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 Lennox Lewis |
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Our Pick: Lennox Lewis
The horror. The horror.
Mike Tyson might win Saturday night. And that would mark the end of civilization as we know it. We can't have a hoodlum, an obviously deranged man, as heavyweight champion, can we?
It would be nice to think that we could. Boxing champions should be judged by their performance, not by their character. But on that basis Tyson comes up short. He hasn't been the boxer, the phenomenon, he once was for a long time. The spotlight seems only to intensify the handicap Tyson's demons place on him.
Mike Tyson is not a nice man. He's likely not a well man, and nobody seems to know whether he's on his medication. But mostly Tyson is a man who seems to want to find his way back to that which he once knew -- how to beat an opponent senseless, even in the face of adversity, in the face of a jab that won't go away. But he doesn't seem able to do it, because he doesn't seem able to control his behavior on basic levels, let alone at the level of developing a tactical plan for a boxing match.
Tyson seems unable to execute a plan for the fight, whatever that may be. His plan should be for a first-round knockout, and failing that the opportunity to demonstrate his right-hand power to Lewis's suspect chin.
But that shouldn't happen. Lewis has some right-hand power himself, and he isn't a fool. Lewis should be sure to use his jab more than he's used to, and set up the right hand as a counterpunch. What Lewis can't do is let the fight become a series of clinches, because that exposes his chin to a Tyson uppercut, or to Tyson misbehavior.
Lewis is not a bad guy. He's just the least interesting heavyweight champion since Michael Spinks. He needs to jab and move, and he seems to have at least a rudimentary idea of what he's up against in Tyson -- a volcano that only he can keep contained through ritual actions: jab and move, jab and move.
Truth is, we'd really like to see Tyson win. We even think it'd be good for boxing, in that Tyson as champ would bring interest back to to the sport. But we're betting against it and going with Lewis.