Mississippi river bank hustle

BOXING/World heavyweight title fight: George Kimball, in Memphis, looks at the build-up to tonight's long-awaited bout between champion Lennox Lewis and 'Iron' Mike Tyson

This old slave-trading centre on the banks of the Mississippi might be a comparative neophyte when it comes to professional boxing, but it would be inaccurate to say Memphis has no history or tradition of memorable fights.

On October 18th, 1956, a sometime guitar player named Elvis Aaron Presley pulled his Lincoln Mark II into a Gulf station on Second Street for repairs. His presence soon attracted a crowd, and an attendant named Ed Hopper ordered him to move the vehicle.

When Presley didn't respond quickly enough for Hopper's liking, the attendant, according to testimony of the day, took a shot at Elvis, belting him in the chops through the open driver's side window, at which point Presley stepped out of the car and belted him back.

"Both men were charged with assault and disorderly conduct," reads the Memphis Commercial Appeal's account of the fracas. "When asked for his name, Presley told police: 'Maybe you'd better put down Carl Perkins'."

The winner: Presley, by decision. He was let off the next day. Hopper was fined $26. A witness said Hopper's eye "looked like a travelling bag".

Apart from the night when the present mayor, the Honourable Willie Herenton, scored a one-punch knockout over a circuit court judge in a downtown saloon, Presley's TKO of Hopper stood as the most famous fight in Memphis history.

That is about to change tonight, when heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson, the self-proclaimed "baddest man on the planet", meet for a scheduled 12 rounds at the Pyramid, the 19,000-seat home of the NBA Memphis Grizzlies.

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When Tyson was greeted by gay-rights pickets at his Cordova training site last week, he leapt out of his car and hugged a startled protester, assuring the fellow: "I'm not homophobic." When he showed up the next day and the pickets were gone, Tyson asked: "Where are all my homosexual friends?" So when Iron Mike arrived for Thursday's weigh-in at the Memphis Convention Centre, it was to find a swarm of pro-Tyson gay demonstrators.

"THANKS, MIKE, FOR SAYING GAY IS OK," read one placard. "TYSON OPPOSES HOMOPHOBIA. THANKS, MIKE!" read another, while a third proclaimed: "WE SUPPORT TYSON'S STEP UP TO TOLERANCE."

Lewis had weighed in at noon that day, Tyson three hours later.

Tonight's adversaries even took different routes to and from the venue lest they run into each other going and coming. The last time Lewis and Tyson had been in the same room together, back in January, a melee had broken out and Tyson took a bite out of Lewis' thigh.

The pro-Tyson demonstrators weren't the only ones espousing their cause in Memphis on the day of the weigh-in. Some religious zealots marched outside the media centre wearing T-shirts that read: "JESUS CHRIST IS THE REAL HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD." They found themselves competing for space with a crowd of travelling Lewis supporters assembled outside the convention centre for the first weigh-in.

When the English fans showed their backsides, they had letters printed on the backs of their red-on-black T-shirts spelling out F*** TYSON.

On the same day that Lewis, a celebrated chess buff, played a match against a 13-year-old member of a local chess club, Tyson's PR minions did their best to salvage their own photo op by having Tyson, who had disdainfully hit the speed bag for 15 minutes and then departed without speaking to reporters a day earlier, invite a group of grade school students to meet the former champion after his workout.

Most of the children were, reportedly, timid, but one of them, 10-year-old Jamal Cornes, marched up to the ring and asked Tyson: "Why did you bite off Evander Holyfield's ear?"

The startled Tyson chuckled uneasily and replied: "That was a long time ago."

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Not even the locals seemed to know what to call tonight's encounter: The River Bout. The Rumble on the River. The Showdown in M-Town. The Clinch in the Pinch. The Fight of the Century. Promoters eventually opted for the understated "Lewis-Tyson Is On", and placards bearing that slogan line the streets of Memphis, to say nothing of the 40-mile stretch of Highway 61 from here to the Mississippi casino enclaves.

One-hundred-and-thirteen years have elapsed since Mississippi played host to its first and only heavyweight championship fight. When John L Sullivan, Jake Kilrain, their respective entourages, and a medium-sized regiment of paying customers departed New Orleans at midnight on July 8th, 1889, most of the party didn't even know their final destination - which turned out to be a ring set up on the banks of the Mississippi River a hundred miles upstream.

The match-up of heavyweight champion and challenger had been banned from most respectable venues, and the location of the site had to be kept secret lest the authorities intervene.

