A Jolly Good KO for Lewis : Boxing: After stopping Ruddock in the second round, British fighter is set for a shot at winner of Holyfield-Bowe bout.

A perfectly satisfactory description of Saturday night’s brief and brutal Lennox Lewis-Razor Ruddock heavyweight elimination could be found on any English luncheon menu. It was bangers and mash (sausages and potatoes), bubble and squeak (the sound made by the frying of leftover vegetables), over and out (no translation necessary).

The bangers turned out to be Lewis’ right hand, Ruddock was the mash and most of the bubbling and squeaking was done by the delirious, heavyweight-title-starved British fight fans and the American promoters who have a financial share in it all. It almost seemed as if Lewis had wiped out 93 years of English heavyweight futility in 3 minutes 46 seconds of boxing.

“Honestly, I never saw anything in Lennox Lewis that said he could beat Razor Ruddock,” said Murad Muhammad, Ruddock’s promoter. “Tonight he looks like a world champion.”

The 8,000 or so at Earl’s Court sounded as if they agreed. They came to witness what they hoped would be the beginning of the changing of the guard in the heavyweight division, and they saw Lewis knock Ruddock to the canvas three times in the final 55 seconds of the bout. Lewis (22-0, 19 KOs) essentially won the fight with one perfect right-hand counter calmly delivered with eight seconds to go in the first round. The punch, which caught Ruddock on the temple after Ruddock missed a wild left, dropped Ruddock for a nine-count.

“I just got caught cold,” Ruddock said. “I’ve been knocking out a lot of people and this is the way it feels on the other side of the coin.”

Ruddock (27-4-1, 20 knockouts) never recovered from the punch. He was battered between his upraised gloves for two more knockdowns, the second of which convinced referee Joe Cortez to stop the fight without a count after 46 seconds of the second round. “When I hit people with my right hand, they don’t often get up,” said Lewis, a 6-foot-5, 227 1/2-pounder who was not previously known as a puncher despite his knockout percentage. “I hit him pretty solid.”

Lewis, who stopped Riddick Bowe to win the super-heavyweight gold medal in the 1988 Olympics, now is signed to fight in the spring against the winner of the Nov. 13 Evander Holyfield-Bowe heavyweight title fight at Las Vegas.

“It doesn’t matter to me who wins,” said Lewis, 27. “But I would like to be the first man to beat Evander Holyfield.”

Publicly, Dan Duva, who promotes Holyfield, expressed no trepidation about having Holyfield meet Lewis. But another member of the Duva camp said: “Why should we care? We got three options on (Lewis) now, too.”

For one night at least, Lewis looked like the future of the division despite having to overcome his homeland’s dismal past. Since England’s Bob Fitzsimmons lost the title to James J. Jeffries in 1899, Great Britain has become known derisively as the Land of the Horizontal Heavyweights, boasting such celebrated failures as Phainting Phil Scott, Henry Cooper, Joe Bugner and Frank Bruno.

Not only did Lewis keep alive the title hopes of a nation, he also bailed out the London bookmakers, who stood to lose a whopping 5 million pounds had Ruddock won. Although Ruddock was a 2-1 favorite most of the week, British bettors pounded the odds down to 6-5 by fight time.

“I said before the fight there were a lot of unanswered questions about me,” Lewis said. “I think I answered some of them tonight.”