AFTER more than two years in the boxing wilderness, the waiting was finally over. Lennox Lewis was getting his shot at redemption, a chance to reclaim the championship he had lost so violently and controversially in London. When it came, the man in the opposite corner was not Mike Tyson, who had been compelled by a court to face him, but Oliver McCall, the very fighter who had ended Lewis’s first reign in such stunning fashion. The fight came about because the Tyson camp had gone back on an agreement to face Lewis in a mandatory defence of the WBC title and vacated, having previously paid Lewis $4m in step-aside money to allow Tyson to fight Bruce Seldon for the WBA title.

Despite his disappointment at not facing Tyson – at least not yet – the outcome was poetic for Lewis. He now had the chance to put the record straight against McCall and do it as a much-improved fighter. There would be no underestimating his opponent this time. Lewis had spent $250,000 preparing at a training camp in Scottsdale, Arizona and pushed himself hard. He did not intend to fail.

‘If he beats me this time, I’ll retire,’ Lewis told Dean Juipe of the Las Vegas Sun before the bout. ‘I’m pretty sure he won’t. I realise I made a mistake.’

Emanuel Steward, who had led McCall to victory in the first fight before switching camps, said: ‘When I got Lennox, I think he was performing at about 40 per cent of his ability or potential. Now I’d say he’s at about 70 per cent. He’s got to win impressively. He wasn’t impressive in their first fight. But my job is to bring out the best that Lennox has, and if I do that it should bring him a victory.’

Lewis added: ‘My chin was out and exposed [in the first fight] and he clipped it. It won’t happen again. I’m with a great trainer, I’m mentally tougher than I ever was and I’m physically more aware. I don’t think I’ll ever look bad again.

‘I’ll say this: I’m prepared for a long fight. I don’t think he can outbox me and it would be fine with me if he comes out and comes right at me.

‘It’s taken me two years to get into this position. I’m not going to mess it up.’

Despite his continuing rehabilitation for drug and alcohol abuse and increasingly unpredictable behaviour, McCall sounded confident. ‘I’m clean and sober. I have the eye of the tiger for Lewis. Drugs and alcohol is a disease, but I’m responsible for my recoveries. I don’t have any excuses. I’m living day by day. I am in the same shape as when I knocked Lewis out first time. I’m like Clark Kent. I want to be Superman again. I have people taking care of my legal matters and I’m ready to fight.’

He wasn’t. After a competitive first two rounds, McCall went into meltdown. It led to one of the strangest endings to a fight in boxing history. By the end of the fourth, by which time he had stopped fighting completely, McCall was in tears in his corner. Referee Mills Lane spoke to him for a second time and McCall was allowed to come out for the fifth, but when his odd demeanour continued Lane stopped the fight, giving Lewis the vacant title but not the sort of redemption he had sought.

The next day, McCall tried to explain away what had resembled an emotional breakdown. ‘My strategy was – and I know it sounds kind of absurd – was a kind of rope-a-dope,’ he told a news conference, reported in the New York Times. ‘I didn’t quit, I came to win.’ Later McCall, whose $3m purse was suspended, called for a rematch, insisting: ‘All of my proceeds will be given to charity. I don’t want the money. Not only do I want a rematch, I’ll knock Lewis out.’

Astonishingly, psychiatrist Dr Leonora Petty, who examined McCall, told the media: ‘I think his mental state is just fine.’

In an interview published in The Guardian 12 years later, Lewis’s manager Frank Maloney recalled one of boxing’s oddest nights.

‘What we saw that night wasn’t a fight, it was a grown man having a breakdown in the ring. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – we’d seen him in the build-up, at the press conferences, walking around the hotel, and he was fine. I hadn’t heard that anything was wrong.

‘We realised, though, after the fight, that we’d witnessed a man break down. Our celebrations weren’t anywhere near what we’d normally have. I think it was quite muted.

‘You know, in Vegas, nothing surprises you. You can always expect the unexpected in Vegas, but I must say that was one of the more bizarre fights I’ve ever been involved in.’

Bizarre or not, Lewis had regained what he lost and was about to embark on the most prolific period of his career.