HEAVYWEIGHT HOPES: Tyson still focusing on Lewis
www.lvrj.com - January 29, 2003
It didn't take Mike Tyson long to realize he was in trouble when he fought heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis last year.
The June 8 fight, perhaps the most hyped bout in boxing history, was less than a minute old when Tyson knew he was in for a long night. Lewis won by an eighth-round technical knockout in a career-defining performance in which Tyson put up little resistance.
Tyson, training in Las Vegas for his Feb. 22 bout in Memphis, Tenn., against Clifford Etienne, said by the end of the first round his legs felt like cement and he could barely move.
"I wasn't into the fight," a relaxed and jovial Tyson said before a sparring session at the Golden Gloves Gym. "After the first round, I came back to the corner and I was dead tired. ... I didn't know what the hell had happened to me."
Tyson said he hoped his punching power would pull him through. Now, with a rematch looming, he said he hopes to make the improvements that will help him reverse the most one-sided loss of his career.
New trainer Freddie Roach has been forcing Tyson to work, and the results have showed around Tyson's waist, as he looks much trimmer than he has in a long time.
Tyson said he wasn't focused for Lewis, leisurely going through his training because he didn't think Lewis had the courage to stand in against him. Tyson expected Lewis to wilt as so many, notably Bruce Seldon and Frank Bruno, had done.
"I just knew I was going to win the fight," Tyson said. "(But) I don't know what I was thinking. I thought this guy was going to give his belt up, like some of these guys do, just put his belt in the ring and let me take it."
Lewis, though winning no awards for bravery, didn't surrender and did what he had to do to win. Even though trainer Emanuel Steward was exhorting Lewis to attack Tyson as early as the fourth round, Lewis was cautious and stayed outside, working behind the jab.
Only when Lewis realized Tyson had nothing left did he open up and finish Tyson off. Steward said Tyson was slowed by a right hand at the end of the first round, but Tyson said it had more to do with his condition than with anything Lewis did.
"I don't remember any one (punch) in particular that really would have made me quit fighting," Tyson said. "He hit me with a lot of right hands. I don't even know what (Steward's) talking about. Listen, if Lennox was that dominant, he should have knocked me out in the second or third round. He was still scared. He didn't take no risks."
And that is why Tyson thinks the rematch will sell despite the fact that he said in the ring after the first fight that he could never beat Lewis. The first fight sold more than 1.9 million pay-per-view purchases, and the second is expected to be able to do at least half as well.
Lewis had talked about an April fight against Vitali Klitschko, but Lewis' attorney, Judd Burstein, said last week that fight was off and Lewis was looking ahead to a June fight with Tyson.
Tyson said he isn't surprised Lewis would consider fighting him again.
"Who else is he going to fight?" Tyson said. "Let's not get it twisted. I'm not going to try to be Mr. prima donna and stroke my own ego, but I'm the hottest thing coming down the pike. The only reason those guys when they beat me, they don't make history, they get a bank book. Then they go to oblivion afterward. It's too bad it has to be that way, but somebody has to be the guy."
