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| Birth Name(s) : Lennox Lewis |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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| Profession:
Athlete |
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Full Lennox Lewis Biography
Lennox Claudius Lewis CBE (born September 2, 1965 in West Ham, London, England) is a retired professional boxer who represented Canada in the Olympics and fought under the British flag as a professional. He is a former undisputed lineal heavyweight champion. Along with Muhammad Ali and Evander Holyfield, Lewis is one of three boxers in heavyweight history to have won the Heavyweight Championship on three separate occasions. Lewis is 195cm (6 ft 5 in) tall and sports an 84-inch reach, much longer than average for his height. During his boxing prime, he weighed 112kg (247lb). Lewis often referred to himself as "the pugilist specialist".
Lewis was born in West Ham, London in 1965 to Jamaican born parents, and moved to Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in 1977 at the age of 12. He attended Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute for high school, where he excelled in the sports of Canadian football, soccer and basketball. He eventually decided that his favourite sport was boxing. Future events proved he was quite skilled as well, as he became a dominant amateur boxer and won the world amateur junior title in 1983.
Surprisingly, Lewis chose not to turn professional after the Olympics, and instead fought four more years as an amateur, hoping for a second chance to win a gold medal. After winning several more amateur titles over those years, he travelled to Seoul, South Korea for the 1988 Summer Olympics and achieved his goal. In the gold medal match, Lewis defeated future world champion Riddick Bowe by a second round technical knockout.
Lewis captured the European heavyweight title late in 1990, added the British heavyweight title in March 1991 and the Commonwealth title in April 1992. By this time, Lewis was a consensus top-five heavyweight in the world.
On October 31, 1992, Lewis knocked out Canada's hard-punching Donovan "Razor" Ruddock in two rounds for the No. 1 contender's position in the WBC world rankings. But ultimately, the victory won Lewis even more than that. After Bowe, who had become world heavyweight champion by upsetting Evander Holyfield, refused to fight Lewis as he had vowed before the Holyfield bout, his WBC title was declared vacant. On January 14, 1993, the WBC declared Lewis its champion. He thus became the first world heavyweight titleholder from Britain in the 20th century.
He received a chance to fight for the mandatory position of the WBC and won it by knocking out contender Lionel Butler in the U.S. But the WBC chose to bypass him and give Tyson the first shot at the title that had changed hands to former Lewis- and Tyson-victim Frank Bruno.
On March 13, 1999, Lewis faced WBA and IBF titlist Evander Holyfield in New York City in what was supposed to be a heavyweight unification bout. Although most observers believed Lewis had won the fight, the bout was declared a draw, to much controversy. Eight months later in Las Vegas (November 13, 1999), the two men fought again and Lewis won a close, but unanimous decision.
On June 8, 2002, Lewis defended his title against Tyson. A fight many had hoped would turn out to be one of the classics, turned out to be one-sided as Lennox used his jab and superior reach to score a dominant knockout victory over "Iron Mike". By the eighth round, Tyson was tired and sluggish, his face swollen and his eyes cut. As he came out for the round, his corner begged him to give them one more round of solid effort seemingly in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to get him to KO Lewis. However, it was Tyson who was knocked out by a perfectly timed right hand that sent him to the canvas for the full count.
This fight was the highest-grossing event in pay-per-view history, generating $106.9 million from 1.95 million buys in the USA, until it was surpassed by De La Hoya-Mayweather in 2007.
Ticket sales were slow because they were priced as high as $2,400, but a crowd of 15,327 turned up to see the biggest sporting event ever in the city of Memphis, Tennessee. Tyson also had to pay Lewis $335,000 out of his purse for biting him at the news conference to announce the fight, which was originally scheduled for April 6 2002 in Las Vegas. Las Vegas, however, rejected the fight and several other states refused Tyson a license before Memphis finally bid $12 million to land it.
Lewis is now a boxing commentator on HBO. He also appeared recently in the film Johnny Was as the DJ of a pirate radio station, alongside actors such as Vinnie Jones and Eriq La Salle. |
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