“Lewis could lose his career if he loses, and he knows it,” Steward said, before sagely adding: “Oliver’s full of confidence that he can beat Lennox because he has been led to believe Lennox doesn’t have heart. They were again fighting for the WBC title, this time vacant after Tyson had given it up having won it from Bruno. McCall, who had replaced Steward with George Benton, had beaten Larry Holmes before losing his title to Bruno, and then secured victories over Oleg Maskaev and James Stanton. By the time of their rematch, at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas on 7 February 1997, Lewis, under Steward’s guidance, had beaten Lionel Butler, Justin Fortune, Tommy Morrison and Ray Mercer.
The most difficult night of Lewis’ career was also the greatest of the erratic McCall’s. “I had a great cheerleader in my corner, but not much of a trainer. “I was making a lot of mistakes and I wasn’t being told about it,” Lewis later said. When one such left was thrown in the second round and Lewis’ chin was unprotected, McCall threw and landed a powerful right, knocking the champion to the canvas at Wembley Arena so heavily that after Lewis returned to his feet following a count of six the referee Jose Guadalupe Garcia rightly rescued him.Īlready frustrated with the methods of his then-trainer Pepe Correa, the previously undefeated Lewis, after also considering the decorated Angelo Dundee, recruited none other than Steward to be Correa’s successor and oversee the rebuild required to make him the world’s leading heavyweight. Recognising Lewis remained reliant on his natural talent – since impressing in stopping Donovan ‘Razor’ Ruddock in two rounds he had laboured to victories over Tony Tucker, Bruno and Phil Jackson – Steward had prepared McCall to counter what he perceived to be Lewis’ lazy left hand. In McCall’s corner that night, however, working his 94th world title fight was Steward, as effective a motivator as he was technically and tactically aware. So heavily favoured was Lewis, then the WBC heavyweight champion, the night of 24 September 1994 that not only had McCall been installed as a 5/1 underdog – even amid an awareness of his success as a sparring partner for Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno – but that an agreement existed for Lewis to fight his great rival Riddick Bowe the following March, after which it was hoped that the winner would meet the imprisoned Tyson. With Lewis, as the trainer of his then-opponent Oliver McCall, Steward had even proved the inspiration behind the significant upset victory that ultimately proved Lewis’ making. If with Hearns, one of the revered Four Kings, he masterminded the evolution of a once unremarkable puncher into one of the most devastating in history, in the similarly great Lewis and Klitschko he rescued and rebuilt the careers of two heavyweight champions whose futures were under threat. They joined forces after Steward masterminded Oliver McCall’s, right, victory over Lewis
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