rahman fight is just another so-called world heavyweight title fight. Lewis is, naturally, billed as the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. He is the holder of the World Boxing Council, the International Boxing Federation and the International Boxing Organisation titles. But these are just three of the 12 so-called sanctioning bodies who believe they run world boxing. When Foreman defended the heavyweight title in Kinshasa, Zaire - now the Democratic Republic of Congo - in 1974 he was the undisputed champion as recognised by the WBC and the World Boxing Association. At that time, these organisations were THE authorities in boxing. Sadly, politics and childish in-fighting have led to a proliferation of so-called sanctioning bodies - better known now as the alphabet soup. There is nothing to suggest that a bout between Lewis and Tyson will change that. If the truth be known, it will not. The Ring have suggested dumping the alphabet soup and getting the world's best eight fighters to fight it out for the right to be called the "People's Champion." It has been tried before, but fighters pulled out because insufficient money was offered. It is a sad world. Unless you are a boxing promoter. Come to think of it, you might do just as well as the president/chairman of your own sanctioning body. It is easy enough -all you have to do is register your organisation as a company. We will sooner have world peace than one true heavyweight world champion. Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, could not sort out the mess that is world boxing. And neither could all the king's horses and all the king's men.