Back then, it was the notoriety of the sport itself, and not one of the participants, that made the fight a pariah in the eyes of civilised society, but a scribe of the day, writing for the New York World, might have been talking about Tyson when he assessed Sullivan's chances: "According to all such drunkards as he, his legs ought to fail him after 20 minutes of fighting."

Tonight, Lewis (39-2-1 with 30 KOs) and Tyson (49-3, with two no-contests and 43 KOs) will properly be fighting across the state line in Tennessee, but for the past week Mississippi loomed large in the proceedings, and the epicentre didn't really shift to Memphis until Thursday afternoon's weigh-ins. It was money from the Tunica casinos which eventually pushed the Pyramid backers over the top in the dwindling bidding to stage the fight nobody else wanted, and both champion and challenger were headquartered in Mississippi - Lewis at Sam's Town, where Jerry Lee Lewis (unrelated to Lennox but a cousin of Elvis) headlined last night, while Tyson was officially assigned accommodation at Fitzgerald's Hotel & Casino, though he showed his face there only briefly last week.

Both contestants flew into Memphis a week ahead of time. Lewis was feted with a parade down Beale Street, while Tyson arrived by private jet and was whisked away to the house he had rented for the week. Promoters carefully orchestrated the week's events, right down to the separate-but-equal weigh-ins, to ensure there wasn't even a chance encounter before the two step into the ring.

The thankless task of refereeing tonight's fight has fallen to Eddie Cotton of New Jersey, the lone American included on a multinational slate of officials. Bob Logist of Belgium, Anek Hongtongkam of Thailand, and Alfred Bukwana of Soweto will be the ringside judges.

The suspicion here is that their services may not be required. If Lewis dominates Tyson as handily as we suspect he might, it wouldn't be surprising to see Tyson do something to get himself disqualified before the fight reaches its midpoint. Put it this way: when was the last fight you saw the bookies post odds of 4-1 on a disqualification?

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With the likes of Jack Nicholson and Denzel Washington, Mel Gibson and Britney Spears, and Wesley Snipes and Johnnie Cochran already due in town for the fight, you could hardly blame the hotel executives down at Sam's Town Hotel & Casino for their excitement when they learnt that Prince William and his entourage would be staying at their hostelry over the weekend.

The Tunica hotel spent the better part of last Tuesday making security arrangements for their new special guest. With Lewis and a small army of his English supporters already in residence there, the hotel had thoughtfully added shepherd's pie and lamp chops to the menu, and were prepared to roll out the red carpet for the royal party when they learned that the Prince William in question wasn't the heir to the British throne after all, but rather the potentate of a principality in Africa so tiny that "I can't even remember the name of it," said hotelgeneral manager Maunty Collins.

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Although Lewis and Tyson have managed to avoid one another through an aggregate 94 previous professional bouts, they are not exactly strangers.

In 1983, Lewis recalled the other day, in a search for quality sparring as he prepared for the World Junior Championships in Santo Domingo, his trainer drove him to the Catskill, New York, gym of the late, legendary trainer Cus D'Amato.

Accounts of those sparring sessions between the teenaged Lewis and the teenaged Tyson vary widely. Tyson trainer Stacy McKinley boasted the other day that Tyson "knocked out Lewis wearing 18-ounce gloves". McKinley, who was certainly not there 18 years ago, said he was in possession of photographs establishing the veracity of his claim. That was three days ago and he still hasn't produced them.

Lewis' recollection is that "we went at it pretty good for four days. Mike Tyson never knocked me out in those four days. He gave me a fat lip. I gave him a bloody mouth, so we were pretty even on that exchange."

What effect the memory of that long-forgotten sparring session 18 years ago might have when Lewis and Tyson climb into the ring at the Pyramid tonight for the richest match in boxing history remains to be determined, but as he held court at Sam's Town casino yesterday, Lewis revealed that at the conclusion of hostilities between the two youthful boxers, Tyson's wise old trainer took him aside and ventured a prediction.

"One day," D'Amato told Lewis, "you and Mike Tyson will meet in the ring for the heavyweight championship of the world."

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"This is a very important fight for me," Lewis reflected this week. "It would have been unfortunate for me if I didn't box the best boxers of my era. Tyson is the best out there right now. This is what the world wants to see: me and Mike Tyson in the ring. I'm glad it's finally come about. I've been waiting for this fight for a long time.

"This fight," sighed Lewis, "is my legacy. I'm getting rid of the last misfit in boxing."

Tyson has studiously avoided the press throughout the week, but following Thursday's weigh-in he did pause to offer one reflection on tonight's bout.

"I just hope," muttered Tyson, "he doesn't have a heart attack between now and Saturday night."