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

To: LPS5 who wrote (3210)	4/20/2001 4:32:15 PM
From: LPS5	Respond to of 10489

Rahman must stay on his feet April 19 2001 at 08:25PM by Gordon Prentice Carnival City is one of the bigger casinos in Gauteng and thus it is fitting that the stakes cannot get much higher for American challenger Hasim Rahman. By beating world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis he will walk away with the jackpot of jackpots. Lose and he will walk away empty-handed. Well, not quite - he will earn $2-million for his night's work but with a loss by stoppage and he will probably fade into obscurity like so many challengers before him. Not that the odds are insignificant for Lewis. He desperately needs a solid victory to keep up his quest for a meeting with Mike Tyson. Should he lose, there is an escape clause in that he will get a rematch against Rahman but no champion, be it from strawweight to heavyweight, likes to have egg plastered all over his face. Most boxing pundits have backed Lewis. From former fighters to commentators and other media men. It is hard to see Lewis losing against one of the lesser-ranked men in the heavyweight division. Promoter Rodney Berman has insisted that the Baltimore, Maryland-based fighter cannot be written off and that much is true. In the heavyweight division, a solitary punch can turn the championship and the rankings upside down. But for Rahman to win what used to be called the biggest prize in sport, he is going to have to get to Lewis early on the fight. It is his only hope. Rahman is going to get past Lewis's imperious jab, get on the inside of him and hurt with hooks downstairs and upstairs. It has been done before. Oliver McCall got it right in 1994 when he stopped Lewis inside two rounds. Ray Mercer and Shannon Briggs also came close to pulling off upsets. But since Lewis's demise against McCall, he has become a smarter fighter. He has since that defeat linked up with veteran Detroit-based trainer Emanuel Steward and the man who has become the Kronk Gym has honed his skills and improved his ring generalship to such a degree that Lewis, that the London-born champion has become the dominant fighter of his era thus far. Lewis, however, can be a slow starter and this makes him somewhat vulnerable in the opening few rounds. We witnessed this in the second fight with Evander Holyfield where Lewis was put to the sword in the third round. He can also start quickly as we witnessed with the crushing stoppages of Andrew Golota, Michael Grant and Francois Botha. The champion is something of a chameleon who will adapt his fight plan as he sees fit. One suspects that he will see what Rahman has to offer in the first round before any number of his fight plans into operation. Lewis can box and Lewis can fight. It all depends what is presented in front of him.