Williams Delivers Knockout Blow to Iron Mike

The bad weather rolled through Louisville most of Friday, then a thunderclap to remember erupted shortly before midnight, the last of Danny Williams's 16 unanswered blows on the ageing chin of Mike Tyson.

Down he went, draped and dead-eyed among the ropes, near the end of the fourth round and down he stayed, to the amazement of a near-full Freedom Hall and viewers in 90 countries, most of whom were surely left to conclude that, after 19 years and a thousand heartaches, this was the last we have seen of Iron Mike in a boxing ring.

Far from the last, though, we have seen of Williams, dismissed here as an 9-1 outsider. Tyson started an unbackable 1-14 favourite. What fools Williams made of one-eyed experts and the bookmakers.

The quiet man from Brixton came to Kentucky, derided as a soft touch, a fighter who has cried before fights, who is mentally weak and lacks heart. All of these barbs were thrown back at his critics in the performance of his career, one he might not match again, but one that he and all of us present will never forget. It was a fairy tale beyond imaginings - even though the fight came within half an hour of being cancelled because the rascally local promoter, Chris Webb, struggled to come up with his downpayment.

Andy Ayling, the travelling representative here of Frank Warren, Williams's promoter, later revealed a tale extraordinary even by boxing's skewed standards.

Webb and his partners failed to deliver a promised payment of $80,000 at the weigh-in on Thursday. It had been due when they signed contracts weeks earlier and remained elusive most of Friday as Ayling threatened to pull Williams out of the fight. When the money had not materialised by lunchtime, Ayling said that he 'planted myself next to Webb and followed him all day. He told me they had run out of money, that there was nothing left. He said he could give me a cheque, but it wouldn't clear. I gave him another two hours.'

The solution was as comical as it was farcical. Webb kept stalling all afternoon and Ayling told Williams's trainer, Jim McDonnell - but not the fighter - that he was considering pulling them out. 'Finally,' said Ayling, 'they found the money - the box-office takings. They gave me the money in a brown paper bag and I spent all night, right up until 10.40pm, counting it [the fight started at 11.13pm]. It came to about $80,000, a third of Danny's purse. I then got a police escort and took the money back to the safe in the hotel I was staying in.'

Webb, of course, denied there had been a problem, saying: 'I was a little confused on foreign broadcast rights, but there was no chance of the fight being called off, absolutely not.' However, Dwight Yarde, Williams's manager, said: 'This time we got Green Shield stamps. Next time we will get real money.'

Ayling said that he has a signed promissory note from Webb and his solicitor for the balance. 'I'm not sure it's worth the paper it's written on,' Ayling said.

Oblivious to the drama, Williams went to the ring calm and determined. But he was all but out on his feet after a savage onslaught by Tyson in the first 40 seconds. He not only held on but then engaged in the sort of war of which few thought he was capable. Williams admitted that he abandoned his game plan of jabbing and moving after two left hooks had nearly separated him from his senses. 'Then,' he said, 'I went to war.'

The intensity of the exchanges barely waned. Tyson said that his left knee went on him at the end of the first and he complained that he could not get full purchase on his left hook. It did not look that way either from 10 rows back or, I would wager, the couple of feet that separated Tyson and Williams for most of the short fight.

Referee Dennis Alfred, one of those clowns boxing occasionally throws up, ludicrously took two points off Williams in the third and later could not recall what for. Nor could he explain why he counted so slowly and distractedly over Tyson in the fourth. The lump of beaten fighter lay virtually motionless for 22 seconds, rising lamely only at the end of the count. 'I explained to them beforehand I would suspend any count if the other fighter was not in a neutral corner,' Alfred said. 'I stopped at six to tell Williams that, then resumed.'

Williams laughed at the explanation. 'The referee was a joker. Disgusting. He wanted to throw me out of that ring. He gave Mike every single opportunity.'

But Williams, one of the nicest people in a sometimes not-so-nice business, wanted to move on. He had made his point. This was a time for celebration, not recrimination.

His companion of 13 years, Zoe Browne, who hates to watch him work, turned up at ringside unannounced and, in the only logical conclusion to the magic, the winner proposed. They are, as he described it, 'Islamically married', but they will further confirm their bond publicly on 1 September, the anniversary of their meeting.

'I have never had a bigger moment than this,' Williams said, with sublime understatement. 'I always had the heart. I was sure of myself. I was relaxed and I was ready. I am going to chill out with my family [his daughters, Nubia, 5, and Maliha, seven weeks, are also here], look for a world-title shot or a rematch with Mike.'

The second option is unlikely. Tyson can now be officially rated a shot fighter and will be awfully hard to sell to all but the most desperate of ghouls. He had three-and-a-half roaring rounds in him and every one of the 17,273 punters present (of whom maybe 13,000 paid) knew that the blizzard had blown itself out. Just as it had against Buster Douglas in 1990, Evander Holyfield twice and, most recently, against Lennox Lewis two years ago. There is nothing left.

We should not have been so stunned at the outcome, but we were - even those of us who had gingerly predicted that Williams would win - because Tyson, even in his ravaged latter days, retains a sliver of menace.

