LEWIS-KLITSCHKO: A WEIGHTY MATTER?

June 20, 2003 - by Ron Borges

s the piece of weighed metal kept sliding along without the arrow rising -- higher, higher, HIGHER -- concern grew. Standing in his underwear in front of a statue of the hockey player Wayne Gretzky two days before he would meet Vitali Klitschko at the Staples Center, heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis seemed impassive through it all but those around him were not.

His trainer began to lean forward, as if to coax the scale to move, and his camp members watched with fascination and some concern when it for too long refused to do so. When the scale finally balanced Thursday afternoon it read 256 1/2 pounds, the heaviest the heavyweight champion had ever weighed for a fight. It was either an omen fraught with dark possibilities or a meaningless footnote, just a few extra pounds that come with age and missing some training days while the scramble was on to decide what to do after Lewis' original opponent, Kirk Johnson, was injured two weeks earlier and threw the entire fight card into question.

In the end, Lewis decided to go forward and insert Klitschko as his opponent even though he had been preparing for an entirely different style in Johnson, who tends to move side to side while Klitschko is only slightly more mobile than Gretzky's statue. Lewis' thinking was that he'd already penciled Klitschko in as a future victim and had to get rid of him any way because he was the mandatory challenger and No. 1 contender so why waste seven weeks of training?

No reason...unless those scales told a story.

The 256 1/2 pounds Lewis weighed in at was 7 1/2 pounds heavier than he was for his last outing, his single-minded destruction of Mike Tyson 54 weeks ago. It was 10 1/2 pounds more than he weighed for his rematch with Hasim Rahman, who he took out in four rounds by knocking him literally stiff. Perhaps most telling of all though, it was the highest he had weighed since Rahman knocked him out with one punch on a night when Lewis entered the ring weighing 253 pounds. He was full of himself that night, exhibiting the same cocksure attitude he has shown all week in Los Angeles whenever Klitschko's name came up.

If everything goes according to plan on June 21, his weight and his attitude will be moot points. Lewis will dominate Klitschko as the world expects and he will move on to perhaps a fight with Klitschko's brother or Roy Jones, Jr. or, Lord help us, Tyson. Regardless, it will be postulated after the fact that Lewis had been right to accept the change of opponents on short notice because at 37 it was a greater risk to layoff for say 18 months, as would have been likely if he had not fought Klitschko now, because at that advanced age unused athletic skills can quickly erode.

Yet as Klitschko's trainer, Fritz Studnek, watched the small piece of metal on the scale sliding ever higher he began to smile. He nodded his head several times as the commission official at the scale kept tapping the metal a bit harder, sliding it a bit farther. Then a bit more. Then, just a bit more.

When it finally moved the arrow up and the weight was announced, Studnek smiled, believing he'd seen something there that will come back to haunt the heavyweight champion in two days time.

"I am very surprised Lewis weighed that much," Studnek said. "Maybe he has been drinking water for two days to convince us he is out of shape but I did think he looked a little heavy. I think it shows a lack of respect."

Most everything Lewis said or did from the moment he urged his promoters to make the fight with Klitschko on short notice seemed to indicate his lack of respect for his challenger. Lewis has grown more and more impressed with himself and his abilities over time and more and more convinced that he is invincible, even though the two knockout losses he's already suffered to Rahman and Oliver McCall would seem to argue otherwise.

To come in nearly five pounds heavier than your previous high after a 13 month layoff may not be surprising but it also may not be good news. Because of the disparity in talent and athletic ability between the two fighters it is difficult to fathom that those pounds will make a difference. But if Klitschko somehow can drag Lewis deep into the fight the way Rahman pushed him into the fifth round unexpectedly in South Africa two years ago before knocking out a tiring Lewis with one punch, anything just might be possible.

That is the mystery and the attraction of heavyweight boxing. At its highest levels one punch can change not only a fight but a life. It can make a guy who made $13,000 in his previous fight, like Rahman did before he fought Lewis, a multimillionaire. It can derail the plans of a Lewis, a Tyson or even a Evander Holyfield. It can make unknown people celebrities and leave fallen celebrities wishing they were unknown.

So does the fact Lennox Lewis enters the ring June 21 carrying the most weight of his career really mean anything? Will it weigh him down, slowing his feet and, more importantly, his reflexes just enough to make him vulnerable? No one will know that until the fight is over. Then it will be obvious what, if anything, the extra weight meant.

Until then, everyone is guessing, including Steward, who said after the weigh-in, "I'm not worried at all. He's a big man, a solid man who is about normal for a guy his size and age. Believe me, Lennox is in great shape. If he'd come in at 250 I would have been upset. What he weighs will not be a factor Saturday night."

Unless, somehow, it is. Unless, somehow, Vitali Klitschko unexpectedly raps Lewis on his porcelain chin with the right hand that has knocked out 31 of the 32 opponents he's faced. Then and only then will the extra weight Lewis chose to bring with him into the ring at the Staples Center make a difference. Only then will the public know exactly how hard Lewis trained for this fight and how lightly he took his opponent.

Until that happens, it won't make a bit of difference what Lennox Lewis weighed. And after it happens, if it does, it won't matter either because it will be too late to do anything about it.