Hail, Her Majesty’s Champion

Remember when everyone could identify boxing’s heavyweight champion? He was Joe or Jack or John L. or Rocky, even Muhammad, and his picture was on cereal boxes and he stopped traffic wherever he went. They made a movie about his life.

Now, it surprises you to know people named Tim Witherspoon, Michael Dokes, Mike Weaver, Pinklon Thomas and even Gerrie Coetzee were heavyweight champions. Surely you remember Pinklon Thomas? No? Well, then, Tony Tubbs?

Not a Manassa Mauler or Brown Bomber or Gentleman Jim in the bunch. You think anyone is going to make a movie of Michael Dokes’ life? If Pinklon Thomas goes into a bar and says he was once the heavyweight champion of the world and can lick anyone in the house, do you think anyone will be impressed? Even believe? They will faint with laughter.

In the minds of many, the heavyweight champion of all the world is in an Indianapolis slammer. Mike Tyson made a big mistake in his life. He went from No. 1 to No. 92235. He went from Iron Mike to iron bars.

And, the heavyweight champion of the world (one of them, anyway) came through here this week. He is--a little chorus of “Rule, Britannia,” maestro!--Lennox Lewis. He is, God save our gracious Queen, a Brit, the first such to rule the heavyweight game since 1896.

Lewis seems a nice-enough young man, pleasant, soft-spoken.

But can he fight? Better yet, can he take it, as the fight mob likes to refer to a penchant for public suffering?

Merrie Olde England hasn’t had too much success in the 20th Century in the prize ring. A prototype of their breed, Don Cockell, once engaged to fight Rocky Marciano and, when Cockell’s manager objected to a smaller ring and wanted the king-size, 20-footer, the columnist, Bugs Baer, wondered in print “Why? His man’s not that tall.”

It would be nice to have a champion named Lewis again, however it is spelled. I am not sure what he’s champion of. Great Britain, for sure. He comes from there. Canada, probably. He was raised there from the age of 12.

He is champion, presumably, wherever Riddick Bowe isn’t.

He didn’t win the championship in the ring, he won it by mail. That happens with considerable frequency these days, where offshore islands’ boxing commissioners have boxes full of titles they will issue on demand for a fee for television to have a “title” fight. Being a champion today is a little like being a Kentucky colonel or a member of the Book of the Month club. A not terribly exclusive fraternity.

Lennox Lewis is fighting a contender named Tony (TNT) Tucker, who was himself champion for about an hour-and-a-half in June of 1987. I would like to be able to explain to you how that came about, but I don’t think it’s explainable. It would make “Alice In Wonderland” look comprehensible by comparison. Suffice it to say, no one took it seriously.

He figures to test Sir Lennox, who, after all, has not yet been hit “upside the haid,” as one of Tony Tucker’s handlers inelegantly put it at a news conference Wednesday. Even for boxing, Tucker is a strange character. He has lost only one fight--and that by decision to Mike Tyson, which is, in its own way, almost a moral victory. A hungry gorilla would not be even money to go the distance with Mike Tyson.

But, a bout with cocaine made Tucker’s dedication look suspect. Fortunately, it was the only bout that he didn’t go the distance. He threw in the towel. He knew he was overmatched.

Because you never know how much a tough fight takes out of a fighter, Tucker is a 6-1 underdog against Lewis. People must think Lennox Lewis is Joe.

The likelihood that either of them will be universally recognized as the champion while Mike Tyson is still a presence is remote. Mike Tyson is a prisoner, but not a memory. And his predicament is not unique in the troubled annals of fistiana. Jack Johnson was not in prison but on the lam from one (again for out-of-the-ring troubles with the ladies) in his reign, and nobody took seriously the pretenders to the throne in his absence, Tommy Burns and Marvin Hart. You can win “Jeopardy” if you remember them.

Also, the fight mob knows prison is not that hard on an athlete. It may be hard on the soul, but not the body. Ringsiders remember how Sonny Liston came out of Jefferson City’s maximum security in better condition than he would have been at that age if he spent the time running the streets. Sonny quickly became titleholder until the bright lights of free society took their toll. Tyson may be as terrifying a specimen when he gets out after years of going to bed early, rising early and drinking milk and reading books.

But Lewis and Tucker will be fighting for the interim championship of the world on May 8 at the Mirage Hotel’s promotion at the Thomas & Mack Arena in Las Vegas.

As fights go, it puts to rout the other heavyweight title fight, Riddick Bowe vs. Jesse (Who?) Ferguson, which figures to be about as competitive as a train wreck.

The payoff would be that Lennox Lewis could be an attractive champion, if the cards fall his way. Boxing has descended into hippodrome of late. At the news conference Wednesday, for instance, his opponent, Tucker, worked himself into a hokey lather, finally leaped to his feet with fists clenched and advanced on Lewis, bellowing “I am going to whip your butt right here and now, Englishman!” It was a transparent, tasteless exhibition, more worthy of a schoolyard bully or TV wrestling than a professional prizefighter. Lewis simply looked at his tormentor with a bemused, bored expression, a Brit at a cricket match.

Perhaps it’s time for the Americans to request the 20-foot ring. If the Tucker tantrum was designed to scare Her Majesty’s representative to the colonies’ pugilistics, it didn’t work. Brits don’t scare.

Just ask Hitler.