As Lennox Lewis nursed his bruised pride last night, it emerged that defeat at the hands of Hasim Rahman could have cost him what would have been his biggest payday, the much-talked-about super-fight against Mike Tyson. The money had already been raised to ensure that a Lewis-Tyson contest could go ahead later this year with the British fighter guaranteed a $25m purse.
The promoter Frank Warren, with whom Maloney now works, had produced bankers drafts to guarantee a minimum purse to Lewis of $25m. Warren's long-term working agreement with the American television company Showtime - to whom Tyson is contracted - meant he was likely to be able to smooth over the contractual impasse with Lewis's TV company HBO.
"Lewis and his business manager Adrian Ogun insisted on going ahead with Rahman. They thought it was cute being in South Africa and getting paid in an offshore account so they wouldn't be taxed," said Warren. "They thought Rahman was an easy touch. Lennox hadn't trained properly, he was knackered after two rounds and now he's blown the biggest payday of his life.
The post-fight suggestion from Lewis and his trainer Emanuel Steward that Lewis had been unaffected by the move to Johannesburg's high-altitude conditions insults the intelligence of anyone who watched the champion puffing and blowing from the second round onwards like a clapped-out dray horse en route to the knackers' yard.
And it is hard to credit how a responsible professional would have taken three days out of training to hang around a film set only two weeks before defending his world heavyweight title. Hard to believe, but it is precisely what Lewis did.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Lewis did not respect the title and much of what it stands for, and that he showed contempt for an honest opponent who had given everything in his preparations to make the most of his opportunity.
Lewis had said of Rahman: "He's a piece of meat that I'll play with." In their way, although said with a smile, the words were as distasteful as those which habitually fall from Tyson's lips, and Rahman was only too happy to thrust such shabby arrogance straight back in the champion's face.
Rahman is not a great fighter and never will be. His reign at the top could be brief, albeit financially rewarding, if Tyson comes into striking distance. But he was good enough to explode the theory, expounded by experienced critics who should know better, that Lewis deserved to be spoken of in the same breath as Muhammad Ali.
To lose to one moderate fighter in Oliver McCall in 1994 was shocking, but forgivable. Being poleaxed once again by a man who surely could not have lived with a Larry Holmes, Riddick Bowe or a prime Evander Holyfield means Lewis can only be regarded as a decent technician with a questionable chin who prospered in a mediocre era.
With a huge fortune almost certainly making him Britain's richest-ever sportsman, the question has to be whether Lewis can find the motivation to battle back to the top because, if he really wasn't suffering from the altitude as he plodded to this dismal defeat, the only other explanation is that, like Holyfield, he has suddenly found that his body will no longer do his bidding.
