5 Biggest Heavyweight Boxing Upsets

#4: Lennox Lewis v Hasim Rahman

April 22nd 2001 | Brakpan, South Africa

The great Lennox Lewis, the ‘pugilist specialist’, was twice sent sprawling to the canvas in devastating, unexpected knockout defeats. Both losses were later avenged, which did not of course diminish the shock of either upset at the time.

His first fight against Hasim Rahman was the classic cautionary tale of an over-confident, complacent champion underestimating a fired-up challenger who knew he was getting his one big shot - and grabbed it with both hands. Or more specifically, with one huge right hand.

By 2001, Lewis reigned supreme as the heavyweight division’s dominant fighter. His only serious rival to that claim was Evander Holyfield, who he beat by unanimous decision 18 months earlier after first fighting the ‘Real Deal’ to a controversial draw in 1999.

Over the previous decade, Lewis had dispatched a string of 90s notables including Holyfield, Michael Grant, Shannon Briggs, Andrew Golota, Henry Akinwande and Ray Mercer. He’d stopped Frank Bruno in seven rounds in 1993, shortly after announcing his arrival as a top tier heavyweight with a stunning two-round demolition of the dynamite-fisted Donovan ‘Razor’ Ruddock.

The heavy-hitting Ruddock had given a peak Mike Tyson all the trouble he could handle in two thunderous bouts, but Lewis just blasted him away. His lone defeat to Oliver McCall – more on that here – had been avenged in some style, and he was unbeaten in seven years entering the ring against the respected but unheralded Hasim Rahman from Baltimore.

The names on Rahman’s CV were no match for Lewis’s. Corrie Sanders – who would go on to knockout Wladimir Klitschko in another big upset – had been stopped in seven, but Rahman had lost against both Oleg Maskaev and David Tua. Lewis had beaten Tua easily in his fight prior to Rahman.

A glance at the two fighters’ amateur record summed up the different levels they were operating on. Lewis was a standout star, defeating future world champion Riddick Bowe to land super heavyweight gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Rahman had fought only 10 amateur bouts, first lacing up a pair of gloves aged 20 in an attempt to escape the Baltimore street life which had nearly killed him on several occasions.

And yet, the warning signs for Lewis were there.

The fight was being staged at Carnival City, a short drive from Johannesburg, South Africa at an altitude of nearly 6,000 feet. To accommodate US TV networks, it was scheduled to begin at 5am local time.

Lewis had trained, poorly by most accounts, in Los Angeles, arriving in South Africa less than two weeks before the fight. Later than ideal. His arrival was delayed due to being on set for a cameo role in the Hollywood blockbuster Ocean’s Eleven, featuring an all-star cast including George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts.

Pre-fight talk centred on a lucrative showdown against Mike Tyson, a fading force at 35, after Lewis had taken care of Rahman. When the champ tipped the scales at a career high 18st 1lb, the impression was not one of a focused heavyweight champion with his mind on the man in front of him.

The chance to fight for the world heavyweight title was probably not something the young Hasim Rahman thought about much while he was getting shot and stabbed growing up in Baltimore. He’d also survived a fatal car accident, at a price of 500 stiches to his face and neck.

But ever since finding sanctuary in the boxing gym, he was totally dedicated to the sport, and he sensed that Lewis was taking him lightly. Rahman based his training camp in New York’s Catskill Mountains to prepare for the altitude, and arrived a month before the fight to acclimatise further. In short, he was preparing like a champion.

Billed as ‘Thunder in Africa ’, at stake were Lewis’s WBC & IBF heavyweight titles. Both men looked calm as they entered the ring, Lewis relaxed as always, Rahman confident.

They each enjoyed reasonable success early on, but it was Lewis who led 39-37 (three rounds to one) on all three judges’ scorecards after four rounds. But the champion was looking laboured, breathing heavily on his stool between the fourth and fifth.

Certainly, Rahman was in the contest and didn’t look like the 20/1 outsider the bookies had made him. He had some swelling around his left eye after an accidental clash of heads, but all that was about to prove irrelevant.

Lewis started the fifth well but was tagged by a solid Rahman right in the second minute of the round. The challenger followed up with a series of jabs, none of which seemed to trouble the champion as he leant back off the ropes, smirking.

But he wasn’t smirking for long, as seconds later Rahman detonated a huge straight right, landing flush on the champion’s jaw with 40 seconds to go in round five. Lewis was dropped heavily and wasn’t even close to beating the count. Lightning had struck again, as for the second time in his career he’d suffered a stunning upset knockout defeat.

The result is often put down to Lewis’ lack of preparation, but that doesn’t do justice to Rahman’s performance. Lewis trainer Emmanuel Steward claimed that it wasn’t lack of fitness but more a lack of “mental focus and intensity”, and the boxing ring is the wrong place to be doing without either of those.

“I would have expected Lennox Lewis to win that fight seven days a week, 24 hours a day”, exclaimed George Foreman, as the dazed, dethroned Lewis was left asking his corner, “what happened?”.

It seemed strange that Lewis, a consummate professional and one of the smartest fighters in the game, would fall into the trap of under-estimating his opponent – especially as he’d already done similar with such dire consequences earlier in his career.

The fall out was unseemly, Lewis claiming that Rahman got lucky, Rahman demanding his respect. With Rahman joining Don King after becoming champ, Lewis had to go through the courts to get his contractually obliged rematch.

Seven months later in Vegas, a much sharper, more focused Lewis delivered emphatically. Landing a massive right hand every bit as devastating as Rahman’s in the first fight, it was all over in four rounds. Lewis had his belts back.

A sore loser after the first fight, Lewis wasn’t exactly a gracious winner second time round. That was out of character for one of boxing’s more thoughtful and level-headed champions. It just goes to demonstrate the extreme physical and emotional demands that boxing at the highest level places on its combatants. But Rahman, a decent man despite his wayward past, deserved better from Lewis (in a pleasing post-script, the two men are on much friendlier terms in retirement).

By now 36 years old, Lennox Lewis, self-proclaimed ‘pugilist-specialist’ and one of Britain’s greatest ever boxers, was approaching the end of the line. After two more wins over Mike Tyson and Vitali Klitschko, the big man was done.

Hasim Rahman, still in his twenties, would go on to have another 24 contests, eventually calling it quits at the age of 41. But those two fights with Lewis set him up for life. Still in the game as a mentor to young boxers, it turned out, against all the odds, to be a happy ending for the man from Baltimore - a man who came from nowhere to claim the heavyweight championship of the world, and his place in boxing folklore.