The 6ft 5in 34-year-old Briton had found it hard to win respect - despite his moral victory in the drawn fight with Holyfield.

Lewis has fought and beaten most of the top fighters in his weight class for the last decade, but this did not make him a household name in America.

Cockney roots

Lewis spent the first 12 years of his life in West Ham, London. Because of family circumstances, he was forced to uproot to Canada and was immediately the butt of jokes on the school playground because of his thick cockney accent.

Frank Maloney has been Lewis's manager since day one

In order to defend himself against future jibes, he took up boxing.

Because of his size and skills, Lewis was an immediate success, and represented Canada at the 1984 Olympics, where he was beaten in the quarter-finals by eventual gold medallist American Tyrell Biggs.

He resisted the chance to turn professional, and continued his amateur career with the aim of winning a gold medal at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

That goal was achieved courtesy of a second stoppage of another American, Riddick Bowe.

The two would become big rivals, although they would never actually meet again in the ring.

Lewis declined a number of offers to begin his professional career in the US, and instead chose the relatively unknown English promoter Frank Maloney as his manager and another unknown, John Davenport, was named as his trainer.

His first fight was a second round stoppage of British veteran Al Malcolm.

Low-key beginnings

From there, Lewis continued his career on a fairly low key level, meeting a string of unknown opponents until signing for a fight with fellow Briton, Gary Mason.

The bout would prove to be a crossroads battle for both men, Lewis winning in six rounds to confirm himself as the country's leading heavyweight, while the defeated Mason retired.

The quality of his opposition was significantly improved after that fight, with Lewis defeating former world champions Glenn McCrory and Mike Weaver, avenging his only Olympic defeat with a third round knockout of Biggs.

He also changed his trainer, bringing in Pepe Correa, a former cornerman of Sugar Ray Leonard.

By October 1992, Lewis was ready for the upper echelons of the division, and signed for a fight with Canadian Donovan 'Razor' Ruddock, the man who had swapped punches for 19 rounds with Mike Tyson.

But Ruddock's reputation counted for nothing, as Lewis disposed of him in two rounds, and was subsequently awarded the WBC version of the heavyweight title.

He was to successfully defend his title on three occasions over the next two years, including a stoppage of Frank Bruno.

Yet in each fight, he appeared at times bored and lethargic, and his American critics maintained that fights with the likes of Bowe or Holyfield would result in severe beatings.

That theory appeared to be vindicated in September 1994 by a second round loss to journeyman Oliver McCall, a fighter who had never beaten a top-ranked opponent.

Team Lewis regrouped, firing Correa and bringing in Emmanuel Steward, trainer of more than a dozen world champions at the famous Kronk gymnasium in Detroit, Michigan, and ironically the man that had masterminded McCall's win over Lewis.

Critics dismissive

The road back from the McCall defeat was not easy - many in the American fight game had been dismissive of Lewis since he turned professional, and they were more than happy to turn their back on him once he had tasted defeat.

It became necessary, therefore, to match Lewis against tougher opposition than he had faced when champion.

Men like Tommy Morrison, Lionel Butler and Ray Mercer, all top 10 contenders tasted defeat at the hands of Lewis, and by February 1997, another title shot came his way, although ironically, it was against McCall.

Emmanuel Steward takes much credit for Lewis' recent improvement

But this was a different McCall to one he had previously faced, one that had just recently come out of drug rehabilitation, and when the referee stopped the bout after five rounds, it was because the American simply refused to fight back.

After that, Lewis made four defences of the WBC title, and although untroubled during those, he still lacks the recognition of men like Holyfield, Tyson or Bowe.

His management recognised this, signing for the first Holyfield fight in March and accepting the shorter end of the purse money, in the hope that a Lewis win would bring them more than the single most lucrative prize in sport.