Lewis No Champion In Win Over Mercer

NEW YORK —  First Lennox Lewis took punches from Ray Mercer then he was booed by the fans at Madison Square Garden, after the former WBC heavyweight champion stumbled to a majority decision over Mercer on Friday night.

In the second of three 10-round bouts, Lewis, 30, of Britain, couldn’t rid himself of the 35-year-old Mercer, and showed poorly in what was touted as a tuneup for a proposed fight with Mike Tyson.

The 6-foot-4 Lewis, 247 pounds, scored often with his left jab and landed several sharp 1-2 combinations and uppercuts, but Mercer, standing 6-2 and weighing 236 pounds, backed Lewis up repeatedly with a strong left jab, and had him in trouble on a couple occasions.

One judge scored the fight even, another gave Lewis a two-point victory margin and a third favored Lewis by one point. There were no knockdowns but both fighters’ faces were badly marked and both were bleeding from the mouth. At the end, many of the 17,041 fans booed the decision.

“I hit him with some shots and he kept coming,” Lewis said. “Ray Mercer gave me a lot of pressure. This was a positive step toward a [Mike] Tyson fight. I’m not taking any easy fights. This was preparation for a Mike Tyson fight.”

After the bout, Mercer suggested that he should be the one to fight Tyson, because their styles are similar and it’s the fight fans want to see.

“I didn’t think I lost the fight. I just went out to fight and win,” Mercer said.

In the third of three 10-round bouts, Evander Holyfield stopped Bobby Czyz after five rounds.

Holyfield, 33, a former undisputed champion, dominated Czyz through the first five rounds. During a rest break after the fifth round, Dr. Rufus Sadler went to Czyz’s corner and Czyz told him, “My vision is blurry and my eyes are burning.”

Sadler asked Czyz if he could continue and the fighter told him “not realistically.”

Czyz’s corner thought Holyfield might have had something on his gloves but referee Ron Lipton said that after the fight was stopped, he rubbed Holyfield’s gloves against his own eyes and nothing happened.

Holyfield, 211 pounds, got inside any time he wanted and scored well with short punches to the head. In the third, Holyfield pinned Czyz, 210 pounds, to the ropes and worked him over until Lipton gave Czyz a standing-eight count.

In the night’s opening bout, Tim Witherspoon, a former World Boxing Council and World Boxing Assn. champion looking for another title shot at the age of 38, knocked down Jorge Luis Gonzalez twice and stopped him at 2:54 of the fifth round.

Witherspoon hurt Gonzalez with a right uppercut with two minutes to go in the round. The punch drove Gonzalez into a corner and Witherspoon bombarded him with head punches, dropping Gonzalez to his knees. Gonzalez’s manager, Louis DeCubas, then climbed the steps waving a towel and referee Joe Santarpia stopped the fight.

Holyfield, 32-3 with 22 knockouts, and Lewis, 29-1 with 24 knockouts, each were guaranteed $2 million. Witherspoon, 35-4 with 30 knockouts, earned $200,000.