LENNOX LEWIS BIO

Lennox Lewis works as a FOX Sports analyst calling Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) boxing fights live on FOX and FOX SPORTS PBC PAY-PER-VIEWS.

Lewis is a three-time boxing world heavyweight champion, a two-time lineal champion, and remains the last heavyweight to hold the undisputed title. He retired from the sport with a record of 42-1-1 with 32 KOs.

Along with Muhammad Ali and Evander Holyfield before him, Lewis is one of three boxers in history to have won the heavyweight championship three times. Lewis has numerous business ventures, philanthropy and charitable projects. He is a major contributor to the Muhammad Ali Center and is a current ambassador for the global based sports charity, Laureus. He lends his talent and expertise to the Canadian youth boxing center, sponsors a youth chess team and is an annual supporter of countless charities and social causes around the globe, all while starting his own charity; The Lennox Lewis League of Champions (LOC) Foundation, whose mission is to inspire the next generation of champions for success in the RING of life.

Lennox Lewis was born in Stratford, East London to Jamaican parents. After the doctor looked at the 4.8 kg (10 pound, 10 ounce), baby, he said, he looks like a Lennox and so he was named. Lennox spent his early years in the East End of London and due to his family’s economic situation his mother immigrated to Canada in search of better job opportunities and left him in the care of a family friend. Without his mother’s presence, he became harder to control and as a result he was sent to several different schools before, in 1977, as a young teenager, Lewis immigrated to Kitchener, Ontario, Canada to be with his mother.

Lennox attended Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute for high school, where he was an all-around athlete who excelled in football, soccer, basketball and track and field. In the 1982–83 school year, he helped the school’s AAA basketball team win the Ontario provincial championship.

Lewis decided that his favorite sport was boxing and set his sight on training exclusively in boxing. He became a dominant amateur boxer and won the world amateur junior title in 1983. At the age of 18, he represented Canada in the 1984 Summer Olympics as a super heavyweight but lost by decision in the quarter-finals to American, Tyrell Biggs, the eventual gold medalist.

Lewis, being a true competitor, decided that he would return to the Olympic games and win gold. In 1988 at the Seoul Olympics, he won the Gold medal in the SuperHeavyweight division. This set the stage for Lewis’s Illustrious boxing career.

He turned professional in 1989 and went on to gain the European title in 1990 and the British Commonwealth Heavyweight title in 1992. He was officially crowned the WBC Heavyweight Champion in January of 1993. In November 1999 Lewis and Evander Holyfield met once again in the ring after their earlier fight ended in a controversial draw. This time Lewis defeated Evander Holyfield to become the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World, unifying the WBC, WBA, IBO and IBF titles.

The crowning moment in his career came in June 2002 when Lewis ceremoniously defeated Mike Tyson. The stage was set for the Lewis vs. Tyson fight 18 years earlier when they sparred, and it was predicted by Tyson’s coach Cus D’Amato that they would meet for the heavyweight championship title. The Lewis-Tyson 2002 fight was the highest grossing pay-per-view professional boxing fight for five years.

In 2002, Lewis was honored by his birth country of England when Queen Elizabeth II awarded him a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). The CBE is an esteemed honor for a British citizen, just one rank below knighthood.

In 2008, Lewis was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, the World Boxing Council’s Hall of Fame and the World Boxing Hall of Fame. In June 2009, Lewis was also inducted in his first year of eligibility into the revered International Boxing Hall of Fame. In 2016, Lewis was honored by the WBC with his picture image permanently embedded in the WBC Heavyweight championship belt.