Tickets went on sale on Monday morning for the March 13th Evander Holyfield-Lennox Lewis fight. Twenty-four hours later, over 7,000 had reportedly been sold in Britain.

"Seven thousand fans from England! They want to fill Madison Square Garden! We can't allow that to happen," warned Don King, the self-styled "World's Greatest Promoter" who will stage the battle for what he termed "the unmitigated, unadulterated, undisputed heavyweight championship of the world".

Evidently not content with an alien invasion from across the water, King predicted that the Holyfield-Lewis fight would inspire interest among REAL aliens.

"Forget `Fight of the Decade' or even `Fight of the Century,"' cried the Barnumesque promoter. "This is going to be the fight of the Universe! The extra-terrestrials and the Plutonians will all be coming to New York to be part of this event."

Almost lost in the hype surrounding the Garden's biggest boxing event since the first Ali-Frazier fight 28 years earlier, was the memory of the performance of each champion in his last defence. Should Holyfield, who defended his World Boxing Association and International Boxing Federation titles against Vaughn Bean in September, show up and meet Lewis, who defended his World Boxing Council belt against Zeljko Mavrovic two weeks later, it could make for such an execrable fight that the Plutonians will be deserting the joint by the second round.

But King is right about this much - as an event, its success already appears to have been ensured.

Madison Square Garden, the so-called mecca of boxing, ponied up an $8.5 million site fee, an almost unheard-of sum for a venue incapable of recouping its investment at casino tables. Tickets at the 19,000-seat building have been priced from $100 to $1,500, but in the first day all 3,500 seats in the $100 and $250 price ranges disappeared into the hands of consumers.

A hefty $49.95 pay-per-view television price is expected to make up the balance of the purse guarantees to the two champions. Holyfield has been promised $20 million, Lewis $9 million.

Jack Nicholson, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and the other usual Hollywoodesque ringside habitues will apparently be displaced to the Garden's cheap seats on the night Holyfield and Lewis do battle.

King revealed in Boston on Tuesday that the Madison Square Garden title fight will be dedicated "to the greatness of womanhood". In keeping with that theme, the "World's Greatest Promoter" said he had reserved a special ringside section from which Queen Elizabeth II, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rosa Parks, Susan McDougal and Mother Theresa of Calcutta will be invited to watch Holyfield and Lewis have a go at one another.

King phoned yesterday morning and apologised for omitting the name of President McAleese from his original roster of distinguished distaff fight fans. "Of course the President of Ireland will be invited, too," said the promoter. "She can come as my guest!" Presumably the President can use Mother Theresa's ticket.

Tuesday's Boston appearance marked the third stop in a cross-country tour in which King, Holyfield, Lewis and the rest of the travelling circus will be flogging tickets and pay-per-view buys for the March fight.

Ironically, on the morning the party was performing for the media in Washington, Mike Tyson was in a courtroom not 20 miles away entering a plea of nolo contendre, or "no contest", to misdemeanour assault charges stemming from an altercation following an August 31st traffic accident.

While technically not entering a guilty plea, Tyson did not dispute accusations that he kicked one middle-aged motorist and punched another following the fender-bender involving his wife, Monica. When Judge Steven Johnson reminded Tyson "You understand that this plea could affect your parole?", the boxer replied "I'm truly aware of that".

How the plea will affect Tyson's status in Indiana, where he remains on probation following a 1992 rape conviction, could impact the future status of the Holyfield-Lewis winner. Whether Tyson can ever return to form as a viable heavyweight challenger remains a matter of some conjecture, but that he represents the biggest potential pay day for whoever emerges from March 13th with the undisputed title is unquestionable.

Tyson, whose boxing licence was suspended after he bit Holyfield's ears in their June 1997 fight in Las Vegas, is supposed to announce a January 16th comeback bout against Francois Botha next Tuesday. That, too, could be delayed.

King, against whom Tyson has filed a $100 million lawsuit, mentioned the former champion only once on Tuesday afternoon and that by way of noting that Holyfield had beaten Tyson not once but twice.

Rather, in the course of his half-hour oration in Boston, King invoked the names of Paul Revere, the black revolutionary martyr Crispus Attucks ("very few of us get a statue, you know!"), Washington Irving, The O'Jays, Frederick Douglass, Cicero, and loosely quoted several books of the Old Testament.

Holyfield and Lewis looked on with mild bemusement as King described the former as "the most amazing man in the sport of boxing, the most dynamic sports figure of the century," and Lewis as "the man from the land of dreadlocks and who-shot-the-sheriff."

"He's been like the invisible man," said King of Lewis, who was coiffed in shoulder-length dreadlocks. "But I'm gonna put a face on the Scarlet Pimpernel. His strength may be in his hair, like Samson, but Mr Clean here (he indicated Holyfield) can take care of it!"

By almost any standard the meeting between the 33-year-old Lewis and the 35-year-old Holyfield is over-ripe by at least a year. King, Holyfield's attorney, Jim Thomas, and Panos Eliades, Lewis' London-based promoter, all described an arduous year-long process which culminated in the fight agreement. King, only recently acquitted on federal insurance-fraud charges, ascribed the difficulties to what he termed "sabotage" on the part of his adversaries.

"Treachery was abounding!" the promoter recalled the complicated negotiations. "It was a very hard fight to make with so much duplicity."

The agreement calls for the Holyfield-Lewis telecast to be handled by TVKO, the pay-per-view arm of Home Box Office, from whom King (along with, at the time, Tyson) had parted quite acrimoniously almost nine years ago.

"Being back working with Don again," said Seth Abraham, the president of Time-Warner Sports, which oversees both HBO and TVKO, "is like dating one's ex-wife".