ALTHOUGH the aim was to build Lewis into a top heavyweight contender in Britain, he was taken back to Canada for his sixth fight. He received a rousing reception from the 4,500 crowd, especially when he was introduced as hailing from Kitchener.

Greg Gorrell, a 31-year-old from Kansas, had a decent enough record of 21 wins from 28 contests but had never met anyone of Lewis’s calibre. At just 5ft 11in, Gorrell was considerably shorter than Lewis and, like the Olympic champion’s previous professional opponents, was heavily outweighed.

The difference in size and physical condition was blatantly apparent, with Lewis looking athletic while the American was thick around the waist. The fight was one-sided. Lewis dumped Gorrell on the canvas at the end of the first round but, in contrast to the Melvyn Epps fight, seemed in no hurry to end it.

In the third, booing could be heard in some sections of the crowd as Lewis dropped the pace further. That encouraged the game Gorrell to try and make a fight of it, but he just didn’t have the power to make a dent in Lewis.

The end came soon enough. Lewis, who had been chastised by trainer John Davenport at the end of the fourth round, came out for the fifth with his old menace back.

He unloaded a salvo of punches before several hard rights sent Gorrell down on to his knees. Although he was up at six, Gorrell was badly shaken and bleeding heavily from a cut over the left eye. It was enough for the referee to stop the fight in Lewis’s favour after 51 seconds of the round.

Lewis’s promoter Frank Maloney praised his man’s performance, particularly his punch variety, although there must have been concern about how Lewis paced the fight. At times, he appeared to switch off.

The fight was remembered nearly 30 years later after Gorrell was tragically killed in a road accident in May 2016. ‘His claim to fame is he fought Lennox Lewis,’ Melissa Ramon, Gorrell’s daughter, told the Wichita Eagle. ‘Of course, he lost. That was always kind of a joke we made about it. But he fought him really hard.’

There would be much harder fights to come for Lewis, but they were still a way off yet.