Princes of Wales : Lennox Lewis Will Face Frank Bruno in the Battle of Britain Tonight, but Memories of ‘the Matchstick Man’ Get Through the Hype

They laid Johnny Owen to rest one month shy of 13 years ago in an overcrowded cemetery 25 miles north of here in Merthyr Tydfil, once a thriving center of the Industrial Revolution and now a depressed and depressing monument to exploitation, wasted resources and cold-hearted progress.

When the iron masters and coal mine owners left, they took most of the jobs with them. Many of the young people soon followed. But Johnny Owen stayed, and, for a time, he restored pride to Merthyr Tydfil.

That was doused after Owen was knocked into a coma by Mexican champion Lupe Pintor’s right hand on Sept. 19, 1980, in a fight for the World Boxing Council’s bantamweight title at Los Angeles’ Olympic Auditorium.

Owen never regained consciousness, and seven weeks later his body was brought home and buried in a grave he shares with a long forgotten ancestor. But the tombstone belongs to him:

“In loving memory of Johnny Owen 1956-1980 He fought the good fight with all his might.” Standing beside the grave on a cold and drizzly September morning, while the wind whistles a haunting melody through the trees, one is reminded that boxing is not merely a carnival huckster’s sideshow. It is a real drama involving real people who face real consequences.

No one needs to remind boxers of that, of course, and it is a tribute to the patience of the two heavyweights, champion Lennox Lewis and challenger Frank Bruno, who will fight each other tonight for the WBC championship in a famous rugby stadium, Cardiff Arms Park, that they were able to sit through such an unreal event as their so-called news conference Wednesday afternoon at the Coal Exchange.

It began with a marching band parading through the halls of the magnificent Victorian building next to Cardiff’s once-bustling, now dingy, docks, followed by four cheerleaders dressed in T-shirts and tight shorts. They were wearing considerably less when photographed recently for Page 3 of one of London’s tabloids, the Sun, which served as their audition for becoming the ring card girls.

Days before the fight, the young ladies proved their promotional value when they were the focus of one of the week’s most provocative news stories. “Topless Models Banned From World Fight!” the placards on the newsstands here screamed after the city fathers ruled that the pin-ups will have to cover up while carrying out their official duties.

Good thing for them, too, because the main event does not begin until 1 a.m. local time to accommodate American television, and the weather forecast for then is cold and wet. Still, Frank Maloney, Lewis’ manager, pouted.

“It’s not unusual for topless girls to be used to carry the cards in the States,” he said.

It’s not?

Even Maloney, however, has standards, which he revealed during the so-called news conference when he accused the Bruno camp of committing “the cheapest trick ever.” But even if the competition in the cheap-trick category was not so stiff in boxing, this one would hardly have been a contender, consisting of Bruno’s lawyer, Henri Brandman, serving Lewis a High Court writ for libel, which Maloney tore into tiny pieces.

While Great Britain’s esteemed, powdered-wigged legal world was spinning off its axis, a scuffle broke out when late-arriving co-promoter Dan Duva was prevented by muscle-bound, skinhead bouncers from taking his seat on the stage.

“A fracas!” shouted the other co-promoter, Panos Eliades.

Then, Lewis’ trainer, Pepe Correa, stood, pointed menacingly at Bruno and warned, “Frank, you will be knocked out. You will be going to sleep. I might even bring a pillow to ringside. You must fall!”

The boxers, to their credit, were there to be photographed and not heard. Both muttered something about letting their fists do the talking. Bruno even kissed Lewis’ mother on the cheek.

*

There is a publicity photo laminated to Johnny Owen’s tombstone, revealing that, even in life, he was as pale as death. He had a big nose, Ross Perot ears and teeth that needed straightening. But the most noticeable feature is his bony frailty, and it was for that reason he was known as “the Matchstick Man.”

“He looked so thin and pale that people seeing him fight for the first time were inclined to prepare themselves for a harrowing experience,” wrote British boxing correspondent Ken Jones.

Yet, Owen was so pugnacious, so tenacious , that he seemed immune to pain. It has been written that he was shy to the point that he could hardly speak to a woman, much less ask her out. A 1979 article about the fighter in a London newspaper, the Observer, was headlined, “Onward Virgin Soldier.”

Not two years later, after Owen’s death, the Observer’s Hugh McIlvanney wrote, “Outside the ring, he was an inaudible and almost invisible personality. Inside, he became astonishingly positive and self-assured. He seemed to be more at home there than anywhere else. It is his tragedy that he found himself articulate in such a dangerous language.” *

The posters for Lennox vs. Bruno hype it as “History in the Making,” but, if so, it will probably be nothing more than a footnote. It is called a fight for the heavyweight championship, and the WBC considers it thus, but virtually everyone else, including the World Boxing Assn. and International Boxing Federation, considers Riddick Bowe the champion, even if he did dump Jose Sulaiman’s WBC belt into a trash can.

