FLOYD MAYWEATHER once said, “I won’t get my dues as an active fighter. It will be when I’ve been retired for 20 years when you will all look back and realise how great I am.”
Not quite as poetic – or humble – as Joni Mitchell’s timeless Big Yellow Taxi, but the point is the same in boxing as it is in real life: You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.
Lennox Lewis is the perfect case in point. While he was active, there were question marks over his chin, his fighting spirit and, as his career started to wind down at the turn of the century, his place in history. Now gone for 20 years, we certainly know today
