LENNOX Lewis’s back was against the wall and it usually spelt danger for his opponents. He had been in the same position before and it had driven him to deliver some of his most destructive performances to date. This time, though, there was no margin for error. In order to secure the career-defining fight he wanted against Mike Tyson, Lewis had to beat Hasim Rahman in their rematch and do it conclusively.

Despite the nature of his defeat in Johannesburg, most observers appeared to be of the opinion that Lewis had beaten himself. This view was shared by the oddsmakers, who installed Lewis as a 7-2 on favourite to regain his titles. He was also earning $11m, more than double Rahman’s guarantee.

Lewis, who had parted company with long-time manager Frank Maloney less than two weeks before the fight, said the prospect of revenge over Rahman had ‘rekindled a flame’. After the weigh-in, Lewis said: ‘Rahman thinks he is king of the world, thinks he has won the lottery. Well, I’m just about to take away the ticket. Don’t miss this. It’s the big one. I may not be saying as much as him, but I feel thunder. Enough has been said, it’s time for action. Time for me to close that mouth of his. The guy is a one-punch wonder.’

Lewis’s trainer Emanuel Steward sounded less than certain about the outcome. ‘No one knows what Lennox Lewis is going to do when he comes out to fight,’ Steward said in a report in the Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail. ‘We don’t know what he’s going to do. He’s very unpredictable. Everything is the first round of this fight. That’s my biggest worry. Rahman is going to come out and take it to the street right away.’

Rahman, who had turned down several lucrative TV deals to sign with promoter Don King, was certainly not short on confidence after his stunning victory seven months earlier. ‘Whatever he [Lewis] thinks, I welcome the challenge,’ he told a conference call from his training camp in Big Bear, California, reported the Las Vegas Sun. ‘I’m big in his head. I can punch hard and I’m going to mix my arsenal up. I’m psychologically, physically and mentally stronger than Lennox Lewis. I know I humiliated this man. I knocked him out and took his titles. The facts speak for themselves.’

Interest in the bout, which was already high, had intensified when the fighters got into a scuffle on ESPN’s Up Close TV show after Rahman had questioned Lewis’s sexuality. That made the fight personal.

It came out in the ring. After dominating the first three rounds, Lewis swung a right hand at Rahman in the fourth that made him back off. He was measuring his distance. About a minute later, Lewis stepped to his left, threw a jab-cum-hook and followed it instantly with another arcing right. Rahman didn’t see it. The blow zeroed in like a missile and exploded on his chin, laying him out flat, arms spreadeagled. The fight was over.

‘Lennox threw one of the great combinations in the history of boxing,’ Steward told Dave Anderson of the New York Times. ‘The left was not supposed to land, just to get him [Rahman] to move into the right hand that did land.’

Lewis, accused in the past of lacking passion, celebrated as if he meant it. No wonder. He had gained revenge and saved the fight that within months would cement his legacy. ‘I said the belts were on loan,’ Lewis said in a report published in the Washington Post. ‘He [Rahman] had his 15 minutes of fame. Now the belts come home.’

Paul Hayward, reporting in The Telegraph, spelt out the significance of Lewis’s victory. ‘On a weekend when a new mega-resort called Aladdin was being saved from bankruptcy, boxing defied deflationary pressure by scrambling to arrange the most lucrative fight in heavyweight history,’ wrote Hayward.

The way was now clear for the fight the world wanted: Lewis versus Tyson. All that remained was to work out the date, terms and conditions – and both sides were on it from the moment Lewis’s big right hand had hit its target.