I’ll definitely be lighter

I’ll definitely be lighter.”The clamour for a re-match will no doubt be led by Home Box Office Television, which offered the weekend fight free to its subscribers but is certain to pitch for a pay-per-view re-match in November or December. Kerry Davis, the HBO vice-president, who before the first bell talked up the chances of World Boxing Council title-holder Lewis’s next, and maybe last, fight being against the World Boxing Association champion, Roy Jones, gave the green light to a re-match when he said: “This was a great fight, and I’m sure there will be a big demand for a return.”There is no doubt about it. Sixteen thousand fans in the Staples Center, the home of the Los Angeles Lakers, gave Klitschko a hero’s ovation and booed Lewis out of the ring. Lewis shrugged and said: “That was because they like a good fight and were pleased to see that Klitschko had come to fight. But if there is a re-match, there can be no doubt about the result.

Just look at the state of his face.”Lewis might also have profitably looked at the state of his own image. He came into the ring, or at least Thursday’s weigh-in, as the respected and untouchable king of the heavyweights, rated by George Foreman, no less, as one of the five greatest in history. He left it to a chorus of sneers, and a tirade from the International Boxing Federation champion, Chris Byrd, who shouted: “We saw tonight what you got left in the tank ­ it’s nothing The way you prepared for this fight was a disgrace. You were garbage against a guy who quit on me.”In fact, Klitschko’s only previous defeat came when, after leading Byrd comfortably, he tore his left shoulder and decided to stay in his corner because of the risk of permanent injury. Here, Klitschko passed all the tests on his nerve and courage, and in the second round he swept the floundering Lewis close to defeat with a series of powerful right hands to the head.”He didn’t hurt me, he woke me up,” Lewis said Unfortunately, though, that didn’t end the nightmare.

It was broken only when the doctor asked Klitschko to look at him directly and noted that the fighter had to move his head to do so. “I noticed,” Wallace said, “that his upper eyelid was cut away and obscuring the pupil of his eye. That meant he could not see a punch coming from straight ahead, which told me he couldn’t defend himself.”Klitschko protested that he could see perfectly, adding: “I knew Lewis was not in great condition and I was going to exploit that in the later rounds. At the end of the fight I pushed him because I wanted him to say to the camera what he had said to me. He told me that he would give me a re-match.”Almost certainly Lewis will, not least because of his track record of redeeming himself from critical breakdowns in professional concentration. It happened after his shocking defeats by Oliver McCall in 1994 and Hasim Rahman two years ago.On both occasions Lewis reinvented himself as a dedicated champion, went to training camp, did his work and demolished his conquerors.

But there are only so many times a fighter can do that.Even though the record says that Lewis beat Klitschko by technical knock-out, the truth was that his performance belonged in the McCall-Rahman category. It wasn’t a victory but a seriously disfiguring blemish, one that he will seek to remove at the first opportunity while dramatically improving his income Lewis earned around $7m for his weekend’s work. He will demand at least three times as much for a re-match that will carry something of the aura of one of the creations of ringside observer Sylvester Stallone. His Rocky Balboa went to war with the robotic Russian, Ivan Drago Klitschko happens to be Ukrainian, but no less robotic. As robots go, though, Klitschko was surprisingly inventive, and Steward admitted: “He surprised me. I believe Lennox would have knocked him out in the seventh round if the fight hadn’t been stopped, but there’s no doubt he gave us some problems.”However, they were not so many as Lewis gave himself when he came into the ring so heavy. When the fight was halted, Klitschko led by two points on the cards of all three judges.