Battle of giants / Sandy feedback

Not since the days of Mountain-Man Primo Carnera (Da Preem) and the hulking Jack Johnson had two heavyweights crowded the pugilistic pit with so much gristle and muscle. World heavyweight champion Lewis Lennox and Vitaly Klitschko – each – easily towered 6-5 and beyond, as high as you can go under the arc lights. Weight-wise, the two giants packed easily much more than 500 pounds. Never had fistiana witnessed two pachyderms in the same ring, each primed by their profession and a brutal, atavistic audience to destroy each other.

Either the fight would be boring because big men, like big elephants, lumber and shovel into each other without much speed, brains and dazzle. Or this one could be an exception. Two overgrown but deadly heavyweights perhaps evenly matched, perhaps two speeding freight trucks about to go into a highway collision with the brakes off – and you can take it from there.

The latter was what happened. It was a great fight, bruising, bristling and brimming with surprises.

The big surprise was the Russian-born Ukranian. He didn’t look, at first sight, like a fist-fighter at all. He looked like one of those extra-tall Russian gentry with a pince-nez who would have been perfect as a Cossack colonel in a film, with a gorgeous blonde in tow. Remember that Klitschko was ballyhooed before the fight as a bookworm with a doctorate in the physical sciences who spoke five European languages. He would be more at home in the opera than a prize ring. And yet you knew, you sensed even before he threw the first punch, Vitali was not pushover.

He had a perfect body, huge with a trim waist. He had height. He had tremendous physical strength. He couldn’t be turned around by Lennox like the handle of a bicycle. And, by golly, he could punch.

In almost all six rounds before the fight ended, Klitschko pounded Lennox with rattling jabs, then lefts and rights that had the world heavyweight champion reeling, shaking his head in surprise, then holding on. And the challenger could do it because his range and level of fire was right there – Lennox’s ebony face. Two inches taller than Lennox, Klitschko was firing virtually point-blank. His target, more often than not, took the punches, and couldn’t swivel away. And the damage showed as Lennox’s knees shivered and drooped like a tree branch bounced by a gale.

The world champion had been idle for over a year. And this showed. Lennox probably thought Kiltschko could easily be demolished, a pugilistic pancake he could easily devour during coffee-break. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Right?

Klitschko got the best of Lennox’s punches, particularly in the third. Once an uppercut hit him flush on the jaw, but the Ukranian just shrugged it off where other boxers, similarly smashed by Lennox, would have keeled over and joined the long sleep of the nightingales. That was Lennox’s only round – the third. And well, it was his round. For he opened up a gash below Vitaly’s left eye, a big gash that opened up like a baby’s small mouth. Then it enlarged into a widening gash that the ring doctor spotted after the sixth round and ordered that the fight be halted. Otherwise, it could have permanently blinded Klitschko’s left eye.

And yet. At the time the fight was stopped, Klitschko, despite the gash, was going great guns.

Lewis had already stepped into the muck, a treacherous slippery muck where fighters who have aged and fought too long normally sprawl. The challenger’s guns were firing with deadly accuracy. They sought the world champion’s jaw, often found it. And as each shot landed, I was watching Lennox legs. They would dip one floor like an elevator, struggle mightily to straighten up, droop again.

Let’s sum it up. One, the champion was not in perfect condition for the fight. Two, age had caught up with him. This showed as Klitschko wrestled him half across the ring where before Lewis, just the sight of him, tall, burly, fearsome and formidable, would drill fear of the Almighty in his foes.

In a rematch, I figure Klitschko will easily take the measure of Lewis. In fist-fighting, more than any other sport, Father Time is relentless. The lungs do not fill up as fast with oxygen any more. The reflexes are a split-second too late. A former flood of punches can no longer go out with crash speed, the legs tarrying a little, the eyes unable to spot a hungry left before it booms into a crushing left hook.

Yes in a year or so, Lennox Lewis will be gone. Yes, he was good, maybe at times even near great. But this was at a time, a period when the heavyweight division was bereft of sparkling phenoms like Muhammad Ali and Jolting Joe Frazier and George Foreman. And we can go back to the days of Jack Dempsey, the unforgettable Manassa Mauler and Gene Tunney who beat Dempsey in that unforgettable "Long Count", Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, and yes, John L. Sullivan and the inimitable Jack Johnson. Johnson was probably the greatest. But he was a negro at a time negroes were hardly allowed in the ring.

They were legends in their time, each fit to star in a Rashomon movie where time, tide and the genius of extraordinary men chased night from the horizon and limned it with lightning bursts, and the clash of the titans.

Mike Tyson is still around. He would have been great but for an abysmally sick mind which could not differentiate between the rape of a woman in a bed and the crushing of a man in a ring. In the end Tyson destroyed himself as he switched from prison to prison. And in between picked fights in bars, lounges and the streets. In prison, he became a Muslim. Out of prison, he was still the homicidal maniac. Lately, he plugged two bystanders slug-silly.

Back to Vitaly Klitschko. If handled right and given the breaks, especially a rematch with Lennox Lewis, he can go far.

* * *

Walking through a Greenbelt alley just days ago, I spotted a couple looking at me. I didn’t give it a thought until they came over, said hello, and asked if I was Teddy Benigno. I said yes. To my surprise, they muttered "condolences" in my ears. Condolences? Yes, they explained, they had read my column on Sandy, and they were "very touched". Oh, I said, "You must be dog-owners or dog-lovers". They answered that they were.

It was uncanny. I had received a raft of letters and some telephone calls on that column on Sandy. I had written it, or rather I had written around it, until almost unbidden the words flowed and I realized I had my own personal tribute to a dog we had learned to cherish. One of the callers was Peter Wallace. And I mention him particularly because Peter is a dog lover and fancier and he said he had also grieved in his time. Peter went a step further by telling me his Labrador had just given birth to a litter of pups. Could I come over and choose any pup I fancied?

Anyway, back to dogs, why we love them and they us.

The following is one of my all-time favorites. Many years ago, when I was vacationing in Paris at the suburban residence of an Agence France Presse colleague (let’s call them by their first names David and Marion), I realized they had no children. What the couple had was a big, really huge dog. He would stand on his hindlegs and be taller than us. His name was Duke. Whenever they came home late afternoon, David and Duke romped in the living room. Romp? They fought, they wrestled, they rolled on the floor. You would have thought it was a real fight, as they barked and they growled, reared up for a breather and fought again with unusual ferocity.

That was the way they played. That was how they showed their affection for each other. David was a big man. And that probably was his exercise, wrestling Duke and being wrestled back.

Well, one day, David and Marion got their marching orders to leave for Hong Kong to man the AFP bureau there. This was the assignment they had long been waiting for – an Asian assignment. But the rejoicing was throttled to a choke. They couldn’t bring Duke along. They couldn’t leave Duke in the custody of friends. Duke after all was not a pet, but a huge animal, almost like a yearling horse. Nobody could really take care of him like David and Marion did. They couldn’t take Duke to a nearby forest and abandon him to the fates.

The solution was Solomonic. They both agreed, with tears in their eyes, that David would indeed bring Duke to the forest – and there put a bullet in his head. And bury him. Which is what David did. When time came for me to pass by Hong Kong on my way back to Paris, I visited the couple. Marion warned me beforehand never to mention the name of Duke or in anyway allude to him.

I suppose Duke was the son they never had, the brother David never had. They never had a dog after Duke or any other pet.