Also called the first heavyweight championship fight between two British subjects since the bare-knuckle days, there is some doubt about that, too, because one fighter is, based on his accent if nothing else, considerably less British than the other.

It is no mystery, however, why the British claim Lewis, because he is their first heavyweight champion of any kind since 1899. Since then, 10 of them have taken on the champion and lost each time.

British boxing writer Harry Mullan once wrote in London’s Sunday Times, “As the writer Dorothy Parker might have put it, if all the British heavyweights in history were laid out end to end, she wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised.”

Lewis, 28, was born in London’s East End, moved with his mother to Canada when he was 9, returned to London one year later to live with an aunt until he was 12 and then spent the rest of his formative years in Canada. It was under the Maple Leaf flag that he won the Olympic super-heavyweight gold medal in 1988, winning a second-round technical knockout over Bowe in the championship match.

Believing he would find more support for his professional career in his native country after meeting an eager Maloney, Lewis moved back to London and vowed to become the heavyweight champion representing Britain. But sometimes even he forgot where he lived.

When he beat Gary Mason for the British heavyweight championship two years ago in London, Lewis said, beaming, “I beat him in his own back yard.”

Someone had to remind him that London also is his back yard.

Bruno, meantime, is as British as chips with malt vinegar. A reform school graduate and former hod carrier from Wandsworth, outside London, he gained recognition by becoming the country’s latest heavyweight hope, twice fighting for the championship, once rocking Mike Tyson in 1989 before bowing out in the fifth round.

But Bruno, 31, owes his immense popularity with all ranks, even non-sports fans, primarily to his entertainment career, particularly in the comical pantomimes, in which he has played the genie in “Aladdin,” Robin Hood and even the female lead in “Romeo and Juliet.” In the Q ratings, which advertising executives use to determine which potential spokesmen for products are best known, Bruno consistently rates at the head of the pack here.

Bruno is so popular in London that Lewis insisted this fight be staged in a venue he considered more neutral, Cardiff. That appeared to have worked in his favor when Bruno’s camp complained, offending the locals.

But Bruno quickly made amends, announcing to a crowd that came to see him spar this week that his wife’s mother’s mother was Welsh. In his local radio advertisements for the fight, he boasts of his “Welsh spirit.”

*

Because Johnny Owen’s family did not have a telephone until shortly before he fought in Los Angeles, his mother, Edith, had to walk up the hill from their house to a pay phone and call a Cardiff newspaper, the Western Mail, for the results of his bouts. But that was as close as she dared get to her son’s violent world.

Even Johnny seemed reluctant to go to Los Angeles. He did not leave until a week before the fight, and everyone warned him that he had not given himself enough time to adjust to the time change. *

The weigh-in for tonight’s fight was held in the rain Thursday under a tent outside the 11th-Century Norman keep at the Cardiff Castle.

A town crier dressed in a Beefeater’s costume announced Bruno at 17 stone (233 pounds) and Lewis at 16 stone 5 pounds (229 pounds).

All of the other numbers seem to weigh against Bruno. Everyone but his most loyal fans consider him a longshot, particularly the bookmakers, one of whom estimated in an interview this week with London’s Daily Mirror that no more than 12 persons in all of the United Kingdom have bet on Bruno.

From reading articles like that, he is convinced that even his usually fawning friends among the media have turned on him, and that has made him edgy in periodic news conferences.

“I’m going to make ‘istory,” he said in response to a question about his chances in a meeting this week with American reporters. “You know what ‘istory is, Bub?”

Lewis, in contrast, appeared so relaxed when greeting the same reporters in his hotel suite that it appeared he might nod off at any moment.

He said he has doubts about his opponent’s chin and his ability to win a big fight but conceded that Bruno has the proverbial puncher’s chance. Refusing to contribute to the hype, he added, “I just want to get to the fight itself. I understand all the pre-fight hype, and you have to play along, but I’m more into reality. October 1 will be reality.”

*

Johnny Owen, the European bantamweight champion, carried a record of 24-1-1 to Los Angeles to meet Pintor, the older, more experienced, more powerful champion who had 33 knockouts in 49 fights.

Owen was hurt early, but, in keeping with his reputation, battled back into the fight before the ninth round.

According to McIlvanney, that proved to be Owen’s irresistible but fatal compulsion. Pintor, he wrote, “had landed enough brutal punches before the 12th and devastatingly conclusive round to break the nerve and resistance of an ordinary challenger. The young Welshman was, sadly, too extraordinary for his own good in the Olympic Auditorium.”

With less than a minute remaining in the 12th, Pintor dropped Owen to his knees with a straight right. After the mandatory eight-count, Owen was driven to the other side of the ring, where he took another right to the head, this one hurling him backward. Losing consciousness before his head thudded against the ring floor, he never woke up.

From the emergency ward at California Hospital Medical Center, a family friend called Edith Owen at home on her new telephone.