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JUNE 2000
Each month we bring you a selection of articles from the current and past issues of BOXING MONTHLY. To buy the magazine, see our subscription or back issues pages, or use our world distribution map to find a news-stand copy. Why not use our Interactive Forum to express your own boxing comments and opinions!
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AMATEUR HOUR?
Only in America. Somehow Grant’s inept challenge has reflected badly on Lewis, who, like it or not, proved himself to be No. 1. STEVE FARHOOD reports from MSG |
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KAMIKAZE CONTENDER: Grant's tactics amounted to 'Head down, flail away' - soon the champ would decide an uppercut might be in order
- Get Big Pic From the Great John L. to Iron Mike and President Ike,
heavyweights have befuddled us. Their rhythms are random, their psyches fragile,
their needs and insecurities unique. Sometimes they infuriate us, other times
they wow us. But most times they leave us muttering: "Go figure." From a psychological perspective, Michael Grant seemed to make
the quantum leap from athlete to fighter last November, when he rose from two
knockdowns to stop Andrew Golota. The body-beautiful’s game was still
occasionally ugly, but among boxing’s big men, championship heart and a strong
right-hand wallop can compensate for technical flaws. That’s why Grant was
31-0 and ranked as the leading available contender by the unindicted few. Lennox Lewis was not as easily impressed. Analysing Grant with
the eye of a chess player, the undisputed (alphabets be damned!) heavyweight
champion sat ringside at the Golota fight and declared: "He’s next."
This is why it’s good to be king: The title fight was made more easily than
most, and after five minutes and 53 seconds of one-sided action at Madison
Square Garden, during which Grant fought like a Golden Glover making his
sub-novice debut, the still-champion nodded knowingly. He had gone and figured exactly right. What the cognoscenti figured was that a long fight favoured
Grant. In almost every one of the 27-year-old challenger’s major bouts, he had
rallied in the deep stretch, when most oversized heavyweights are sucking oxygen
and squinting for the finish line. For a heavily muscled fighter, Grant was
remarkably relaxed in the ring, and his superior stamina had surfaced in wins
over Al Cole (KO10), Obed Sullivan (KO9), Ahmad Abdin (KO10), Lou Savarese
(W10), and Golota (KO10). Asked for a prediction before the Lewis fight, Grant
smiled. "I don’t make predictions," he said. "But the 10th
round has been awful good to me." So why did he fight as if needing a knockout in the first 10
seconds? Grant’s decision to bum-rush Lewis and bowl him over was
strategic suicide. What in Lewis’s history suggested he might be vulnerable to
such unsophisticated tactics? More pointedly, Grant might not have been capable
of fighting any other way. When 17,324 fans fill boxing’s most famous arena .
. . and Michael Buffer roars "Let’s get ready to rum-buuuuul!" . . .
and Boyz II Men takes forever to sing the National Anthem . . . and the eyes of
the world burn right through you on step one of your ring walk . . . Well, the
moment has been known to swallow a man whole. Even a man who stands 6ft 7ins and scales 250lbs. From the initial press conference, through public workouts and
conference calls, to the endless fight-week festivities, including the final
press gathering and the weigh-in, Grant seemed self-assured. But as the opening
bell grew closer, a transformation took place. Boxing writer Thomas Hauser, who spent the entire day of the
fight with Grant for houseofboxing.com, described the dressing-room atmosphere. "It seemed Michael was not emotionally ready to go into
the ring," Hauser told me. "I didn’t sense any of the energy that
was going to be necessary for him to do what he had to do. The locker room was
eerily quiet. You don’t have to scream and yell and have loud music playing
that gives everyone a headache, but there were about a dozen people in the room
and this was too calm. "Someone in that position might fight a very passive
fight. Michael didn’t do that. He came out aggressively, which was the plan.
But he broke down in terms of his technique. Why? I don’t know. The only thing
I can tell you is Michael’s first fight in Madison Square Garden was against
Olian Alexander [in 1996], and he looked terrible. Afterward, he said fighting
in the big arena had gotten to him." Wrote Hauser on the website: "As Grant began to loosen
up, for the first time since he’d entered the room, his face seemed to
transform into the face of a fighter. His eyes grew more focused, angry, and
intense. "Then the look receded." The solemnity of Grant and his cornerman-trainer Don Turner,
who’s always ready with a chuckle, resembled a pallbearer-contrasted sharply
with the opposite corner. Upon climbing through the ropes, Lewis began dancing
to his ring-walk music, the theme from "The Good, The Bad, And The
Ugly". (Naz has nothing to worry about.) The chilling stare-down was
available when called upon, but he seemed in no hurry to intimidate. Maybe he
was just relieved to be matched with someone other than Evander Holyfield. The contrast was not lost on Lewis’s trainer, Emanuel
Steward. "When we were in the dressing rooms and they put the TV camera on
Grant’s side," Steward said, "they looked so serious. And when they
came into the ring, Don Turner’s eyes were 100% on Lennox Ñ in fear. It was
an amazing transformation from what we had seen at the press conference only
three days before." Go figure. Actually, it wasn’t hard to figure at all Ñ but
only in hindsight. At the bell, Grant, 250lbs (17st 12lbs), from Norristown,
Pennsylvania, shot from his corner as Marvin Hagler had against Thomas Hearns.
