21 hours ago
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“I wanted to jump out of a plane, but they say I’m too heavy. So I can’t do that.”
Lennox Lewis, a true legend of British and world boxing, celebrated his 60th birthday on Tuesday and he's still looking to push through his boundaries.
With his ambition to try skydiving thwarted, Lewis, the former undisputed world heavyweight champion, has started scuba diving.
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He can bask in a legacy that paved the way for the British heavyweights that followed him. Before Lewis, UK boxing's big men were generally viewed as gutsy challengers who couldn't make it at the highest level.
Since Lewis, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua have spearheaded British boxing's charge into the heavyweight world title scene, with Moses Itauma currently posed to take on the baton.
It still took a quarter of a century for another fighter, Oleksandr Usyk, to follow Lewis and become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
"It is the greatest prize in the world," Lewis told Sky Sports News. "It meant to me that I was the best. There were so many different champions, so many different belts but being undisputed marks me as the No 1 guy and that's what I wanted to do.
"I wanted to bring all the belts together. When they said, 'that guy's heavyweight champion and that guy's heavyweight champion' - no. There can only be one guy.
"That was my aim to go out and get that championship and be undisputed heavyweight champion of the world."
He explained how he kept his motivation to break those boundaries in his career. "There's always somebody out there that says they can beat you and you have to show them that they can't beat you," Lewis said.
"It's hard getting to be the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. But it's even harder to keep it."
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In a glittering career that saw him beat Evander Holyfield, Frank Bruno, Vitali Klitschko and a host of others, he picks out his victories over Ray Mercer and Mike Tyson as his favourites.
"There's so many fights to choose from. All of my fights were really good. I have to say the Mercer fight was a really good fight," Lewis said.
"Because I got hit in that fight and it was back and forth. They like action fights, they like those type of fights and I like those fights as well.
"The Tyson fight, people loved that fight, they said it was a great fight, they loved it and they enjoyed watching it."
That cemented him as the best of his era and left him widely regarded as the best British heavyweight of all-time.
The next great heavyweight?
His advice to Moses Itauma, the rising star on the current heavyweight scene, is that there's no need to rush.
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Lewis thinks Itauma doesn't need to challenge Usyk in the near term. "Way too soon. It's better to wait. Wait until he retires," Lewis said.
"He's not going to be around too long, I'm talking Oleksandr Usyk, and then take your shot. There's no use doing it right now. Right now you're learning everything and you have to wait till the right time.
"You can never be rushed. If you're rushed, it's going to be a bad result for your career. So it's better to take your time, take it when it's there when you're ready."
English (US) ·