WHEN a fighter has a point to prove, no stone is left unturned in his determination to achieve the desired result. He will prepare diligently and invariably reap his reward in the ring. But when he is unmotivated and under-prepared, it is a different story entirely. In with an opponent he perceives as no threat, he places himself in immediate peril.

In Oliver McCall, Lennox Lewis was facing a challenger he did not respect, a man of undoubted physical fortitude but one who was both temperamental and inconsistent. McCall was better known for his countless sparring sessions with Mike Tyson and others than for anything he had achieved in his own career, which had been blighted by drug and alcohol abuse. At 29, McCall had beaten few fighters of note in his 34 bouts and had no championship experience.

Before the fight, Lewis’s handlers were busy looking ahead. Frank Maloney, Lewis’s manager, had been trying to negotiate a big-money bout with Michael Moorer, the new WBA and IBF champion, before announcing that Lewis would next be defending in a mammoth showdown against bitter rival Riddick Bowe, who had by now been without a championship for nearly a year.

Although McCall was clearly being overlooked, Maloney insisted Lewis’s mind was on the job. ‘He has this fear of losing, that is one of the greatest things,’ Maloney told WireTV. ‘If you’ve got that, you’re always going to be on guard and not take any unnecessary chances.’

The rumoured truth appeared to be very different. There were reports that the discordant attitude of trainer Pepe Correa had caused a rift in the camp and affected the usually meticulous Lewis’s attitude to training. Lewis had apparently disagreed with the choice of sparring partners brought in and missed parts of his normal routine, sometimes failing to turn up for training at all. It raised concerns over Lewis’s physical and mental preparedness for McCall, a fighter he was heavily favoured to beat.

McCall, by contrast, had been training for four months and given himself an extra edge by bringing in a new trainer in the shape of the knowledgeable and respected Emanuel Steward.

Despite the odds against McCall, Steward foresaw his man troubling Lewis. ‘Because Lennox is extremely skilful, a good puncher and naturally talented, I think Oliver McCall presents the biggest problem in the world that he could face,’ said Steward. ‘Oliver’s a big, strong man, 230lbs, with tremendous natural reflexes and talent that he has never even utilised. I was amazed when I started working with him at the foot speed that he had in addition to his strength.’

On the night, McCall was the complete antithesis of Lewis. At times, he looked close to the edge mentally, weeping as he walked to the ring while the champion oozed his usual calm. But despite his obvious emotional fragility, the challenger was physically ready and presented a clear and present danger to Lewis.

‘I’m gonna be the next heavyweight champion of the world,’ McCall had predicted at the press conference to announce the fight a few months earlier. ‘Before I come out of the ring, all I’m gonna hear is “the new...”

Astonishingly, he was right. Twenty seconds into the second round, Lewis’s world was turned upside down. As he went to throw a jab, McCall beat him to it with his own right. While Lewis’s punch and a following right missed, McCall’s found its target, detonating on the point of Lewis’s chin. Lewis collapsed instantly on to his back, his face frozen by a vacant glaze. He somehow pulled himself upright but tottered backwards before lurching sideways, almost in the same movement. There was no escaping the crisis. Lewis was gone. Almost instantaneously, as Lewis held up his hands and desperately tried to right himself, referee Jose Garcia waved the fight over. While Lewis, who could barely stand, did his best to look indignant, McCall star-jumped in utter jubilation.

‘What can I say?’ a tearful McCall told the Associated Press in his dressing room after the fight. ‘I am happy, I am thrilled. We knocked him out. We did it!’

In defeat, Lewis was less than gracious, claiming McCall had simply landed a ‘lucky punch’ and was helped by the referee. His camp later protested but there would be no rematch – at least not yet.

‘I am absolutely sure of what I did,’ Garcia said later. ‘Lennox Lewis was knocked out. To allow more punches to Lennox Lewis would have fatal consequences. My duty is to protect the health of the fighter.’

McCall’s victory not only jettisoned Lewis’s first reign as champion but also reopened the door to his promoter Don King, who was now awaiting the release from prison of his biggest cash cow, Mike Tyson, with even more relish. Just over a week later, King’s re-emergence as a factor in the heavyweight division was greeted memorably in Sports Illustrated by the British columnist Hugh McIlvanney.

‘It was a night when the most ominous cackle in boxing carried all the way from a northern suburb of London to a cell block in Indiana and sent a shiver down many a spine on both sides of the Atlantic,’ McIlvanney wrote. ‘Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh. The signature crowing of Don King – even more than the gusher of self-congratulation and mangled quotation it punctuated – let the other leading connivers in the world’s most-manipulable sport know exactly what they can expect now that King is back in economic control of the heavyweight division.’

For Lewis, it was the first time in his professional life that he had tasted the pain of defeat. But from every negative comes a positive. He would soon start to rebuild, aided by the very man who had masterminded his downfall – Emanuel Steward.