When the verdict was read out by ring announcer Jimmy Lennon the reactions of the respective principals was instructive. Lennox Lewis angrily stormed from the ring and barricaded himself inside his dressing room for the next 10 minutes. Evander Holyfield looked positively relieved, and not a bit sheepish.

Possibly the only man in the building more embarrassed than Holyfield was New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, seated nearby at ringside. A tough-talking former prosecutor, Giuliani has boasted that crime in the Big Apple has been on the decline since he took office, but a brazen larceny had just occurred before 21,284 witnesses.

The fight that was supposed to unify the heavyweight championship of the world instead left it more confused than ever. The match that was going to redeem boxing in the eyes of the sporting public had instead re-cast it in the shabbiest of lights. Lewis, who had thoroughly dominated Holyfield for most of the night, was denied victory by a draw so outrageous it brought immediate demands for an investigation.

And that wasn't the worst part. A post-mortem audit of the official scorecards revealed that had Lewis opted to fight cautiously and concede the final round - as he might reasonably have done, given what seemed to be an insurmountable lead at the time - he would have lost the fight and Holyfield would have been the undisputed champion.

Lewis dominated almost from the outset, keeping Holyfield at the end of his longer jab and repeatedly beating the ageing warrior to the punch. Lewis's superiority in this early going was so surprising that he seemed to find it difficult to believe his own fortune.

If Lewis seemed to fear that Holyfield was setting a trap, the American's supporters were convinced of it. For weeks before Saturday night's encounter Holyfield promised he would knock Lewis out in the third round, claiming to have received a message from God to that effect. When asked what he might do if he did NOT knock the Englishman out in the duly appointed round, Holyfield replied that he hadn't even contemplated the possibility. "There ain't no plan B," he said.

Holyfield did indeed pull out all the stops in the third, belting Lewis around the ring in his only truly dominant round of the night. When the bell rung ending the round a mighty roar swept across the crowd, at least half of which seemed to be pro-Lewis, and Lewis himself, having weathered the storm, trudged back to his corner, a look of relief etched on his face.

If Holyfield was unsettled at having been misled by the Almighty, it rapidly became evident that the other half of his prediction was accurate - there WAS no plan B. The middle rounds settled into a pattern of familiarity, with Lewis exerting his will and Holyfield becoming increasingly frustrated.

There remains the lingering suspicion that Lewis may have warily believed this was all coming far too easily. He contented himself with piling up the points, or so he and the rest of us believed, without exposing himself to any real danger that might have come from attempting to finish off his wounded prey. In this regard, Holyfield's history as a fearsome counter-puncher may have saved him.

Boxing is one of those sports where statistical compilations are not always meaningful, but in the case at hand they may be somewhat instructive. Ringside tabulations revealed that over the course of the evening Holyfield landed just 52 jabs to Lewis's 187, and that Lewis out-punched his 36-year-old opponent by 348-130 overall. In six of the 12 rounds Holyfield landed less than 10 punches.

Yet, when interviewed, Jean Williams, the lone American judge (who had been appointed by the International Boxing Federation - each of the three sanctioning bodies was allowed to appoint one scoring judge) maintained that she had scored the fight 115113 for Holyfield because he had "landed more punches".

"I don't have the benefit of statistics," said Williams. "I go by what I see, round by round."

Well, what she saw was plainly wrong but the vision of Larry O'Connell, the British judge, wasn't much better. O'Connell, who had been appointed by the World Boxing Council, apparently bent over backwards to avoid charges of favouritism with the result that he had Holyfield ahead by a point going into the final round which Lewis, to his credit, won on all three cards. The third judge, South African Stan Christodoulou, more reasonably favoured Lewis, 116-113. This had been an out-and-out robbery, and everybody knew it.

If Steve Collins held out any glimmering hope for his fanciful notion of becoming Roy Jones's next opponent, it was effectively dashed at the weekend when Home Box Office finalised a deal with IBF champion Reggie Johnson to fight Jones in a light-heavyweight title unification bout at Las Vegas's MGM Casino on June 5th.

Jones, who was in New York to serve on the network's broadcast team for Saturday night's Lennox Lewis-Evander Holyfield fight, and Johnson agreed to terms on Friday.

"This is the fight we wanted all along," said HBO senior vice-president Lou DiBella, who said that the delay in negotiations had been due only to pressure from the World Boxing Council and World Boxing Association for Jones to instead face their respective mandatory challengers, Germany's Graciano Rocchigiani and Argentina's Dario Matteoni.

"Realistically, I'll say what I've said before," said DiBella. "Collins was never seriously considered as the opponent for this fight. I don't know where he got the idea that he was, but it wasn't from us."