He's always looked classy to me, as though there is plenty there in reserve. Probably the best we've had. Just wish that he was more "British".
Oh but I forgot he was born in Britain therfore i'm British. BULL#@%#.
His memories of his early years are jolly enough but things started going wrong when he was expelled from primary school. "Some kids wouldn't let me play soccer, so I took their ball," he explained. "One guy tried to get it back so I punched him in the face and was taken to the principal's office. They told me I was going to get it, so I smashed my hand through his window - see, I still got the scars," and he showed me the reminders of his petulance. "I remember the note they sent home with me: Sorry, but we have to expel Lennox. He's a danger to the other kids."
Some kids wouldn't let me play soccer.! Tough!
Oh wait i'm bigger and stronger so let's punch them in the face!
"The headmaster would put on the gloves with me and he'd let me punch at him - just to get that aggression out and get me tired because I was a hyperactive boy with a bad temper who needed his mother's attention," he said.
Mummy.
At the age of 12 this insecure Cockney boy was reunited with his mum in the German-Canadian town of Kitchener, Ontario, and there he had a far more positive educational experience, excelling at his school work as well as in sport. Much of this had to do with his mother's influence, and Lewis remains extraordinarily close to her - still living together with her in his North London mansion. But even the Canadian experience had its rough edges. "I was called 'nigger' and stuff, and chased and teased and the police wouldn't look at my heart; they'd look at my colour and would stop to harass me. These were things I came to expect."
Chips on my shoulder. Cry me a river.
These experiences were seminal to the sense of self that emerged. "I'm very conscious of my blackness and my culture and my history," he said. I asked him who were his heroes, and he didn't hesitate. "[Nelson] Mandela, Malcolm [X] and Martin [Luther King] - look at their life stories and what they've overcome - and my mother because she's been through a lot to bring me up in today's society; not an easy task."
My heroes are Melson, Magggie Thatcher, Winston Churchill..oh but wait, they are BRITISH ( Ok Winston isn't totally British).
The one side to his identity which confuses people is his nationality - Jamaican parents, first decade or so in Britain, next one in Canada, back in Britain, training and fighting in America, holidaying in the West Indies, with an accent that is sometimes hard to define. "When I'm in England people say I sound American. When I go to Canada they say I sound English. So Ijust say I'm mid-Atlantic. I'm someone who lives on planet Earth."
British? Spare me.
http://www.mg.co.za/mg/za/archive/2001apr/features/21apr-boxing.html