The netherworld of boxing is peopled by strange and shadowy figures, none more strange and shadowy than Carlos (Panama) Lewis, the mystical guru who has resurfaced in the role of trainer for Francois Botha, the South African heavyweight cast in the opponent's role for Mike Tyson's comeback fight in Las Vegas next month.

Although Lewis has been working with Botha in the gym, don't expect to see him in the corner on the evening of January 16th. He will, as usual, be shouting his instructions from a seat in the audience. Fifteen years ago, Lewis was implicated in a fight-fixing scandal for which he served a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence.

Banned for life from boxing, he has not been able to secure a licence anywhere in the United States, but this has not prevented him from dispensing his arcane advice in dingy gymnasiums from New York to Nevada. He has served as an unofficial "adviser" to Botha for several years, although when the so-called "White Buffalo" fought Michael Moorer for the IBF title in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, the Nevada Commission ordered Lewis removed from his ringside seat and placed well back in the crowd.

Two decades ago Lewis, now 52, was regarded as an up-and-coming star in the ranks of boxing corner-men. Although he had apprenticed under legendary trainer Ray Arcel and had worked the corners of world champions Roberto Duran and Vito (The Mosquito) Antuofermo, he remained unfamiliar outside boxing circles.

His first brush with notoriety came in the November 1982 junior welterweight clash between Aaron Pryor and Alexis Arguello. Midway through that bout at Miami's Orange Bowl Stadium, Arguello seemed to have gained the upper hand. When Pryor wobbled back to his corner between rounds, a fellow second attempted to pass him a water bottle. A television microphone in the corner picked up the voice of a remonstrating Lewis, saying: "No, not that one. Give me the special bottle. The one I mixed myself."

Pryor drank of the magic elixir and knocked Arguello out in the 14th round. By the time officials got around to searching for the "special" bottle, it had long since disappeared.

The following summer, Lewis worked the corner of Luis Resto, a journeyman middleweight who fought Billy Collins, a young and undefeated Tennessean, on the undercard of Duran's WBA junior middleweight title fight against Davey Moore at Madison Square Garden. Resto, who brought a 16-8-2 record to that fight, handed the 15-0 Collins a fearful beating. Following the loss, in the course of which Collins suffered fractures of the orbital bones surrounding both eyes, Collins' father/manager demanded that the New York Commission check Resto's gloves. When the gloves were seized and inspected, it was discovered that most of the horsehair padding had been removed. Resto might as well have been hitting Collins with a balpeen hammer.

Both Lewis and Resto were convicted of assault, conspiracy, and tampering with the outcome of a sporting event. Each served something less than half of a six-year sentence, and both were banned from the sport for life.

Collins' injuries were severe enough that he never fought again. Ordered not to box, he fell into a self-destructive pattern of alcohol abuse. He was killed in an automobile accident the following year, leaving an infant daughter. His father termed it "suicide", but Randy Gordon, then the editor of The Ring magazine, went one step further. In an editorial, he labelled it a case of "murder, plain and simple".

This is noteworthy largely because Gordon, who subsequently served a term as chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, is now an adviser to the Botha camp, in which role he has strongly lobbied to have Panama Lewis' trainer's licence reinstated.

Asked this week whether his beloved mentor, Arcel, had ever expressed disappointment in his role in l'affaire Resto, Lewis replied "Yes. He told me I should have got rid of the gloves."

Despite having been banished from the sport, Lewis has somehow managed to eke out a living from boxing over the decade since his release from prison. Never one to discourage his mystical image, he has become almost a caricature of himself. He sports a mouth full of sparkling gold teeth, intricately braided dreadlocks, and walks around laden down with so many baubles, bangles, and rings that if he were ever accidentally knocked into a swimming pool he would surely drown. What he has been doing with the rest of his time is suggested by the frequent horse-racing analogies which sprinkle his conversation. In suggesting that Tyson may have overreached by agreeing to meet Botha in his first fight back, Lewis said: "When you're bringing a horse back from a long lay-off, you'd want to come down in class."

He was brought to the Botha camp by manager Sterling McPherson, himself a fringe boxing character whom Don King calls "my personal Judas Iscariot". (King, who nurtured Botha's career for several years, was heard to lament "the Buffalo has left the herd" when McPherson packed Botha off to his former ally Frank Warren.)

It might be argued that Botha and Lewis sort of deserve each other. Three years ago the White Buffalo defeated Axel Schulz in Germany to win the vacant IBF heavyweight title, only to be stripped of his championship when he subsequently tested positive for steroids. Between the histories of Botha and Lewis, Tyson, a convicted rapist and sometime cannibal, could actually look like the good guy in the January 16th bout.

Analysing the match-up earlier this week, Lewis made what was perhaps an unfortunate comparison, likening it to the first Max Schmeling-Joe Louis fight, with the South African cast in the role of Adolph Hitler's favourite heavyweight.

"Botha is a white fighter who fights like a black fighter," boasted Panama.

And when asked about Tyson's new trainer, Tommy Brooks, Lewis sniffed: "If it was Kevin Rooney, then I'd be worried."

Even though he remains persona non grata in the world of organised boxing, there is little any commission can do about his presence in the gym - with Botha or anybody else. McPherson and Gordon defend Lewis' role, saying: "We're allowed to do that."

"A trainer," Lewis pointed out the other day, "still doesn't ride the horse."

"True," we agreed. "But even a horse trainer has to be licensed."