Two minutes and 51 seconds into the fourth round of what was supposed to be a routine engagement on his way to rehabilitation, however, the former two-time heavyweight champion of the world was reduced to the sort of ignominious state he had been happy and able to impose on 44 of his 50 victims since he emerged from the Catskills in 1986.

Tyson, the youngest heavyweight champion at 20 and now the saddest ex-champ, made history and, cruelly, at 38 and £22million in debt, with his earning power reduced from a projected $80m for a further four fights to zero, he is history. Freddy Roach, his wise and compassionate trainer, admitted as much. 'This definitely could be the end,' he said. 'No doubt about it. He said he was sorry he did not do what he was supposed to do tonight. I told him he did not have to say sorry. There are other ways to make money, even if it is hard to walk away from this game.

'We will sit down and talk, but money's not an issue. I am more concerned about his health. What good is money if you can't count it?'

The night belonged to Williams, latterly of south London but soon to count the world as his home and his oyster. He was magnificent - and not only for dismantling a legend, but in his stout rejection of the slurs unfairly heaped upon him by people who barely know him and, it has to be said, did not want to know him. A Los Angeles writer referred to him as 'some guy called Danny Williams'. Others laughed at his chances, regarding him as no more than a foil. His was the deserved victory of a man who utterly believed in himself over a man who long since had even forgotten who he really was.

Tyson bought his friendship down the years, squandering more than $300m in the process. Once destroyed, he lost his admirers. Sadly, he would probably have them back tomorrow if he had the funds. What happens to him now is problematic. He was saved the embarrassment of an inquisition on Friday night when he was spirited away to a hospital for 'routine scans'.

There is no question that he underestimated his opponent. The build-up had been as subdued as anyone in the Tyson business could remember. No tantrums, face-offs or rants, no bad headlines or vibes. The strong suspicion was that Tyson was staying on his mood-calming medication until the last minute; Williams was just waiting, without chemical assistance, for the night.

Not even Webb, the interesting 33-year-old local 'entrepreneur' who put this show on, succumbed to the temptation to ape Don King, whose absence probably ensured an atmosphere more like the class reunion in Philip Roth's American Pastoral (full of dying self-delusionists) than a heavyweight fight. While Don stayed away, his old chum, Bob Arum, went to work. The rumour was that he had persuaded Tyson to fight for him. Not much chance of that now.

You have to hand it to Webb, though. Against the odds, he pulled it off. Who would have entrusted the hazardous assignment of promoting Tyson to a small-time hustler, a former male stripper and amateur boxer, a high-school drop-out with a history of abusing women? Actually, this is boxing. Dumb question.

Webb, true to the stereotypes of the fight game, is due in court here tomorrow to answer charges that he threatened the mother of his child. A warrant says that Webb called her last December to say he could 'kill someone or hurt someone really bad'. He is pleading not guilty.

Webb has beaten four charges of theft in the past three years and been named, says the Louisville Courier-Journal , in 'more than a dozen lawsuits'. In 1994, he was convicted of possessing cocaine. 'I don't understand what any of my past mistakes have to do with this event,' he told reporters. 'This is about bringing boxing back to Louisville.'

One suspects that Webb's eye for a buck is marginally stronger than his love of tradition, but this sleepy city does have a remarkable attachment to boxing history, especially so Louisville Central High. Uniquely, it has produced three world heavyweight champions: Muhammad Ali, his friend Jimmy Ellis and the now sadly crippled Greg Page, who was in a wheelchair ringside on Friday night.

But for all the real-life tragedies that proliferate the sport, boxing is essentially about pretence. Even the legends pretend. Even Ali. Few have identified boxing's most enduring myth for the hokum it is - Ali throwing his Olympic gold medal into the Ohio river - as astutely as the wizened New Jersey boxing writer Jerry Izenberg. 'If they trawled the Ohio for a thousand years,' he said, 'they'd more likely find a mermaid than an Olympic gold medal.'

Maybe that is why Ali stayed away. Or maybe he did not want to see his sullen daughter, Laila, on the undercard, continuing a career of preposterous falsity. Laila is a magnificent specimen, not only conventionally beautiful but a perfect genetic link to her father - tall, slim and strong. But hers is a brooding, angry presence and, in boxing terms, there is hardly anyone to match her with, although the sweet-faced Monica Nuñez, from the Dominican Republic, who has moved through the weights from 116lb when she started boxing four years ago to 162lb here, took Ali to the ninth round on Friday night.

From the crowd to the fighters, from the cheque-writers to the guys who get the beers in at home and cough up for pay-per-view, boxing is about pretending. Pretending it is as it used to be. Pretending we are in the same game as Dempsey, Louis, Ali and the rest. We are not. In the home town of the greatest actor boxing ever had, in Ali's backyard, we all put on our slap and acted up a storm.

Which is why Tyson, the creepiest of parodies, keeps getting the call from central casting. After a brief period on debut in 1985 as a man-child phenomenon, he has been playing the monster most of his working life.

His has been a spectacular fall, but no amount of examinations will adequately explain how he blew his career, and much of his life. To observe him at close quarters is to see a victim of self-loathing and overindulgence, a wild yet oddly perceptive individual with nowhere to go and no one to go there with. He lives alone in a borrowed room in Phoenix. There will be no more rising from the ashes for Tyson.