BOXING: Even Lennox Lewis's most ardent supporters found themselves wincing as the rounds wore on, and had the victim of this corporal punishment been anyone other than Michael Gerard Tyson, the heavyweight champion might have been accused of unnecessarily sadistic behaviour. George Kimball in Memphis reports

Having already demonstrated that he could land his thudding jab at will (at one point in the sixth round, Lewis peppered Tyson's face with 10 unanswered jabs in succession), he added to the mix thundering right uppercuts, which Tyson was equally powerless to elude.

Lewis's domination was so complete that it seemed to mesmerize the crowd (allegedly 15,327) on hand at The Pyramid for Saturday night's heavyweight championship fight. The star-studded audience had begun the night divided roughly 60-40, with Lewis's backers in the majority, but as the night unfolded, allegiances were all but abandoned as they settled in to watch Lewis's disciplined unmasking of the onetime "Baddest Man on the Planet".

On the eve of the fight, Tyson had threatened to crush Lewis's skull, but by the time the end came his own face was a battered pulp. A cut above his right eye bled from the second round onward, and the eye had nearly closed. In the sixth, Lewis had cut Tyson above the left eye as well, and bloodied his nose for good measure. It was a display so dominant and so cruel that had Desiree Washington, the young lady Tyson was imprisoned for raping almost a decade ago, been present, she would probably have been pleading with referee Eddie Cotton to stop the fight.

Even a late influx of Tyson money left Lewis an 8 to 5 on betting favourite, so the outcome can hardly be termed an upset. What was an upset, on the other hand, was that Tyson accepted his beating ("like a man", said Lewis) rather than attempting to terminate the issue by biting one of Lewis's ears. The thought might have occurred to him, but the simple truth was that he couldn't get close enough to do it.

In the seventh round a frustrated Tyson did unleash a couple of low blows aimed at Lewis's cup. (One ringsider suggested that rather than eat Lewis' unborn children, as he had once vowed to do, Mike had apparently settled on ensuring that they would remain unborn.) By then Tyson was so spent that he couldn't even hurt him there; the attempted fouls were so ineffectual that they barely drew Cotton's notice.

Of the referee's performance, the most charitable thing one can find to say is that Cotton had a bad night. There had been pre-fight whispers of chicanery, and Cotton certainly seemed to bend over backward to tilt the fight toward Tyson. No referee was going to save Tyson on this night, but Lewis could be forgiven if he often felt as if he were fighting two men in the ring.

In the second round, Cotton twice warned Lewis for holding, although it seemed plain enough to most that Tyson was initiating most of the clinches. At the end of the fourth the referee not only disallowed a Lewis knockdown, but penalised the champion a point. (Lewis had rocked Tyson with a right hand, and as he stood there wobbling, shoved him over, grazing the top of his head with another punch as he went down.)

In the fifth, Cotton warned Lewis for hitting off the break, although Tyson had been doing the same thing all night, and even in the final round the referee bungled his job. Lewis banged Tyson with a right uppercut, then caught him with a left uppercut and a straight right hand. Tyson's knees buckled and he sank to his haunches, but neither his backside nor his gloves ever touched the floor. There was no standing eight-count in effect, but Cotton gave Tyson a count anyway, the effect of which was to allow him to recover enough to fight for another half-minute.

The end wasn't long in coming. Lewis measured Tyson, sticking his left out to show him the jab, and then unloaded a vicious roundhouse right that sent Tyson crashing to the deck. He floundered about in a half-hearted attempt to rise, but was unable to beat the referee's count, which reached 10 at 2:25 of the eighth.

"This is the guy who bit me," Lewis reminded people afterward. "I decided he'd get some discipline."

"No one," he added, correctly, "gets away from my jab."

By his own admission Lewis had given away the first round, in part because he had yet to settle into his fight plan, but mainly because he mistakenly treated Tyson as a dangerous opponent. Once he established the jab in the second round it became a completely one-sided fight. The storyline was so plain that three ringside judges from three continents had scored every one of the seven rounds in concert - the first for Tyson, and every subsequent round for Lewis.

In the run-up to Saturday night Lewis had called the Tyson match as an opportunity to "cement my legacy as the best heavyweight of my era," and he seemed to leave no room for argument on that score.

And although the contract signed by both men calls for a rematch down the road, it is unclear whether the boxing public will even have the stomach to watch this again, much less demand it.

Tyson burst upon the boxing scene as a teenager 17 years ago and won his first heavyweight title at 20, but it was apparent to all, as it should have been before, that the myth crumbled long ago. His sociopathic and bizarre antics may have kept his name before the public, but he hasn't won a bout of real significance against a legitimately dangerous opponent in over 10 years.

Tyson, now 49-4 with two no-contests (Lewis is 40-2-1), had held the title for three years before Lewis emerged from the 1988 Olympics to turn professional. Lewis is 36, and Tyson will reach that age later this month. Clearly, the two men have not aged equally.

"When Mike was 19, he ruled the world. I'm like a fine wine," said Lewis. "I came along later on. I went along, just took my time, and I'm ruling now." Tyson spoke dreamily about a rematch, but Lewis is obligated to defend his titles against the International Boxing Federation's top-rated Chris Byrd first. Byrd is a slick, though light-punching, lefthander likely to frustrate Lewis, and while Lewis should win, it won't be pretty to watch.

Tyson in theory would be next, but after the beating he took Saturday, Iron Mike allowed that he might need "two or three more fights" in the interim.

Haven't we heard that before? Tyson's enduring if undeserved reputation made Saturday night's matchup the most eagerly anticipated in boxing history. Celebrities from Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, and Clint Eastwood to Michael Jordan, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Cuba Gooding Jr had flocked to this backwater town on the banks of the Mississippi River, seemingly tying up every stretch limousine in the Confederacy, but as the day of reckoning drew nigh it became apparent that promoters had badly miscalculated, both in pricing the tickets out of reach (ringside seats were $2,400) and in their assumption that Lewis's British fans would abandon their television sets in the midst of the World Cup to follow their man to Memphis.

By the afternoon of the fight what had been a week-long street carnival had degenerated into a frantic fire-sale that stretched for blocks on end, with ticket touts desperately undercutting one another in their effort to cut their losses. At 3 p.m. on Saturday, we saw a pair of $1,400 seats flogged for $400 apiece. In revealing the attendance, promoters took care to announce that 15,327 had paid, but it was apparent that there were more than 4,000 empty seats in the 19,000-seat venue, and many of the "paid" tickets will probably turn up, unused and will be offered for sale as souvenirs.

Although the fight was conducted under extremely tight security measures - police helicopters whirred overhead, and every patron entering the arena was frisked for weapons - the services of the bulked-up constabulary were not required. A phalanx of muscular, yellow-clad steroid specimens a dozen-strong preceded the fighters into the ring, forming a diagonal line of demarcation, ostensibly to keep Lewis and Tysonfrom getting at one another before the opening bell. As the fight played out, though, the outcome became so foreordained that every vestige of controversy disappeared, and when it was over even the most vocal Tyson partisans melted meekly back into the Tennessee night.

The pay-per-view totals have yet to be tabulated, but the early returns were more promising, and it remains possible that both Lewis and Tyson exceed their $17.5 million guarantees. Tyson, of course, already owes most of his purse to his television network, Showtime, and to the Internal Revenue Service.

Once he had regained his senses, in fact, Tyson (after depositing a kiss on the cheek of Lewis's mother Violet) uncharacteristically praised Lewis, describing his performance as "splendid", and calling him "a masterful boxer". He even thanked him for the payday.

"I'm happy he gave me a fight," said Tyson. "The money was great. I really appreciate it."