But his timing and balance were dreadful Ñ he reached for Lewis, overextending
his punches Ñ and the threat of a nuclear shootout dissipated within seconds. "I was shocked and very surprised when he came at
me," said Lewis, 247lbs, introduced as from East London, England.
"Most of the time I could see it when he was winding up. I just held my
position so I could get a good shot." Grant did manage to connect with a hook-right combination,
cutting Lewis’s bottom lip. But his next two blows were wild misses. Quickly
settling into counterpunching mode, Lewis looked to answer with straight rights.
But as Grant stumbled forward, he repeatedly dropped his head. Calling on the
experience that his opponent lacked, Lewis adjusted splendidly, coming under,
instead of over, with his right. His first uppercut set up an overhand right
that caught the challenger high on the head. Only 85 seconds in, Grant was
stretched on the canvas. "It was stupidity on my part," Grant said.
"Lennox is a smart guy. He dropped his hands and said: ÔCome on. Come
after my head right now.’ It was a smart move because I was trying to take his
head off. I came after him and he took a half a step back and he did what he
did. "I just got caught with a shot, one of those equilibrium
shots, and it stunned me for the rest of the knockdowns he had." There would be a quartet of knockdowns in all, and the second
and fourth were the products of illegal blows. Knockdown number two came after
referee Arthur Mercante Jr. (USA) ordered the fighters to break. Lewis landed a
right and Grant fell into the ropes, prompting a count. With 12 seconds remaining, Lewis, 36-1-1 (28 KOs), hammered
Grant, 31-1 (22 KOs), with a thunderous overhand right. The challenger’s right
leg folded awkwardly, and not a soul in the building thought he was going to
pick himself up. But with the help of the ropes, he did just that. The bell rang
before Lewis could administer further torture. "I was surprised that his
corner actually sent him out for the second round," said Lewis. In his dressing room instructions, Mercante, who was miked,
had told Lewis: "There’s only one thing I want to say: Try not to pull
his head into you." But with Grant bending over in the clinches, Lewis
couldn’t help himself. After ducking under Grant’s desperate power shots
earlier in the second, the champion braced Grant’s neck with his left forearm
and drove a savage uppercut into his chin. Boom! Grant’s head bounced off the
canvas, and while Mercante counted, he never tolled the fateful 10. There was no
need. Perhaps the instruction to protect yourself at all times
supersedes the rule about holding and hitting. Whatever the case, Team Grant
elected not to make an issue of the infractions, and we were spared another
post-fight controversy. The time of the KO was two minutes, 53 seconds of round two.
The judges were Melvina Lathan (USA), Steve Weisfeld (USA), and Anek Hongtongkam
(Thailand). Interestingly, all four officials were chosen by the New York State
Athletic Commission, without input from the sanctioning bodies (the IBF and WBC).
In the immediate past, the alphabets had selected two of the four officials. For the umpteenth time, Lewis benefited from an opponent’s
meltdown. (Is there some sort of Jamaican voodoo at work here?) But unlike his
eyesore fights with Henry Akinwande and Oliver McCall, the champion capitalised
in emphatic fashion, featuring the type of power surge the public thirsts for.
That Lewis is the best heavyweight in the world is no longer an issue. But given
the 24 largely unsatisfying rounds vs. Holyfield, the timing of this blowout was
essential. As a pay-per-view attraction, Lewis is marginal, and another backward
step would have been devastating. (As it was, Lewis-Grant brought only 350,000
PPV buys, a disappointing figure given the stakes of the bout and the perceived
quality of the challenger.) Still, it’s Lewis’s lot that he’s never to receive full
credit, at least on this side of the drink. After describing Grant as "an
amateur", New York Post columnist Wally Matthews wrote: "But in the
process, [Lewis] showed once again that he is only a somewhat more advanced
amateur, a tremendously powerful one to be sure, but an amateur just the same.
Lewis’s first effort as undisputed heavyweight champion was exciting, but
unscientific and even unprofessional." Go figure. Regardless, don’t expect ringing applause when Lewis rejects
the challenges of the most deserving contender, David Tua (too short), and the
most marketable, Mike Tyson (washed-up). In the meantime comes a well-deserved
gimme against the earnest Frans Botha on 15 July in London. If Lewis can’t win, he might as well lay back and enjoy the
victories. At age 34, he figures to reign as long as he pleases Ñ which in
heavyweight-speak means he’ll probably lose to Botha. Befuddle on, boys, befuddle on. |
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