Sweet science has same old stings

So Lennox, you reckon maybe the fix was in? Say it ain't so. Around Madison Square Garden in the good old days the sages used to note that not many archbishops ever get to win the heavyweight championship. Well nothing changes.

How ironic, though, that the return of heavyweight championship scrapping to the dowdy majesty of Madison Square Garden should have brought the inate crookedness of the sweet science out into open country once more. In Vegas and Atlantic City, the very rocks they crawled out from under, the spivs and shysters can work under camouflage.

Well Lennox, let's see now if there was any reason to suspect that there was something shonky coming down the line in New York on Saturday night.

Despite it being a touchstone of faith among surviving heavyweights that Mr Don King is Beelzebub with a hairdo, it was Mr King who was doing most of the flogging of the bout. Bad sign.

A quick glance at Mr King's CV tells us he started his life as a numbers czar in Cleveland and worked his way downwards, killing two men, one of them for a debt of $600, and ripping off countless boxers before arriving at his present position as sport's most unshakeable pariah.

Mr King is in the process of being sued by a Mr Mike Tyson, who resides presently in an Indiana correctional institution. The action pertains to millions and millions of dollars worth of fees which he alleges Mr King took from him without so much as a "thanks a million big fella".

Whatever the outcome of the litigation between those two sporting knights, it is unlikely that our learned friends will be able to heal the scars in their ruptured relationship. With Tyson gone, Don King might just have to miss a meal.

Mr King knew some things on Saturday afternoon which Lennox Lewis might usefully have pondered. Tyson is a piece of used trash and although he may be scraped off the floor of his prison cell and thrown back into a ring some time within the next year, the public appetite for that brand of exploitation has withered.

Furthermore, the Lewis fight with Holyfield being a unification bout for the heavyweight division, the days of having two or three circus rings operating at once are gone. The TV boys want big fights and meaningful fights. That means less fights. Worrying.

Lennox Lewis and the waning Evander Holyfield were a genuine enough pairing, neither pug would merit much mention in a pub argument over who was the top heavyweight of the century, but the clamour for pay-per-view rights suggested that it was a fight which looked as if it might last more than 30 seconds.

Whatever the outcome on Saturday night the pay days for Don King looked as if they might be coming to an end. Holyfield is at the end of his tether in terms of appetite and talent. Lewis is game, but his cautious style-free style has never endeared him to the market in America.

If Holyfield planted Lewis on the canvas sometime in the opening half of the fight Lewis's limited usefulness as a human luncheon voucher for Don King would expire. If Holyfield were to roll over, King, under increasing pressure from television to produce those decent bouts, would be left with Lewis, the only cold fish in the boxing game and a huge supporting cast of nobodies.

The best possible outcome therefore was a draw. And lo it came to pass. Guarantees a rematch. Keeps Tyson's bargaining position weak. Buys some time for Don to perhaps lure Lewis away from Frank Maloney.

Sure, for 24 hours the boy scouts in the media will weep over the lost virginity of boxing, but they'll come back. They came back after Holyfield's ear got bitten off, they came back after Tyson's rape conviction, they came back to see George Foreman move about the ring like an arthritic bouncer. And that was just the '90s.

We always come back, wagging our tails behind us. Boxing, see, does us the courtesy of letting us in on the dodge. By tipping us the wink, we allow its criminality to pass off as pantomime.

Always did. James Joy Johnston was known as the Boy Bandit and he used to run the boxing promotions out of Madison Square Garden. The Boy Bandit used to entertain the scribes for afternoon tea every afternoon at four o clock and religiously they would gather around him. "Legitimate business," he would say, "is just a figure of speech." The boys would write it down chuckling.

James Joy Johnson is the man who promoted Bob Pastor. Bob famously ran away from Joe Louis one night. Johnson indefatigably promoted him as Rapid Robert for years afterwards.

We are indebted for the second time this week to the late Red Smith for the best anecdote concerning Johnson and Rapid Robert Pastor. Rapid Robert was fighting another journeyman called (you'll love this) Turkey Thompson. There were nine knockdowns in the fight and fewer punches. Suddenly, to everyone's surprise, having survived a worse barrage, Rapid Robert hit the canvas having apparently been felled by a very light left jab. Rapid Robert eventually won the fight and afterwards Red Smith inquired as to how come a powder puff punch could have laid Rapid Robert out like that.

"Well," said the Boy Bandit frankly, "I was shouting at Robert to stay down and take the full nine count and he misunderstood me to say `fall down'. Robert is very obedient."

Lewis will cry all the way to his accountant's office after Saturday's larceny. What happened was grotesquely wrong, but it had so much precedent that acceptance of the fix should be there in small print in any fight contract. In the long run the whole business will be of immense benefit to Lewis. He stands this morning as an unappealing plodder who has seized what moral high ground boxing has left.

Anyway, what did Lennox really think would happen? Damon Runyon, who covered a fight or two in the Garden, used to tell people the story of the old gambler who was on his deathbed when his son came to him for advice on how to get through life. "Some day son," said the gambler, "you will come upon a man who will lay down in front of you a new deck of cards with the seal unbroken and offer to bet he can make the jack of spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear."

"Yes?" said the son.

"Well son, don't get involved because nothing is surer than you are going to get an earful of cider."

Whatever happened to the good guys who used to run boxing on the level anyway. Straight diamonds the lot of them. Where are you now Frankie Carbo, Blinky Palermo, Eddie Cocos? Where are you now that Lennox Lewis has an earful of scrumpy and we are all a tizzy.