Lewis a Far Cry From Real Louis Even With Big Right, WBC Title

It would be nice to have a heavyweight boxing champion named Lewis again--no matter how it is spelled.

But you have to regretfully conclude that Lennox is no Joe.

Lennox Lewis is, in many ways, the most attractive of the guys who revel in the title “heavyweight champion of the world” these days. He is articulate, attractive, a gentleman. He has this clipped British accent that always impresses, awes and intimidates Americans. I mean, imagine Ronald Colman as the heavyweight champ of the world, and you get the picture.

He has only one drawback: He can’t fight.

Oh, he can hit, all right. He might have the best right hand in the business right now. George Foreman, no less, concedes that to him. It’s a bomb.

The trouble with having a bomb is, you’ve got to find a way to deliver it.

Lennox looks as if he is trying to send it by fourth-class mail. Addressed to “Occupant.”

The other Louis--Joe--needed an opening no bigger than a keyhole when-- pow!-- it was in there and on your chin. Lennox almost needs you to paint a target on it and hold it still.

It’s the trouble British boxers have had since antiquity. Somehow, it’s not in the British character to brawl, in-fight, or even duck. The British credo, “No gentleman ever plays a game too well,” extends to fisticuffs.

To the Brits, a prizefight is like a French duel. You don’t duck, sidestep, or fall away. You stand up like a man and hope your opponent misses. It’s what got the Redcoats licked in the American Revolution. The British squares were no match for the minutemen hiding behind rocks, leading to the suspicion it’s where the word squares came from to describe the hopelessly naive.

American fighters, from Washington’s army to Jack Dempsey, had no such constraints. They fought out of a crouch, they bobbed and weaved, they came in low. The Marquess of Queensberry devised a series of humane rules for the sport in 1867, but the Americans pretty much rose above it and turned the game into a back-alley assault and battery.

America loved its bully boys. John L. Sullivan was the first, the prototype. He brought the title to America in the 1880s and it was never to return to Britain again, although an Italian, Primo Carnera, a German, Max Schmeling, and a Swede, Ingemar Johansson, would briefly take it to the Old World.

The Brits sent periodical challengers over to the United States to see if they could somehow bring the championship back to what they considered its rightful ancestral home, but they were found wanting. The best of them was the Welshman, Tonypandy Tommy Farr, a carnival or booth fighter, whose claim to fame would be that he carried Joe Louis to a 15-round decision at a time when most Louis opponents were hard put to go more than one round with him.

The worst the Brits sent over was a pale, tense, clumsy heavyweight named Phil Scott, whose stock in trade was to dive to the canvas at a crucial moment, holding his groin and crying “Foul!” He was miscast as a fighter, but Shakespearean as an actor. He won so many fights lying on his back, emoting, that the press was to dub him “Phainting Phil.”

He didn’t do much for the image of the English fighter in this country, although he did hasten the development of the tin protective cup and the practice of deducting only a round, not a fight, for a low blow.

He never got a title shot. Of course, in those days, there was only one heavyweight champion of the world. Today, there are almost as many as there are letters in the alphabet. Everyone, it seems, gets his letter. You have “heavyweight champions” named Witherspoon, Dokes, Weaver, Tate, even, briefly, Page and Bey. Some years, it’s hard to tell who isn’t the heavyweight champion.

Lewis is one of two at the moment. He won his title the way so many seem to do nowadays--by phone. What happened was that Riddick Bowe, shortly after he had won the unified heavyweight title by beating Evander Holyfield, chose to take one of his championship belts, the one emblematic of the World Boxing Council’s championship, and deposit it in a trash bin, rather than give Lewis a shot at it.

The WBC, so to speak, took it out, dusted it off and gave it to Lennox Lewis.

It is Lennox’s view that Bowe was not acting out of disdain for the WBC so much as out of fear of Lewis, who had knocked him out in the Olympics at Seoul in 1988.

Whoever is right, the reality is, Lennox Lewis is the first Brit since the days of the storied James Figg, Tom Cribb, Daniel Mendoza and Tom Molyneaux to have any claim at all to the heavyweight title.

He came to the States last week to defend his half of a title against a trial horse named Phil Jackson in Atlantic City.

Now, Jackson, it so happened, is not going to put anybody in mind of Joe Louis.

But neither, it so happens, is Lennox. Lewis, despite having grown up in Canada, turns out to be your standard Brit in the ring. He doesn’t fall to the floor clutching his groin, but, like most UK heavyweights throughout history, he makes his fight like a statue. He seems incapable of moving forward. Indeed, he has trouble moving laterally, and he looks like something hanging from a chain most of the evening.

A British fight is like the Battle of Jutland. It’s fought at long range. You take your shot, the opponent takes his. And whoever lands the most wins a dull decision.

The problem begins in the gyms. American fighters have always had one advantage over our British cousins in that, in this country, the gyms are full of canny, savvy old trainers who know all about the art of slipping punches, fighting on the inside, body shots and a whole lot of stratagems a Brit wouldn’t, so to speak, stoop to.

Lewis needs six months with Georgie Benton. Or one of those wise old bent-nose pail toters who can show him how to unload that right without wiring ahead it’s coming. After all, the other Louis had Chappie Blackburn. Rocky Marciano had Charley Goldman. And so on.

Lewis could be a colorful and popular champion. He could be the first Brit in a century to be undisputed heavyweight champion.

But, first, he has to learn to fight.