All set for a `real fight'

Twenty-eight years ago this week I was in the company of Padraig O'Malley when Joe Frazier decked Muhammad Ali with a left hook. It is hard to say who was more devastated by the punch.

Although the 15th-round knockdown more or less sealed his fate, Ali was plainly more embarrassed than hurt. The consequences for O'Malley, on the other hand, were somewhat direr. Now a celebrated author (The Uncivil Wars; Biting At The Grave) and influential political theorist, Padraig was at the time a struggling graduate student at Harvard. A few days earlier he had received his semester's stipend, a couple of thousand dollars - and he bet all of it on Ali.

With the most celebrated and eagerly anticipated heavyweight fight since then just two days away, there is evidence that thousands of Americans may be once again wagering with emotional allegiance instead of their minds. Logic suggests that Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis should be the tossup the odds-makers marked it when they made the fight a 6 to 5 pick (American bookmakers ensure that they will extract their pound of flesh in advance) before it was even officially announced, but the intervening months have seen Holyfield edge ahead, to the point that he is now a 3 to 2 favourite with most Las Vegas sports books.

To put this development in perspective, consider that two-and-a-half years ago Holyfield opened a 25 to 1 underdog for his first encounter with Mike Tyson, before being bet down to 19 to 1 by fight time. Despite having thoroughly deflated the myth of Tyson's invincibility, Holyfield is now 35. Has he truly improved that much? championships of the World Boxing Association and International Boxing Federation titles, and Lewis, who owns the World Boxing Council belt, will meet at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night to unify the heavyweight title for the first time in seven years. Remarkably, considering that the pair have 73 bouts between them, they have never as professionals faced a common opponent.

The closest approximation to this category would be Riddick Bowe, who was responsible for two of Holyfield's career losses and unlucky in losing the middle bout of their trilogy - the one interrupted by a parachutist dropping out of the sky and into the ring at Caesars Palace. Lewis, representing Canada, knocked out Bowe in the Gold Medal bout of the 1988 Seoul Games.

As a barometer these results are less significant than the undeniable fact that Lewis is, physically, cut from the same dimensions as Bowe, the man who came closer than any other heavyweight to dominating Holyfield. Bowe stood 6 ft 5 in and fought at around 245 lb. Lewis is nearly 6 ft 6 in and figures to scale in at nearly 18 stone when Saturday's combatants weigh in this afternoon. For all his gifts and unquestioned mettle, Holyfield is a bulked-up cruiser-weight who has often had trouble solving the puzzle posed by big men.

Granted that when it comes to boxing, second-generational interpretations of common opponents is a decidedly inexact science. Ken Norton, for instance, gave Ali more trouble than any man he ever faced. Ali won two of three fights with Frazier. But when Frazier faced Norton, he went through him like a wrecking ball. George Foreman similarly demolished Frazier, but couldn't beat Ali.

Trainer Emanuel Steward readily concedes that Holyfield has faced superior opposition, but this is not entirely Lewis' fault. Bowe, the last man to hold the undisputed heavyweight title (having beaten Holyfield, who had knocked out Buster Douglas, who had shocked Tyson in Tokyo), literally tossed the WBC belt into a London dustbin rather than face Lewis. Tyson first paid Lewis $4 million and then gave up the same WBC championship rather than get into the ring with him.

Also overlooked in the pre-fight speculation is the fact that in 1994 Holyfield was diagnosed with an allegedly incurable heart defect and ordered never to fight again. While time and events have eclipsed that diagnosis (Holyfield claims to have been cured by the evangelistic faith healer Benny Hinn), both his skills and his stamina have been called into question in his subsequent, non-Tyson bouts.

One might reasonably expect, then, that Lewis will walk right through him, but the spectre of the left hook with which Oliver McCall, a journeyman career-long sparring partner, felled Lewis at Wembley Arena five years ago, spoils an otherwise neatly-wrapped package. Holyfield figures to try to negate Lewis' physical advantages by getting inside the bigger man's jab, burying his face in his chest to conduct one of those heavyweight grappling matches in which the preponderance of the punches are winged from short range. And if one of them lands, anything can happen.

Holyfield has been guaranteed $20 million for this weekend's performance, Lewis $9 million. Promoter Don King has availed himself of every opportunity to cast this showdown as the Frazier-Ali I of its generation. Earlier this week, for instance, to considerable fanfare, the artist LeRoy Neiman unveiled a new painting of that 1971 encounter, and both Ali and Frazier will be at ringside Saturday night.

For all the anticipation surrounding the blockbuster encounter, it might also be noted that neither Holyfield nor Lewis exactly looked like a world-beater in their last outings, points decisions over, respectively, American Vaughn Bean and Croatian Zeljko Mavrovic last September.

"It could come down to who has the biggest heart," supposed my friend Fast Eddie Schuyler, who has covered two generations' worth of world title fights for the Associated Press, "and we all know who that is."

Could be, but a few days ago when I remarked that this was looking increasingly like a fight that shouldn't have a favourite, former heavyweight champion George Foreman sighed and said "that's the way I feel about it too."

Foreman, who lost a 1991 decision to Holyfield, will be working on Saturday night's telecast - and a few weeks later will be making his first visit to Ireland.

"Lewis is weak in the early rounds, but Holyfield likes to wait and see what you've got. Lewis is the real puncher of the two, but he tends to be an underachiever. It's a good fight," said Foreman. "It's a real fight."