Don King didn't even have to work hard to sell this one. "Every time somebody tries to throw cold water on this fight, it turns to steam," proclaimed the self-styled World's Greatest Promoter. "This fight is hot!"
It is that. Madison Square Garden, which has hosted high-profile boxing matches since the days of Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, never experienced a quicker sell-out. The ringside seats, priced at $1,500, are fetching $5,000 and up on the flourishing black market on Seventh Avenue, just a few steps away from the arena's main entrance. Pay-per-view television buys, priced just five cents shy of $50, are expected to easily exceed one million in the United States alone.
In the modern-day world of boxing, where gambling casinos offer multi-million dollar site fees for big fights in the hope of recouping the investment at the gaming tables, Madison Square Garden reasserted itself by bidding $8.5 million to host tonight's bout.
"We wanted to put the world on notice that we intended to reclaim our position as the `Mecca of Boxing'," explained MSG vice-president Kevin Wynne, who said that the arena would "make a substantial profit" despite the massive outlay.
The weigh-in even drew a crowd. Several hundred boxing fans, most of them afflicted with British accents, waited outside the Garden's employees' entrance on Thursday afternoon, cheering wildly as Lewis arrived, surrounded by an entourage in matching tracksuits, who whisked their way inside at a militaristic double-march pace.
Their encounter with the scales brought few surprises. Evander Holyfield weighed 215 pounds, the larger Lewis 246. (And in case you're wondering, that isn't even close to the biggest differential in heavyweight championship history: Primo Carnera outweighed Tommy Loughran by 270 to 184 when they fought for the title back in the Stone Age, and Holyfield himself was 49 pounds lighter than George Foreman, 257-208, for their 1991 fight.)
The 36-year-old Holyfield brings a 36-3 record and a reputation as one of the most courageous men ever to lace on a pair of gloves to tonight's battle with the hard-punching Lewis, three years younger with a career mark of 34-1.
The two champions - Holyfield holds both the World Boxing Association and International Boxing Federation belts, while Lewis is recognised as the champion by the World Boxing Council - will be seeking to unify sport's most coveted title for the first time since 1992.
The clamour for tickets indicates a revived interest in boxing unmatched since Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, both undefeated at the time, met for more or less the same purpose in the same ring 28 years ago. And the sport's proponents would note, it couldn't have come at a better time.
Mike Tyson, long the standard-bearer for the world's heavyweights, is back behind bars, serving a one-year sentence for assault. Riddick Bowe, the last man to hold all three heavyweight belts (albeit briefly) and the author of two of Holyfield's career defeats, is about to join him. (Bowe is currently under house arrest in Maryland, where he awaits sentencing on federal charges of forcibly kidnapping his estranged wife and their children last year.)
Holyfield, normally soft-spoken and Bible-quoting, has repeatedly and quite uncharacteristically predicted that he will knock out Lewis in the third round. The cynic might note that the prediction might have more to do with the fact that tonight's combatants will share in the pay-per-view revenue than any realistic expectation, but in Las Vegas, where they will quote odds on a cockroach race, the odds on a third-round Holyfield KO have tumbled from 30 to 1 to 15 to 1 as a result of the tub-thumping.
Holyfield had shown signs of ageing in the past, but revived his career with two stunning upsets of Tyson, the last at the cost of part of his ear, while the enigmatic London-born Lewis has evinced a maddening inconsistency throughout his 35-bout pro career.
"You never know which Lennox Lewis is going to show up," confessed veteran trainer Emanuel Steward, who moved to the Englishman's corner after helping engineer his only career defeat - Oliver McCall's shocking second-round knockout at Wembley Arena five years ago. "Lennox knows this is the defining fight of his career. I'm only hoping he doesn't come out with his chess-game mentality."
At his best, Lewis possesses a jab unequalled among today's heavyweights, but all too often he has disdained the weapon, attempting instead to pulverise opponents with a big right hand which seldom lands, but extracts devastating results when it does.
Logic suggests that Holyfield will attempt to neutralise both weapons by crowding Lewis and forcing a fight that could be as easily waged in a telephone booth as a 20x20-foot ring.
The local bookmakers have Holyfield a 6 to 4 favourite. The pick from this corner is Lewis in eight.
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