No dispute in Lewis win over Botha

Ron Borges

Sunday, July 16, 2000 | 10:51 a.m.

LONDON - Boxing's White Buffalo became extinct Saturday night, and it didn't take long for Lennox Lewis to wipe out the herd.

With the first overhand right the undisputed heavyweight champion landed, he buckled the knees of Frans Botha, the self-styled White Buffalo of South Africa. Although Botha did not drop, he reeled backward from mid-ring to the ropes like a man hit by a stun gun.

Perhaps not wanting to disappoint the estimated crowd of 9,500 who had gathered at London Arena, Lewis approached cautiously and took heed to do no more damage for the moment.

It was not a long moment.

By midway through the next round, Botha was often leaning backward and seldom punching until Lewis suddenly dropped a chopping right hand to the ear that buckled Botha's knees again. A short left came right behind it into the middle of Botha's face. Already headed floorward, Botha did not hit his knees soon enough as the champion leaped forward and slammed one final, long right hand to the face that swept Botha out of the ring facefirst.

Referee Larry O'Connell, who had been so vilified in England for calling the first Lewis-Evander Holyfield fight a draw, needed no help with his vision this time. On his hands and knees with his face hanging outside the ring and facing a roaring crowd he could neither hear nor see, Botha's helplessness was obvious and O'Connell waved his hands immediately after Botha tottered to his feet at the count of 6.

"Lennox caught me with a great shot like a champion and what can you do," Botha asked no one in particular.

Lewis had come home to fight in London for the first time in six years (and probably for the last time) for just this purpose - to destroy his opponent and continue claiming his place as the world's best heavyweight.

"He kept Botha in a zone where he was totally ineffective," said Emanuel Steward, Lewis's often hard-to-please trainer. "He kept him where Lennox could fight and Botha couldn't. I couldn't believe he could land three hard blows like that so fast and knock him out of the ring like (he was) an 80-pound man."

The victory upped Lewis's record to 36-1-1 with 29 KOs and left him well-rested for a scheduled November fight with International Boxing Federation No. 1 contender David Tua, who is a far more powerful puncher than Botha (40-3-1) but an even smaller man.

But Lewis had more than his destruction of Botha on his mind to send back to the man in America he really wants to fight. He also had a postfight message: "Tell Mike Tyson, either put up or shut up," Lewis said. "He's fighting guys like Lou Savarese and talking about being the best since (Jack) Dempsey and all that rubbish. He gave up his championship a long time ago. He's not even the best in his era. Evander Holyfield beat him twice. I'm the undisputed heavyweight champion. I'm the man at the top."

Indeed so, but business must go on. And with Tyson an unwilling and unlikely future victim for Lewis, earlier in the evening another potential slaughter victim named Wladimir Klitschko was put on display. For seven rounds, the heavily hyped heavyweight from the Ukraine bombed a kid from Queens named Monte Barrett with looping right hooks and solid left hands, driving him to the floor five times before referee Richie Davies came to the conclusion that enough was enough. By the time he did, at 2:42 of the seventh round, enough had been more than enough for Barrett.

By then Klitschko had beaten the stuffing out of him, badly cutting his right eye and dropping him three times in the seventh round before Davies stepped in and stopped the fight. That came long after Barrett's initial trip to the floor, late in the first round when Klitschko dropped him with a sneak attack of a hook off the break.

That punch left so lasting an impression on Barrett that he spent an inordinate amount of time the rest of the night clutching the towering Ukrainian to his chest. Fred Astaire spent less time cheek to cheek with Ginger Rogers than Barrett did with Klitschko, yet the strategy did little toward bringing him a victory.

Klitschko's long jab landed repeatedly. When he found his distance, he hurt Barrett (23-2) either with short right hooks or stinging lefts that convinced his opponent to pursue his strategy of clutching him until Klitschko finally rid himself with a thud in the seventh round. First a right-left combination dropped the tiring Barrett midway through the round and split open the side of his eye. When he got up, blood was trickling down his face. But before it had time to reach his chin, Klitschko dropped him again with another right hand.

Klitschko was ordered back to work after Barrett got up again. So, again, he summarily clubbed him to the floor a third time with one more thudding right to the face. As Barrett fell, even Davies could no longer ignore the carnage and called a halt to the affair.

But Klitschko (34-1, 32 KO's) and HBO both got what they wanted, since each was hoping for the kind of knockout that would allow them to continue building him into a future opponent for the man who would soon follow him into the ring and leave even sooner.